Halloween vampires

It’s all about you isn’t it?

Crude, tasteless, inappropriate, NSFW

But makes sense.

Halloween is an opportunity to be really creative.

Judy Gold

Some people are born for Halloween, and some are just counting the days until Christmas.

Stephen Graham Jones

If human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween.

Douglas Coupland

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Mark Twain

Halloween is nearly upon us.   Are you prepared?

Danse Macabre

When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
William Shakespeare

The fear of premature burial

Premature burial works just fine as a cure for adolescence.
George Alec Effinger

This is probably more appropriate for Halloween.  I know that Bruce would enjoy the article, since he is a fan of Poe and Lovecraft.

Six feet under
the earth she lies
with dust at her feet
and dust in her eyes.
Sydney King Russell

A Berkshire doctor related the story of another young mother, the wife of an army medical officer stationed in the Tropics, who had suffered a severe heart pain shortly after giving birth. Despite the best efforts of doctors — including, presumably, her husband — she died, or at least appeared to have done.

She was immediately prepared for burial. But the attendants were unable to close her eyelids, so her eyes were open as her children came to pay their last respects.

After they left, the woman’s nurse began stroking the face of her dead mistress. To her amazement she detected the sound of breathing and raised the alarm.

Doctors held a mirror to her mouth but there was no vapour on the mirror and when they opened a vein in each arm, no blood flowed.

They were convinced that the woman was indeed dead, and preparations for her burial continued.

Yet the loyal nurse persisted, applying mustard to her mistress’s feet and waving burnt feathers under her nose in the hope of provoking an instinctive physical reaction.

Finally, this roused the woman from what was a trance.

After her rescue, she said she had been aware that her children had been there saying their goodbyes, and of her coffin being brought in, but felt powerless to speak. She was, it seems, suffering some kind of temporary paralysis as a result of giving birth.

'Similarly, in 1903, a 14-year-old boy was buried in France, having been forcibly removed from his mother who protested that he was not dead. The day after his funeral she was found digging in the earth with her bare hands, trying to reach the coffin. The coffin was duly opened and the boy found inside, his body twisted from trying to break out: he had died from suffocation.'

Intriguingly, there are several cases of dogs saving their masters by barking at the coffin or attacking the pallbearers, forcing them to set the coffin down and open it up to find the occupant alive.

Whether the animals somehow sensed that these unfortunates were still living, we cannot know

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2289355/Let-coffin-Im-alive-New-book-reveals-spine-chilling-true-stories-premature-burial.html#ixzz2MyMvzQzA

By mere burial man arrives not at bliss; and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here - the Infinite.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte

I know wreaking such havoc was not what you meant

Rulers and would-be rulers view the rest of our species as milk cows, to be kept alive and milked for as long as possible, no matter how much joy is taken from them. The purpose of life, however, is to enjoy yourself. It's not to be treated like part of a herd and be fed what your master wants for his own purposes.

Doug Casey

On the eve of December, reject being part of the herd and enjoy your self as Christopher Lee reads Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas.

It was late one fall in Halloweenland,
and the air had quite a chill.
Against the moon a skeleton sat,
alone upon a hill.
He was tall and thin with a bat bow tie;
Jack Skellington was his name.
He was tired and bored in Halloweenland…

http://www.neatorama.com/

"My dear Jack," said Santa, "I applaud your intent.
I know wreaking such havoc was not what you meant.
And so you are sad and feeling quite blue,
But taking over Christmas was the wrong thing to do.
I hope you realize Halloween's the right place for you.
There's a lot more, Jack, that I'd like to say,
But now I must hurry, for it's almost Christmas day."
Then he jumped in his sleigh, and with a wink of an eye,
He said, "Merry Christmas," and he bid them good bye.

Comment

Just wanted to say thanks for today’s Quotefish!  I especially loved the Halloween references to H P Lovecraft.  I discovered Lovecraft as a teenager, when Ballentine Books issued a whole series of reprints of classic fantasy and early Sci-Fi works.  I found Lovecraft, and E R Eddison (the Worm Ouroboros) and William Hope Hodgson (The Night Lands) and many more.  I remember reading “the Doom that Came to Sarnath” and other works of the Cthulu Mythos late at night in my room, uneasily aware of the night sounds around me…

Bruce

Eat, drink and be scary

'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.
William Shakespeare

All Hallows’ Eve is derived from the Celtic Night of the Dead. The Celtic people divided the year by four major holidays. The festival observed at this time was called Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween); the Celts believed that this night, the souls of those who had died this past year were traveling their lonely way to the other world, and thus, for those few hours, division between this mortal world and the world to come all but vanished. Ghosts could walk the world and did.  All Hallows’ Eve and All Souls’ Day

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

Scottish

That Hallowe’en the hill noises sounded louder than ever, and fire burned on Sentinel Hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be assembled near the unlighted Whateley farmhouse. After midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandaemoniac cachinnation which filled all the countryside, and not until dawn did they finally quiet down. Then they vanished, hurrying southward where they were fully a month overdue. What this meant, no one could quite be certain till later. None of the country folk seemed to have died—but poor Lavinia Whateley, the twisted albino, was never seen again.

H.P. Lovecraft

You can read The Dunwich Horror short story by clicking the link.

I’ll save this for next year

I know some people love Halloween, but can we keep it out of the office?

This is not to say that you can’t go out and have all the drunken, costumed fun you want with your friends after hours — I just don’t want to deal with it at work.

Remember, we’re not friends — I’m just barely tolerating you for 8-9 hours a day, and if I win the lottery, I’ll be flipping you off on my way out the door. I don’t want to be the killjoy, but it’s just that I think there’s no joy in this to start with.

Why?

Really?!

Hmmm — let me think…

Stepcase Lifehack

Eat, drink and be scary

Proof of our society's decline is that Halloween has become a broad daylight event for many.

Robert Kirby

TRICK

Where is the peace dividend that was supposed to come after the end of the Cold War? Where are the fruits of the amazing gains in efficiency that technology has afforded? It has been eaten by the bureaucracy that manages our every move on this earth. The voracious and insatiable monster here is called the Federal Code that calls on thousands of agencies to exercise the police power to prevent us from living free lives.

It is as Bastiat said: the real cost of the state is the prosperity we do not see, the jobs that don't exist, the technologies to which we do not have access, the businesses that do not come into existence, and the bright future that is stolen from us. The state has looted us just as surely as a robber who enters our home at night and steals all that we love.

William "Bill" Bonner

From John Mauldin’s Frontline

OR TREAT

On Halloween, witches come true;
Wild ghosts escape from dreams.
Each monster dances in the park....

Nicholas Gordon

In case you missed the post on Stingy Jack…Read it HERE

Getting Ready for Halloween

'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.
William Shakespeare

Auld Daddy Darkness creeps frae his hole,
Black as a blackamoor, blin' as a mole....
James Ferguson

Jack O Lanterns and Stingy Jack

Stingy Jack was a miserable, old drunk who loved playing tricks on anyone and everyone. One dark, Halloween night, Jack ran into the Devil himself in a local public house. Jack tricked the Devil by offering his soul in exchange for one last drink. The Devil quickly turned himself into a sixpence to pay the bartender, but Jack immediately snatched the coin and deposited it into his pocket, next to a silver cross that he was carrying. Thus, the Devil could not change himself back and Jack refused to allow the Devil to go free until the Devil had promised not to claim Jack's soul for ten years.

The Devil agreed, and ten years later Jack again came across the Devil while out walking on a country road. The Devil tried collecting what he was due, but Jack thinking quickly, said, "I'll go, but before I do, will you get me an apple from that tree?"

The Devil, thinking he had nothing to lose, jumped up into the tree to retrieve an apple. As soon as he did, Jack placed crosses all around the trunk of the tree, thus trapping the Devil once again. This time, Jack made the Devil promise that he would not take his soul when he finally died. Seeing no way around his predicament, the Devil grudgingly agreed.

When Stingy Jack eventually passed away several years later, he went to the Gates of Heaven, but was refused entrance because of his life of drinking and because he had been so tight-fisted and deceitful. So, Jack then went down to Hell to see the Devil and find out whether it were possible to gain entrance into the depths of Hell, but the Devil kept the promise that had been made to Jack years earlier, and would not let him enter.

"But where can I go?" asked Jack.

"Back to where you came from!" replied the Devil.

The way back was windy and very dark. Stingy Jack pleaded with the Devil to at least provide him with a light to help find his way. The Devil, as a final gesture, tossed Jack an ember straight from the fires of Hell. Jack placed the ember in a hollowed-out turnip...one of Jack's favorite foods which he always carried around with him whenever he could steal one. From that day forward, Stingy Jack has been doomed to roam the earth without a resting place and with only his lit turnip to light the way in the darkness.

For more on Stingy Jack: http://www.writing.com/