Rika Ezaki

The world is harmful
Rika Ezaki

Eyes, fingers, band-aids, bondage.  Rika Ezaki's art combines otherworldly repetitions with lush details to create images at once striking, eerie, and disturbing.  Gentle, faded color schemes and delicately curving lines impart a refinement that matches the considered composition and content of Ezaki's art.  It's fascinating.  It's beautiful.  And in its beauty it is seductive and dreadful.

Ezaki's nightmare pictures frequently echo the traditions of Japanese erotica and the Japanese expression of the grotesque.  Schoolboys are caught lounging, glancing out at the audience with heavy-lidded eyes, sometimes entangled with lascivious monsters.  Schoolgirls are bound like pin-ups, harassed by demons, or skewered on mega-pencils like St. Sebastian.  

While I wouldn't call this art Safe For Work, it isn't as graphic as you might imagine.  There are no exposed genitals or blood.  But this modesty is exactly what makes the erotic subtext of Ezaki's work so deeply disturbing to me.  Mind you, the subtext is extremely clear.  Themes of abuse, bondage, and all manner of emotionally twisted relationships are on display.  Oftentimes, they're softened to seem appealing, even romantic.  For example, in Your Gold Lotus, a youth is surrounded with slender female legs.  On the surface it seems like a classic foot-fetish image.  It is only upon closer inspection that one sees all the shoes are far too tiny, and that all the feet have been bound down into body-horror nubs inside those cute little boots.

Of course, there are two other areas that Ezaki explores exquisitely: lonesome ghost-stories, and super-kawaii, super-monstrous sticker sheets (And OMG I NEED SOME OF THOSE).  

Attempted Double Suicide shows a long-haired maiden clutching a skeleton in the moonlight.  It suggests a classic folktale, complete with kimono and moths.  There are kitsune priests and black flames and filters that would make you utterly certain you're looking at a blockprint on silk.  Other works include a schoolgirl whose hair is levitating.  It's an understated bit of insinuation that reminds me simultaneously of Alfred Gorey and Rene Magritte.

Then, Ezaki swings far into Western horror imagery with angels, horned devils, crosses, and goat legs.  And then there are the sticker-sheets.  You'll just have to see them to believe them.

In short, I think Ezaki is marvelous.  With a gorgeous style and strange ideas, Ezaki makes things for gazing, things for delving deep into mysterious nightmare worlds.  

I highly suggest you give the website some traffic, and perhaps even contact the artist if you see something you like!  Despite being in Japanese, don't fear: click on Pix, then the blue link, and you can wander through a complete album of Rika Ezaki's work.

http://kizetz.com/

Sweet Dreams!

-Joanna

The Silent Twins - June and Jennifer Gibbons

This is perhaps one of my favorite instances of real life creepy that I have come across in a long time, simply because there's no true way to know exactly what was going on in the psyche of these girls and what drove their actions.

June and Jennifer Gibbons were born in Wales in 1963.  Being the only African-American students in school, the girls were bullied from a young age.  After a while, they were so ostracized and traumatized, that they only communicated with each other, using a form of cryptophasia, a language developed by twins that only they can understand.  At the age of 14, the sisters were sent to separate schools in an attempt to "regulate their behavior" but this proved to be even more damaging, causing them to become completely catatonic and entirely withdrawn from others.

As the girls got older, they turned their interests towards creative writing, filling tons of journals and attempting to sell their short stories to several magazines but proved unsuccessful.  They did publish several books set in the United States through a self-publishing press, New Horizons, entitled Pepsi-Cola Addict and The Taxi-Driver's Son to name a few.  In the '80s, in their late teens, the twins' behavior started to take a turn, attacking each other physically, drinking heavily, smoking marijuana, and committing a string of crimes including arson and petty theft, resulting in their admittance to a high-security mental health hospital.  There, they lost all interest in creative writing and were placed on high doses of anti-psychotic medicine.

The girls had a longstanding agreement that if one were to die, the other would go on to live a normal life and resume speaking again.  They decided that while in the mental hospital, it was necessary for one of them to die.  Jennifer was decided to be the sacrifice.  In fact, she even told their only friend at the time, a journalist named Margie Wallace, simply "I'm going to die.  We've decided."  The girls were in the process of being transferred from one hospital to another when Jennifer fell unconscious.  In the hospital, she died of an acute myocarditis, inflammation of the heart.

After Jennifer's death, June gave interviews to several magazines and stated that she felt free at last and liberated.  She now lives a normal life, no longer needs psychiatric services, and is accepted by her community.

People say twins have an unspoken connection, a bond that no other set of siblings could imagine, a sharing of one soul in two bodies.  In some cases, this can be as innocent as finishing each other's sentences or wearing matching clothes.  In other cases, it can escalate to the withdrawn and odd behavior of the Gibbons sisters or even the violently dangerous behavior of the Eriksson twins, Ursula and Sabina, whose story is also highly intense and interesting.  (Note to self: May have to write blog post on them in the future.)

If you have time, I definitely recommend reading up more on this case, as there are far more twisted details than I include in this post.  All said and done, this is both a tragic story and a story of freedom rolled into one, leaving everyone who reads about it with a feeling of intense fascination but also an unsettling sadness.

-Amanda

The Descent - Movie Review

The Descent
Released 2005
Directed by Neil Marshall

Slow-burn buzz.  Possibly the slowest burning buzz I've ever seen for a horror movie.  Over the past decade, The Descent has been gradually clawing its way higher and higher up on my watch list.  When previews for it first came out in 2005, I laughed at how terrible it looked.  I mean, really, who wants to watch a bunch of babes mud-wrestle in a cave and get eaten by orcs?  Not me! 

ONLY IT’S NOT LIKE THAT.  I promise.

The Descent is a remarkably good movie.  It sports a well-rounded all-female cast that’s exactly opposite your regular Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory babe-troop.  Aside from how satisfying the characters are, the movie is fast-paced and genuinely thrilling.  It takes the claustrophobia and unease implicit in spelunking, and ramps it up fast and hard.  Then, when you think the movie is glowing with adrenaline from scaling bottomless chasms, it hits you again with the grotesque cave monsters.  Which, I know, sounds dumb, but trust me on this: the cave monsters are good.  I’ll explain why in a bit.

So, about that cast of nothing but awesome women.  It’s got 6 actual women.  Not girls, not babes- women.  Women who are brave and have virtues and flaws.  Women who go hard-core caving for funsies.  They’re thrill-seekers.  They each have their own lives and careers.  There’s a delicate web of relationships between them of which, sadly, we only catch glimpses.  But even these glimpses are rich compared to the character-development we get for characters of any gender in most movies.

Not a duck-face in sight.

And the reason why they looked like they were mud-wrestling in the preview is because they kinda do- it’s just that they’re engaged in some of the most sloppy, brutal, true-to-life fighting I've seen for a while.  None of this prettily choreographed, laughably-unrealistic Black Widow bunk.  They slip and roll around in blood-mud with inbred mutants until they’re lucky enough to plunge their thumbs deep into said mutant’s eye-sockets.  It’s harsh.  And for someone who's looked up to Ellen Ripley since 4th grade, it’s also really satisfying.   

About those cave monsters.  Spoiler: they’re an ancient race of humans that have evolved underground.  They’re blind and use echolocation to hunt prey.  They crawl lots and it’s quite uncanny.  But they also have really bad senses of smell, and aren’t very good at knowing what’s in their bone-room.  Look… don’t worry about the logisitics.  This isn’t science-fiction.  This is a horror movie about The Moon-eyed People.  And while I was personally underwhelmed by The Moon-eyes as capital-M Monsters per se, I really loved them as a more subtly-shaded device: human-shaped animals.  The Descent shows you the monster lots.  And to be entirely fair, the make-up effects are gorgeous.  But once I got over the displeasure of how much I was looking the monsters in the face, the more they started to warp into something more interesting.  They began to seem less Other-y.  This coincides perfectly with the descent of the characters into primal survival states.

I'm considering investing in an climbing adze.

To make a note about cinematography/direction, there’s also a beautiful, lovely, gorgeous shot in this movie.  The lead has to scramble up a hill of bones to the surface.  She’s illuminated by a narrow shaft of light among the darkness.  She struggles, exhausted, covered in blood and death, up and up.  It’s one of the most heartbreaking expressions of grieving I’ve ever seen.  By the time you see it, it’ll make sense.  And, yes, a woman crawling up a bone-pile is very heavy-handed.  And I would happily call it silly in anything other than a horror movie that seems to have been crafted entirely around this gem of a shot.

Onto things that aren't great about this movie: the bad CG.  It’s mostly used for cave interiors that would be really unfeasible to construct or shoot on location, so just deal with it.  There are no CG monsters, and the movie makes use of practical effects for everything it wants to look good.  But, I know some people honestly just can’t stand older CG, especially on HD tvs, so if that’ll break your concentration- try to prepare yourself.

Also, the pacing is off, and I’m not sure whether it makes the movie better or worse.  The fight-scenes can seem a little sluggish.  They really wallow in the… well, wallowing.  There are parts that I think are drawn out just a touch too much in attempts milk every last sweet drop of tension and excitement out of a situation.  

Then again, the weird pacing of this movie made its jump-scares intense.  I have a bad habit of counting down to jump-scares in movies.  You know: “Jump-scare in 3, 2, 1…Rawr!”  Try it sometime, you’re probably better at it than you think.  But this movie is uncountable.  I’m having a hard time pinning down exactly why the scares are so effective, but suffice to say, I screamed “JESUS CHRIST!” more than once in alarm.

As an overall result, the pacing has some beneficial effects, but makes the movie feel loosey-goosey.  Preferably, it would be edited down into elegant perfection, but I know this isn’t always possible.  It’s just a touch disappointing when there are so many other yummy things going on.

In conclusion, if you love the idea of the Ted the Caver creepypasta but are too impatient to read all the way through it, have I got the movie for you!  While not the most subtle or psychological of horror tales, The Descent definitely hits all the good spots of a survival/monster movie.  Good characters, thrills, chills, and blood-mud.

Oh, and the best Apocalypse Now moment since… Apocalypse Now.

 -Joanna

Lustmord: The Word as Power

Have you ever been sitting in your house, maybe trying to write a horror story, and think "Man, I need some music.  I need the darkest, deepest, doomiest music I can find, but if I listen to metal or noise music I'll get distracted.  Or worse, I'll get a migraine.  What I need the is the subtle soundtrack of abandoned demonic temples and vast unknown wastelands.  I need the music that they pipe into the malls in Rl'yeh."

Well look no further than the latest release by my favorite dark ambient artist: The Word as Power by Lustmord.  Brian Williams, the man behind Lustmord, has been producing the spookiest, tastiest dark ambient for decades, unspooling great swaths of bassy synthesizers and groaning guitars over his albums.

With The Word as Power, Lustmord introduces human vocals into his work for the first time.  But this isn't a matter of lyrics or spoken word.  Rather, the voices on this album echo lost and forlorn, wailing heinous incantations to the rising gloom.  They moan in made-up languages as tectonic sub-bass rumblings build and recede at a glacial pace.

Now, I will warn you, I do mean glacial.  Giving The Word as Power a listen can be a deeply rewarding experience if you've got a good sound system and a lot of time on your hands.  But it isn't exactly a speed-rap.  Several of the tracks run in excess of 15 minutes, evolving slowly and evoking a sense of eternal entrapment.  Which, if you're an impatient person, will be exactly what you think of the album: timeless purgatory.

However, I've found this to be one of my favorites, as it's difficult to come by good music to fit otherworldly hellscapes that don't involve lots of screaming.

The Word as Power is available on all the regular sources for music.  I highly recommend it, especially if you need to set the mood with sound that's deeply evocative, alien, yet eerily human.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I tried to think of a good thing to tie in with this album review.  Some piece of artwork or poetry.  I settled on these passages from one of my favorite books: House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson.  I think they capture well the scenes that come to mind when listening.  Enjoy!

Presently, I landed, and stood, surrounded by a great waste of loneliness. The place was lit with a gloomy twilight that gave an impression of indescribable desolation.

Afar to my right, within the sky, there burnt a gigantic ring of dull-red fire, from the outer edge of which were projected huge, writhing flames, darted and jagged. The interior of this ring was black, black as the gloom of the outer night. I comprehended, at once, that it was from this extraordinary sun that the place derived its doleful light.

From that strange source of light, I glanced down again to my surroundings. Everywhere I looked, I saw nothing but the same flat weariness of interminable plain. Nowhere could I descry any signs of life; not even the ruins of some ancient habitation.

............ 

And so, after a time, I came to the mountains. Then, the course of my journey was altered, and I began to move along their bases, until, all at once, I saw that I had come opposite to a vast rift, opening into the mountains. Through this, I was borne, moving at no great speed. On either side of me, huge, scarped walls of rocklike substance rose sheer. Far overhead, I discerned a thin ribbon of red, where the mouth of the chasm opened, among inaccessible peaks. Within, was gloom, deep and somber, and chilly silence. For a while, I went onward steadily, and then, at last, I saw, ahead, a deep, red glow, that told me I was near upon the further opening of the gorge.

A minute came and went, and I was at the exit of the chasm, staring out upon an enormous amphitheatre of mountains. Yet, of the mountains, and the terrible grandeur of the place, I recked nothing; for I was confounded with amazement to behold, at a distance of several miles and occupying the center of the arena, a stupendous structure built apparently of green jade. 

From House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgeson.

-Joanna 

"of the wants, of Tarrare."

From The London Medical and Physical Journal (Oxford University) 1819. p. 204
Read the full text on Google Books.  The account of Tarrare begins on p. 203.

He could eat a meal for 15 laborers.  He ate live snakes and dead bodies.

He may have consumed a living child.

Welcome to our first Matter-of-Fact Monday!  The day of the week where everything we talk about is true!  Or at least based in reality of some sort.  While the rest of the blog is dedicated to creative work in our favorite genre, you can always rest assured that Mondays will give you a dose of true-life horror.  So, let's get on with learning about one of the most bizarre and creepy individuals ever to wander through France.

There are many articles dedicated to the man known as Tarrare.  Most begin with his humble birth in the French countryside around 1772.  Then they cover his stints as a travelling geek, swallowing corks, rocks, and live animals as the warm-up act to a "charlatan".  And there was his brief service as a spy for the French Revolutionary Army (they made him swallow messages, of course).  But most stories about Tarrare focus on one thing: his insatiable hunger.

What more can I add?

Other authors state the facts clearly and simply, as if to emphasize the reality of the account.  Which isn't really a bad idea, considering that the story of Tarrare is so deeply unbelievable.  The mind cringes away from it, dismisses it as a work of macabre fiction.  It can't possibly be true.  But M. le Baron Percy, Tarrare's doctor and author of the account, was a well-respected military doctor of the time.  An overview of his other reports show that he was not given to flights of fancy.  If Tarrare was a hoax, it would be quite out of character for M. Percy to perpetrate such a thing.  This leaves us with an uncomfortable notion.

Tarrare was real.

My intent is to do the opposite of these previous articles.  Where Wikipedia and the beloved Fortean Times treat Tarrare as a curiosity, albeit a disgusting one, I plan to retell the tale of Tarrare in all its horrible glory.  Tarrare was hideous and scary.  Understatement may inspire respectability and a slow-burn sort of dread.  There is an argument to be made for rendering Tarrare as a sympathic, human oddity.

But, remember, he probably ate a child.

Let's begin with how he looked, his physical existence.

Tarrare was a medium-sized man, perhaps 5'6", slender and meek.  It is said that he was "almost devoid of force or ideas."  Save eating, of course.  At the age of 17, even after years of gluttony, he weighed only 100 pounds.  He was balding: "the little hair he had preserved, although very young, was very fair and extremely fine."  His teeth were streaked "like marble."  His cheeks were sunken, wrinkled, and hung limp from his face.  This was a direct result of Tarrare's ability to open his mouth and fill it with a dozen eggs or apples at a time.  His lips were barely visible, but his mouth was very wide.

Tarrare could open his mouth so wide, in fact, that a cylinder a foot around in circumference could be placed inside without touching the roof of his palate.

At his autopsy, it was found that when Tarrare's head was tilted back, a straight canal was formed down his enlarged esophagus directly to his stomach.  The doctors were able to look in his mouth, down a tunnel of flesh the width of a softball, and see his stomach.

Tarrare's stomach was capable of distending to such a massive, bloated form, that when he was not full of food, the skin of his abdomen fell saggy.  There was such an excess of it that he could wrap the flap of skin most of the way around his body.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself that Tarrare may have been a sufferer of any number of syndromes that attack the connective tissue in the body.  He must have had a genetic defect that caused his joints, skin, and tissues to stretch and unhinge in such a manner.  But, no.  According to the account, Tarrare had no loosened skin, no joint-trouble, no sprains or unusual flexibility, aside from those related to his constant eating.  His mouth, jaw, esophagus, and distended stomach were the result, not of a medical abnormality, but of constant strain and stretching.

But the disturbing truth of Tarrare's body doesn't end there.

He constantly sweated and was burning-hot to the touch.  Tarrare literally steamed.  M. Percy, his doctor, described that from Tarrare "a vapour arose, sensible to the sight, and still more so to the smell."  In fact, Tarrare smelled so bad that people had a hard time getting within twenty paces of him.  His excrement was described as "fetid beyond all conception."

And the stinking vapour got worse after he'd fed.  During his rare times of extreme satiation, Tarrare's eyes would turn a vivid, blood-shot red, his cheeks would flush, and he would fall into a deep sleep to digest.  He would burp and move his jaw in chewing-swallowing motion, though M. Percy found no signs of actual rumination.

That's what Tarrare was.  Now, let's look at what he did.

Tarrare is known to have consumed the following:

-A quarter of a bullock in a day.
-stones
-corks
-a basket full of apples (basket included)
-a pocket watch and chain
-flints
-four bowls of curdled milk and two enormous hard puddings (the dinner for 15 German laborers)
-quadruple military rations
-kitchen trash
-other people's leftovers
-small boxes containing military messages.
-a golden fork

Not so bad.  Typical side-show fare.  But wait, there's more!

-dogs
-living cats
-living snakes
-a living large eel without chewing (though he crushed its head in his molars)
-thirty pounds of raw liver and candles
-offal from slaughterhouses (he fought wild dogs over his findings)
-thirty pounds of raw beef lungs

So he liked his meat raw and kind of rotting... so?

Well, let's mention the things he consumed during his stay at M. Percy's hospital.

When he first arrived at a military hospital in Soultz, he ate 4 meals himself, the other patients leftovers, kitchen scraps, and turned to the apothecary's room.  Therein he ate all the poultices.  Poultices being a moistened, mashed mixture of plants, flowers, flour, mud, ash, or other ingredients.

Tarrare was later found sipping from bowls of blood from blood-letting patients.  The staff surprised him in the midst of his consumption and sent him back to his room.

Later, they found Tarrare in the morgue, eating parts of dead, rotting bodies.

He was allowed to wander the halls of the hospital at night, breaking into offices, sneaking into rooms to lap at half-coagulated bowls of diseased blood.  He crept into the morgue to eat corpses.

The last straw was when a 14-month-old child went missing.  Many accounts describe the victim as either a baby or, as I just did, a 14 month old.  But this misses the point.  Children routinely learn to walk by twelve months old, a year that is.  This was not a small, ten-pound swaddled baby, or a collection of months.  This was a toddler.  Sure, someone may have kidnapped the child, or it may have wandered out on its own.  But the staff immediately suspected Tarrare and threw him out as a result.  We do not know for sure, and the thought is beyond real conception.  But it's possible.

Tarrare ate a toddler.

A child that was heavy and could thrash its limbs about.  A child that was learning to talk.  A child that may have tried to run.

In a stroke of irony, Tarrare died at 26 from consumption (tuberculosis) and diarrhea.  Doctors had to work quickly as a strange corruption instantly began to decompose his body at an accelerated rate. When they autopsied his body they found his intestines were putrefied, tangled, and oozed pus.  His liver and gallbladder were enlarged and putrid.  His stomach was covered with ulcers and filled almost all of his abdominal cavity.  This was all they found, as the stench of his body rendered the doctors unable to continue.

Tarrare was a man made to consume.  He ate so much it warped his body into little more than bones surrounding a gullet and stomach.  He was a gaping mouth that swallowed contagion, rot, and living creatures.

"Let a person imagine," said M. Percy, "all that domestic and wild animals, the most filthy and ravenous, are capable of devouring, and they may form some idea of the appetite, as well as of the wants, of Tarrare."

-Joanna

P.S. Special Thanks to Caitlin.

The Taking of Deborah Logan - Movie Review

The Taking of Deborah Logan
Released 2014
Directed by Adam Robitel
Spoiler-Free!

Found-footage possession?  Again?  How can anyone possibly squeeze a passable movie out of such a threadbare formula?  Well, when you cast a jaw-dropping (hee, hee) mature actress as your lead, and make it uncomfortably about Alzheimer's, it's not so hard.

The Taking of Deborah Logan first got my attention not via pitch or preview, but when a friend of mine showed me some of the most puzzling and horrifying gifs I've ever seen on tumblr.  Now, I know tumblr gifs aren't the best way to start a story, but they definitely piqued the interest of the room, and we all set out on a quest to figure out: WHAT IS THAT FROM?  A found-footage movie from 2014, apparently.

What made me rearrange the schedule for horror-movie night, putting Deborah Logan at the top, was a look at the premise.  Deborah Logan is an aging woman from rural Virginia and reluctant subject of a documentary about Alzheimer's and the psychological toll it takes on those who care for Alzheimer's patients.  Naturally, the film spirals out of control as Deborah deteriorates into madness, self-mutilation, and violence.  As the documentary crew dig into Deborah's past as the town's switchboard operator, they uncover a series of grizzly unsolved murders.  Four girls were brutalized, and the suspected killer disappeared.  Deborah knows something, but the secrets are mixed in a snarl of delusion about serpents, rituals, and devil-worship.

The reason you should watch Deborah Logan is not for the mind-bending effects near the end, or the gleeful turn towards traditional possession-horror it takes half-way through, you should watch it for Deborah Logan herself.  You should watch it for how uncomfortable it will make you about dementia.  You should watch it for the well-developed, unique characters, how they relate to one another, and how their choices are remarkably, frustratingly human.  You should watch it for the humble sense of humor the movie has about itself.

I'm not ashamed to say that the first half of Deborah Logan made me yelp for my husband to join me on the couch.  I needed someone to snuggle.  It's deliciously creepy.  Full of long, silent, spooky scenes that don't necessarily end in jump scares.  In fact, the movie makes a habit of not scaring you- precisely so that the suspense is never adequately released.  I ended up watching perfectly innocuous character-development scenes set in broad daylight with a sense of dread and apprehension.

Jill Larson (aka Deborah herself), gives such an incredible performance, it's... difficult to do justice to with words.  She transforms herself from a polite, Southern lady you could easily mistake for one of your relatives, to a raving, naked, dangerous monster.  Her physical acting, in sculpting her facial expressions, body language, and voice, is astonishing and richly delivered.  She is the warping, glimmering, bleeding heart and dark soul of this movie.

Ask her what happened to her neck.

Honestly, around the hour mark when the crew discovers the mystery of Henri Desjardins, the French Satanist who may well be possessing Deborah from beyond the grave, I was relieved.  The movie's steady and exciting pace drives it along as its content veers hard right into classical possession territory.  From there, it's a satisfyingly familiar horror romp through forests, abandoned mills, and twisting cave passages.  It's filled with scaly nightmares and heroism.

But before that right turn, Deborah Logan can be very hard to watch from an emotional standpoint.  The desperate gallows humor of Deborah's daughter as she drenches her exhaustion and pain with alcohol; the way Deborah's hair becomes lank and dirty; the manner in which her deterioration is all too familiar to anyone acquainted with Alzheimer's or mental illness.  And that's what sets The Taking of Deborah Logan apart in my mind: the fact that it made me cry before it made me jump.

Or, if you're unmoved by that sort of thing, Deborah Logan is a movie full of subtle and astounding makeup effects, chilling ambiance, a diverse cast, and strong female characters.  It's got venom-spitting, child endangerment, electrocutions, dirt-vomit, and more old-lady rump than you'd probably ever put in your own horror movie.  And then, when you get to the part at the end that inspired those tumblr gifs, your mind will reel and refuse to process what you're seeing.

Deborah Logan isn't without its flaws, of course.  It's not a "pure" found-footage movie, as it frequently pipes in spoopy ambient booms and roars ala Paranormal Activity.  The shaky-cam near the end nauseated me (literally- I get carsick easy).  The plot is predictable and follows the genre formula to a tee.

But, just like a really good plate of spaghetti, Deborah Logan makes up for its over-done recipe with tons of flavor and excellent execution.  Sure, you may have chowed through any number of mediocre bowls of mushy pasta and bland sauce, but when a spicy, meaty, perfectly al dente plate is put in front of you, are you sure you don't want to take just the tiniest bite?

-Joanna

Upcoming Relaunch!

Hello dear readers,

If you're new to our blog, welcome!  Here you'll find the best in creepy, strange, and horrific content chopped up into pleasantly-sized articles.  All written by two lovely ladies.  Sisters, in fact.

This blog has fallen quiet for some time.  We've been revamping and preparing for the most stupendous of relaunches.

Here's what you can expect from the new and improved Hand Of Jessee:

• A regular posting schedule:  Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays at 8:00 p.m. EST.
• More in-depth discussion and intensive research.  We delve beyond the link dump.
• High quality reviews of work spanning all mediums.  Books, music, art, theatre, games, and more.  If it's strange or horrific, we'll write about it.
• Weekly movie reviews.  There's a lot of scary movies out there, y'all.

We've also decided to divide our content into three categories, organized by day.

• Matter-of-Fact Mondays feature articles about strange, mysterious, and disturbing phenomenon based in the real world.  Portraits of serial killers, missing persons, bizarre animals, and tales that have a basis in fact will be shared at the start of the week.  Even if the content strays into madness or unreliable witnesses, one fact remains: someone believes in it.  Nonfiction, in other words.
• Spooky Wednesdays feature critiques and cheers for all creative works of horror.  From book and game reviews to critiques of fine art, this is the day to revel in our favorite genre.
• Film Review Fridays feature all the movie reviews we inevitably write. Considering the plethora of films we devour, movie reviews need their own day so we can talk about other works in horror at all, ever.  Spoilers optional, but clearly noted.

Make sure to follow us via email, or G+ for all the latest.

Have a Spooky New Year!