Mass Grave

Cellar Dwellers

In-Between

By Ray Bradbury

Attics are awful and lovely.

You know what I mean?

Basements are low, dank, and darksome,

Halloween’s buried there;

The air of the earth

Simmers slowly, gives rise

To nightmares at midnight,

The size of its shadows is awesome.

And in-between?

The house that we live in,

Sane, boring and plain,

Pictures hung straight on walls,

Here nothing appalls,

The rugs if they misbehave,

Are twice taken out and beaten.

Meals are eaten three times a day

In a room where our dining,

And occasional wining with poker 

With loud uncles who laugh

When the joker is played,

Is all staid; sound and clean.

In-between, where we live, in-between,

A boy could go mad.

So on sad days in autumn,

He takes his dry soul

Down the hole in the dark

Or, pure lark on the fly,

Climbs to attic and sky,

Where the wind leans all year,

And pure fear is the stuff

That roams gardens of dust

And web, where the spider,

Soft glider of nerves,

Serves a fly for dessert

Then back down to the scene

Where the green salad waits

On dumb dining room plates

And nice parents whose talk

Is a chalk-screech on board.

Where the lands of the Lord

Are a Sunday morn chat

That can flatten the mind

And sift dust in the ear

Year on year.  No wildness.  No joy.

No place for a boy.

Attic, yes!  Basement, sure!

There the terror is pure.

There an All Hallows grave

Can save souls that might smother

From calm dad or sweet mother.

Up! Down! That’s the scene!

But---In-between?

Oh my gosh.  In-between?

Know what I mean?

Basement Dwellers

 

September 1st

Spending the first of September fiddling and tinkering in the basement, getting ready for the big day.  Everything's going really well and I'm definitely ahead of schedule.

  

As a child, September was the ugly end of summer vacation.  I recall worrying about September by the end of each July.  The worrying practically ruined August.  I tried to force myself to savor the break from school, to mentally will the days to go slower.  They never did.

September also meant that Halloween was around the corner...  and Thanksgiving and Christmas soon after.  It felt like being bamboozled.  We had to do this one [horrid] thing in order to get these other [great] things.  I can recall asking my mother every morning "How many more days until school?"  She probably couldn't wait.

The prison routine was easy to pick up once we started back.  Before you knew it, the weather was crisp and cool and decorations for Fall and Halloween were getting hung.  We spoke of our costume plans and talked about scary movies.  Teachers shut off the lights and told ghost stories.  We made napkin ghosts and ate mellowcreme pumpkins.  

I can recall a particularly windy Fall day where I gazed out the window of a classroom that faced the wooded area that backed up against the narrow parking lot next to the school.  The window was on the third floor, so it offered a terrific view of the creek that ran through those woods. We spent so much of our free time down in those woods, and along that creek.  Leaves were flying from the trees with each gust of wind, and the trees were already thinning.  A small dirt path ran along the creek, and I found myself staring at it, imagining a classic Witch moving along it.  I swear that I imagined it so clearly that it was like watching it happen.  She hurried along, with her back to me, as the leaves snowed down around her.  I turned to a kid next to me and tried to explain what I was seeing in my head, but it surely came out as goofy, and ranty (I've seen that look a million times since then [proportionate to my rantings]).

I'd like to think that it was one of those formative moments... one of those sparks that I carried with me.  Something that made me want to build and photograph spooky props when I figured out how to build them.  Oddly, thinking about that today made me extremely grateful smartphones didn't exist back then.  Heck, the Internet didn't either.  I dread to think how having the ability to instantly view such a scene...a Witch walking along a leafy path... would have satiated my thoughts, and dulled my creativity.  And I can't even comprehend what A.I. would have done to my motivation.  I feel like so much of my process starts with "You know what would be neat?!" and to be able to google that neat thing, or to create it instantly with A.I., well, I'm thinking I wouldn't have been as compelled to build it.  

Thankfully, I'll never know the answer to that.  As I'm sitting here right now imagining myself talking to my old grade school and asking them for permission to take some photos from that window.  Looking down on that old dirt path, as I snap a bunch of photos of my Witch prop, with her back to me.  As leaves shower down around her on a very windy Autumn day.

Cheers to September!  

It's nice to have you back.

Basement Black & White

Workshop Tour

Short video over on Instagram of some props in the basement (framed out the stuff for 2024 [haha])...

Click below...

In The Basement

Spook House Witches

Basement Buddies

Workshop Photo

From right before the big day...

Basement Spook House

Dark Workshop

Pre-Halloween Basement Shots

From The Basement...

 

Old And New

A Happy October To All

It's actually here.  It's happening.  I am looking SO forward to this month.  Gonna savor it.  Gonna squeeze it.  

Going to ENJOY it.

Hope everyone has a wonderful October!

The Creep

When you mention to your friend that you bought a new fog machine, and they suggest an inside test run with adjacent photo shoot...  preferably a photo shoot featuring glowing eyes.

Thanks again, Wren!  A fine idea.  And the fog machine works like a dream.

Prop Building

A cup of great coffee next to me, Dark Ambient music playing WAY too loudly in the house, and I'm down in the basement working on props for this year's Haunt.

Not too shabby.

More Basement Monsters

With crazy lighting...