Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 10: Adele

| October 10, 2011

Last year in Dark Sentiments – Day 12, Mrs. LFM and I collaborated in assembling a playlist of songs born of the darkest sentiments; the kind we characterized as, “Sentiments ranging from the acts of tortured souls, the anguish that can sometimes be born of love, hate, wounds that will never heal, and doors that […]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 9: The Payzant Family and That Which Befell Them

| October 9, 2011

Signs leading into some communities on the south shore of Nova Scotia read, “We love the beauty that surrounds us and welcome you to share it.” Such a sunshiny bit of prose, but ’twas not always thus. The town of Lunenburg and its surrounding area was settled by Protestant immigrants of German, Swiss, and French […]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 8: The Burning Times

| October 8, 2011

The Burning Times By LFM It was a simpler, darker age, An age of Ox and plough, When doughty farmers, iron thewed Wrought life from earth and bough. But woe is me, it came to pass That clergy came to roost, And serving up “the word of God” An awful thing was loosed. “The devil […]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 7: When Axes Grow on Trees

| October 7, 2011

“You know, I often say that the world’s a crazy place – “crazy” in a good sense, and in the sense that, for example, when you walk in the forest or over the fields, or elsewhere, you never know what you’re going to come across.” ~ Laurie Lacey One morning in the early autumn of […]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 6: Cold Steel

| October 6, 2011

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the […]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 5: Seeing is NOT Believing

| October 5, 2011

A recurring theme in the horror genre is supernatural subterfuge that results in one person believing that another has become a monster, with predictably homicidal results. While such events are a matter of record, explained as arising from insanity, the human mind has yet to reveal all its dark secrets. Behold the “flashed face distortion […]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 4: Of Dolls Possessed

| October 4, 2011

Evil and otherwise supernaturally animated dolls or puppets are a recurring theme in the horror genre bringing us, among others, the Puppetmaster series that began with the movie of that name in 1989, and the better known Chucky franchise that kicked off with Child’s Play in 1988. If you spend any time in the world, […]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 3: Dagger Woods

| October 3, 2011

Dagger Woods is a small rural community located amid softwood forest and marshland slightly less than 10 kilometers east of the university town of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Anyone driving Highway 104 to or from the eastern part of the province will be familiar with the turnoff. Tales of a malevolent being haunting the woods began […]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 2: The Griesly Wife

| October 2, 2011

I first heard The Griesly Wife recited to me late one night over a camp fire by a lake shore deep in the woods of darkest Nova Scotia. The person who recited it had learned the poetic tale without knowing its author, and believed the story was set somewhere in a remote part of northern […]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 1: It’s Back

| October 1, 2011

“I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres; thy knotted and combined locks to part,and each particular hair to stand on end,as quills upon the fretful porpentine!” ~ Hamlet; Act 1, Scene 5 As our regular readers […]