Nightmare #298 – House, Plans and Zombie

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(Male, 50′s) Extremely strange and disturbing dream that only incidentally had a zombie in it. I guess that’s enough to make it a nightmare, right?

I was in this house which at times was the house where I live now and at times was the house where I grew up, even though it really didn’t resemble either of those actual houses very much. There was a big apple tree in the back yard.

And there was Richard Pryor. He was just hanging out. He might have been a relative or he might have been just a friend but he was just there and we were all acting like it was no big thing. I haven’t thought of Richard Pryor for years by the way though I used to think he was pretty funny. He looked good, like he did back in the 70′s before all the freebasing coke stories came out. So there was me, Richard Pryor, the girl who later became my wife and a couple other people.

We were working on plans to remodel the house. We all were inside standing around the dining room table and then one of us would make a change to the set of plans, then we’d all walk out side to see what that would look like on the house. It was like as soon as we made a decision, it actually changed the house.

But we got mixed up a little. Some of us were changing the plans while others were checking the results, so I passed people coming back in as I was going out. And one time when I passed Richard Pryor, he wasn’t looking very good. His hair had changed to white and his skin was ashy grey. He was dead alright but he was still walking around. No one else seemed to realize it yet, and Richard Pryor didn’t even realize that he was a zombie yet so I still had some time before things got ugly.

But the only weapon I had was a hammer. I got it in my hand and I came up behind Richard Pryor. I knew that the only way to kill a zombie was to take its head completely off – at least that’s what I “knew” in my dream. So I was preparing to hammer at the back of his spine, over and over until his head fell off. It was going to be awful. I felt sick to my stomach thinking about all the gore and blood. When I raised the hammer behind my head, I woke up.

Nightmare #297 – Zombie U

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(Female, 40′s) I’ve been watching *Lost* on dvd so maybe that’s what brought on this dream about a group of zombie apocalypse survivors.

My partner and I were on a camping trip in a mountainous area. We had put up our tent and were making dinner when a group of armed people came into our camp. They started asking us questions like who we were and what we were doing there. When we answered them, they seemed relieved. They explained that now they knew that we were okay. Because we could talk, we weren’t zombies. Somehow my partner and I had missed the news reports that there was a zombie outbreak in this place. We weren’t safe in the woods, they said, so those people led us out of the mountains and back into town.

The town had a large university campus, and most of the survivors had moved to this area, we were told. Everything looked normal, but we were not to let that fool us. Danger was everywhere and especially after dark. Zombies were fast and clever but unable to talk.

My partner and I stayed at the university. We made a few friends and got to know the area. We went out to the bars with friends in the evening. I didn’t understand how life could appear to be going along normally if there was this zombie problem. Everything looked like it was working normally: the university had classes, the electricity was on, college students were playing frisbee and getting suntans.

My view of that relative ‘safety’ changed abruptly. My partner and I were walking home from the bar with four friends and a zombie appeared. We all ran as fast as we could. Someone fell down, and someone ran back to help him, hitting the zombie with a shovel. Then we all ran into a house and collapsed in the chairs and on the floor, gasping and trying to catch our breath. We looked at the friend who fell. “Are you alright?” someone asked him. He just nodded, out of breath. We should have been worried at that point, but we weren’t paying attention.

My partner and I went into the kitchen for a drink of water and so did two of the others, leaving the falling down guy and another guy alone in the living room. When we came back into the room, we realized our mistake. Both of them were silent, staring at us, hungry-looking.

We had been told that zombies couldn’t talk, but no one had told me they could communicate. As we watched, one guy’s head turned into a gray wavering smokey head sitting on his shoulders, and the other guy opened his mouth wide and inhaled this entire head, nodding like he understood. He exhaled the smoke, and the head materialized like normal. Then the second guy’s head turned into the same kind of gray wavering smoke, and the first breathed him in. This was how the zombies communicated. If we hadn’t been so utterly fascinated, we would have hauled our asses out of there, but we survivors just stood there watching.

When the zombies turned toward us and started to advance, we scrambled out of the house, pulling the door shut and holding it. “Hurry! Get the fire department!” the guys holding the door shut told me. The fire department would come and set the house on fire. That was a change, right? But it was the only way to deal with zombies.

Other Haunts: Hexing Hitler

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In 1941, a group of folks assembled to put a “hex” on Hitler. Life Magazine – the internet of those times – was on hand to record the event with some snappy photojournalism. Godwin’s Law be damned: this is a hoot, that is, using the “forces of Darkness” to combat “Evil incarnate.”

http://www.life.com/image/ugc1017252/in-gallery/36172/putting-a-hex-on-hitler-1941

Your position on the utility of hexes or the authenticity of these particular would-be pagans is not the point. We humans need to feel as if we are doing something that is meaningful, that our actions have an effect especially during times of distress. During WWII, we had collections for scrap metal. We grew “victory gardens.” Contemporary reflection somewhat pessimistically notes that these activities didn’t really help the war effort as much as they bolstered the moral of those on the home front. So why not “hexes?”

There was great recent controversy when someone planned to burn multiple copies of the Qu’ran. It prompted folks across the Muslim world to burn effigies of just about everyone they didn’t like… even though, as I read it, it’s a cultural proscription, if not cardinal no-no to make graven images of humans. This emphasis on non-representative art is a contributing factor to the splendor of Islamic geometric mosaics, I’m told. Would there have been such an outrage if the American protest only burned – or put a hex – on representations of Bin Laden?

If you’re getting hung up on the whole black magic thing, perhaps because of christian baggage, then call it an “imprecatory prayer.” Lord knows there are enough bible-belters using such language as veiled threats against the president. You’ve maybe seen the bumper stickers that say “Pray for Obama – Psalm 108 8 & 9″ Look those lines up, will ya? They’re not the cuddly Loving Shepherd. They say “May the days of his reign be few; let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.” Ah, explain to me how that’s NOT outright sedition?

Nightmare #296 – Test Anxiety Too Late

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(Male, 30′s) This was one of those classic nightmares, the kind everyone talks about having but it was so vivid, so real. It didn’t seem like a joke at the time. I was really on edge.

I was walking down a hallway very similar to the hallways at the place where I work but it was crowded. It felt like there were hundreds of people trying to go one way or the other in the hallway. People were desperate. It struck me as not very professional.

I finally got to the room where I was headed and I sat down. Then I realized it was a chemistry lab, a high school chemistry lab. I remembered that I had enrolled in a science class and that I guess I hadn’t attended in months. I recognized the room but I didn’t know anything about what was going on.

The teacher started off with a game. I sort of caught on and I thought, maybe, I could fake my way through the whole class period. Then the teacher handed out the test.

It was actually kind of cool. We each pulled a plastic figurine out of a large cardboard box and we had to describe its molecular structure… that is, pretending that it represented a molecule. The guy next to me had something that looked like a clear glass giraffe. Even I knew that was supposed to be CH4 – which is a “realization” that is simply hilarious in retrospect.

The thing I pulled out looked like a sea anenome with maybe a dozen long spikes pointing out of it, some of which had jointed articulations. Even the teacher seemed to think I’d selected a hard one. I was confused and I started to panic a bit. It got worse when I realized I hadn’t brought any paper or even a pen. I do all my work on a computer so it’s probably been a week or so since I’ve used paper as part of my job.

I looked up at the door. It seemed so far away. Just then two of my actual co-workers walked by. They looked in at me and just shook their heads in pity. These are two people who I admire and the way they looked at me was crushing. I found that part the most disturbing.

I looked around the room. I was wearing a suit and tie, a normal business suit and I was crouching on this chair that was too small, sitting in a room full of teenagers in jeans and greasy hair. Teenagers who also seemed to know more chemistry that I did. The teacher was collecting the tests. I still didn’t even have a paper to hand in. The creature I had selected was beautiful, intriguing but it wasn’t a chemical. I think it might have actually been alive. I held it in my hand even though I knew its long spines might prick me.

I woke up just as I was about to be found out as a fake.

Public Service Announcement: Wolfsbane in Bloom

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“Even those who are pure of heart, and say their prayers at night,
can become a wolf, when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

As a public service announcement to all readers who are werewolves, shape-shifters or otherwise lycanthropic, this is what wolfsbane looks like. It comes into full bloom this time of year, right around the time when animosity against the lycan community tends to be highest.

Be aware.

Nightmare #295 – Armed Panic

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(Male, 50′s) This happened at the end of a pretty normal, pretty boring dream. It was everyday life. I lived in a very old house, wood clapboards, gray paint, white trim, on a tree lined street with lots of bushes in the yard, the way people used to have yards full of plants and flowers and not much lawn. The houses were pretty close together like an old city. I was just sitting and something caught my eye outside the window. There were dozens of people running through the yard. They were scared of something and they were all fleeing the direction of down town. Some of them stopped running long enough to look behind but then they kept running. Clearly something was up.

I went outside and found things generally quiet. The first wave of panicked crowds had passed. Neighbors were on their porch but no one seemed to know what was going on. I looked next door and saw my son and daughter in law and I knew they didn’t know there was trouble. I entered their house and asked if they still had a shotgun. My son said he thought so but it would be in the attic. I offered to get it. I had to climb up a ladder that was built into a window. There was no actual entryway to the attic – I had to push my head through the ceiling. But the room upstairs was fully furnished, fully finished with hardwood floor (How did I force my way through that?) It was a baby’s room though my grand-daughter wasn’t there at all – and actually she’s a lot older than the age of the child this room was meant for. Leaning up against the wall – next to the crib! – was a shotgun.

I brought the firearm down to the first floor and went out on the porch again. There were more people in the streets. Everyone was tense and concerned but no one really knew what was going on. Agitation was rising. There was a team from the local hardware coming around and handing out weapons. The weapons looked like modified weed-whackers, like they wouldn’t do anything more than irritate a monster. He said he’d put it on my tab if I ended up having to use it. I asked him if he knew what we were up against, if he knew what was terrorizing the town.

“Not a clue,” he said.

Nightmare #294 – Again, bloodier

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(Female, 40′s) This nightmare was obviously modeled on *Groundhog Day* or *Run Lola Run*, but scarier and bloodier.

I was sitting in a room with my husband and 4 other people. The other people were not real people from my life, just dream characters. We were sitting and talking at a round dining room table. Then there was a knock on the door. One of the men stood up and answered the door. A tall man dressed in a black officer’s uniform came in the room holding a gun and shot him dead, immediately, for no reason we could see. Then the man with the gun herded us out of the room and down the hallway, where there were more soldiers. A woman from our group tried to run away, and she was shot and so was another man. There was a short old man who started laughing then and said to the officer, “See, I told you it would work!” I realized he was on their side. “We don’t need you any more,” said the officer as he pulled the trigger and shot the old man. They led my husband and I out into the forest, and I knew any minute we were both going to die.

Then I was back at the first scene of the dream again, everyone alive and sitting at the table talking. I looked around, worried and nervous, but the other people in the room continued their conversation. I said, “Something terrible is going to happen.” “Why would you say that?” my husband asked. Everyone looked at me, curious. Then I realized that I was the only one of the group who knew what was going to happen next. “Someone is going to knock on the door. Don’t answer it!” But when we heard the knock on the door, the man stood up and answered it anyway– just like before. And was shot by the officer. And the action went on.

Then we were back at the first scene again. This time I knew I had to be more assertive. “If you don’t do what I say, everyone will be dead in 10 minutes.” I pointed at one of the men. “Go lock the door. Don’t let anyone in!” “She’s crazy,” said the old man. “Don’t listen to her!” I told my husband and another guy to hold him down. There was a knock at the door, and the old man kept shouting, “They are in here! They locked the door!” Shots were fired at the door knob and the officer strode into the room…

Then the first scene again. I stood up. I said to my husband, “He’s a spy! Knock him out!” pointing at the old man. I don’t know why, but he believed me. He stood up and grabbed a chair and hit the old man over the head, knocking him out. “Turn off the lights and hide!” But still the knock and the shots and the man with the gun…

The first scene over again. But this time I pointed to the knocked out old man and said to my husband, “Kill him now.” My husband and another man beat in the old man’s head with chair legs. Thud, thud, crunch, crunch. “Everyone grab a chair leg. Arm yourselves. Smash the light bulb. They will be here any minute.” We waited in the dark for them, armed and ready.

One of these times we were going to get it right and survive.

Movies: Three Corpse Circus (review)

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Three Corpse Circus took over the historic Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor, MI last night, Devil’s Night and presented four hours of short horror movies. Yup, four whole hours of films, contests and costumed tomfoolery. If you weren’t there, you done goofed up bad. I spoke briefly with one of the organizers Jonathan Barkan who says they hope the Circus will grow to be more than just a film festival, that Three Corpse Circus might become a rallying point for the horror community in Michigan. Last night was a excellent start.

The films were better than I’d feared, a notch above the mixed bag you’d expect from a college town. A couple were real gems. Others were arty and experimental. Some cute and amusing. And to be frank, some were unspeakable, trite, poorly shot, not acted at all… dumb. Bad even for Youtube. But what I saw last night were movies I never would have seen elsewhere. Most of the pieces had some aspect that was pretty interesting. Their failures were mostly in consistency. Technically, I suppose many of the movies were “mediocre” but I mean a kind of expectant and exciting mediocrity. They left me with a sense of anticipation, that I’m really interested in seeing the NEXT movie by these film makers.

A great example of this category is “The Lair.” (http://www.thelair-movie.com/) The acting was more than good enough, much better than many commercial horror movies. There was evidence of actual script composition and, egad, character development, again a relative rarity in short horror. Competent editing built actual suspense and didn’t rely on cheap jump scares, well, not excessively. OK so the setting was the tried and true deserted campground and, granted, the premise wasn’t the most original. But the piece was generally effective. If I had to be a dick – and critics are supposed to be dicks, right? – the footage shot at night was too grainy. But where else would I have had the opportunity to see this film except at a film festival like Three Corpse Circus?

A gem of the evening was “Connected,” one two offerings from Denmark. (http://www.ov43.com/) Clocking in at barely 8 minutes, “Connected” gets in, does the job and gets out and it does so ENTIRELY WORDLESSLY. Great futuristic costumes, a convincing post apocalyptic backdrop and a clear situation, conflict and bleak resolution. It was probably dark science fiction more than straight out horror but, damn, it was a joy to watch. And again, I never would have even heard of it if I hadn’t attended the Three Corpse Circus.

The true highlight of the evening for me was the other Danish film Opstandelsen (“Ressurection”) which was as good a zombie movie as I’ve ever seen – and this is coming from someone who doesn’t find zombies particularly compelling. The movie is shot in and around an old austere church and incidentally, they shot the HELL out of this location. There are scenes in the sanctuary, the basement, UNDERNEATH the basement, the bell tower… I’ve whined in the past how easy access to fantastic ancient locations can make even crappy European movies into something watch-worthy, but the makers of Opstandelsen squeeze every bit of ambience from this place. It’s not just a cheap and easy backdrop. The prosthetics were first rate and relatively understated. The blood and gore was believable and I think the tone of its color grew progressively darker until the blood was nearly black by the end. The make up especially on the female survivor was exceptional. By the end of the movie, she was basically wearing corpse paint – her skin so pale as to be nearly white with drippy spatters of dark blood around her eyes. Lovely! The script showed off nice characterization with juicy familial strife. All three of the primary survivors had character arcs that led to satisfying conclusions. Damn, it’s hard to find something to complain about but, perhaps the range of the acting was a bit constrained – one character always stuck on high, another on low with the coke-snorting protagonist being a nice blend. I’d have to see it again before I said it was perfect but since it’s a 50 minute movie, a length too short to distribute commercially and too long for the internet, there is likely NO chance I would have been able to see it at all except at a film festival like Three Corpse Circus.

You’ve picked up on my take-home message by now. If you’re into horror and you’re in Michigan, get to the next Three Corpse Circus. It was well worth while this year and every indication is that it’s just going to continue to get better.

Halloween Playlist: 13 Songs about Ghosts

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Thirteen songs are enough to anchor a good Halloween party playlist. Not all of these are on your iPod, I’ll bet either. If your friends are like mine, their creativity shines brighter when they have a set theme to work on. The theme of this party could be “Ghost Town” and folks could dress up like ghosts or Wild West characters.

1) (The Obvious) Ghostbusters (From “Ghostbusters”) by Ray Parker Jr (or should I say Huey Lewis… a lawsuit alleged that the melody is highly reminiscent of “I Need a New Drug” but frankly the bass line of BOTH songs sounds like “Pop Muzik” by M) If you can get the video to “I’m in Love with the Other Woman” see if you can project that somewhere because it features a haunted house. This track is so obvious that is has to go somewhere. Succumb.

2) (Ghost) Riders In The Sky by, heck hasn’t EVERY authentic country western group recorded a version of this classic? – If I had to pick one, I think The Highwaymen did a serviceable rendition. Consider using several different versions of this track on the playlist, as a refrain. The Cowboy Cultural Society, an internet radio station, often plays a half hour of “G.R.I.T.S.” with different versions.

3) My Wife and My Dead Wife” by Robyn Hitchcock off Fegmania. This is a subtle alternative/folks ballad about domestic troubles caused when a husband is torn between his current wife and his dead ex. Told with Hitchcock’s typical irony yet with heart of genuine emotion. A nicely sing-able chorus too.

4) Ghost Of A Texas Ladies Man by Concrete Blonde. A little more raucous alternative rock tune by the band that brought you “Joey.”

5) Johnson’s Love (LP Version) – Dwight Yoakam. Straight ahead country. Mournful tale of a love that lasts longer than life.

6) Haunted House Blues– Bessie Smith. Do you really need a reason to put Bessie Smith on a playlist? She carved out a gutsy place for the female voice within blues of the early 20th century. A fun surprise from 1924.

7) The Ghost In You (Album Version) – The Psychadelic Furs. Moody, haunting love song that makes you want to mousse up your hair and wear tight 80′s style pants. Does she love you? Is she dead? Who knows, but it’s all sadness and doom. The Counting Crows do a just-as-sad acoustic cover version of The Ghost In You

8) The Ghost Of You– My Chemical Romance. A sad song to be sure, especially with the repeated line “Never coming home.” Since music and music videos have become fused in our culture and in our minds, it’s hard to hear the song without thinking of scenes of soldiers getting one last dance at the USO before they head off to the trenches of WWII.

9) Wuthering Heights– Kate Bush. Like a bit of literature mixed in with your art pop music? Kate Bush delivers a lovely concoction in this emotional song which went on to become her biggest selling single. Sung from the point of view of Catherine, who pleads outside Heathcliff’s room “I’m so cold. Let me into your window.” The lyrics take on a sinister twist if one considers the events of the novel; she may well be a ghost, inviting Heathcliff to join her in death.

10) Walking With A Ghost (Album Version)–Tegan and Sara. A good song to dance to while trying to exorcise the ghost of a ex-boyfriend or the nightmare you had last evening. Covered by the White Stripes too.

11) Spirit In The Sky — Norman Greenbaum. The tune combines psychedelic rock and gospel music with its distorted electric guitars, loud drums, tambourines and hand-clapping background singers to produce a feel-good song about meeting up with the Spirit in the afterlife.

12) My Life As A Ghost– Tanya Donelly. A sweet and sad song from the ghost’s point of view. She’s happy as she follows him around but seemingly has no impact on him.

13) Walking In Memphis (Remastered)– Marc Cohn. Anthematic 1991 hit from singer-songwriter Marc Cohn. The guy in the lyrics follows the ghost of Elvis to the gates of Graceland and later rock outs with a gospel band.

Halloween Playlist: 13 Songs about Wolves, Werewolves and Shapeshifters

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Thirteen songs are enough to anchor a good party mix. Not everything here are tracks you’ll love but mix and match. It’ll all turn out OK. The idea of these themed playlists is that a lot of folks end up with lame costumes, not because they can be anything but because they can’t choose. Help them. Throw a Halloween party with a specific theme. This playlist is for a lycanthropic party. Show movies with the sound turned down. Serve theme-related snacks – for werewolves, I’m thinking lamb and that means gyro sandwiches. You got the idea. Run with it.

1) (The Obvious) – Werewolves Of London (2007 Remastered) by Warren Zevon off “Excitable Boy” or “Genius.” It’s the obvious track because everyone knows it and it’s clearly related to the theme. It’s got the same name at least as a classic werewolf movie, though as with all of Zevon’s tunes, he was likely referring to something else entirely. Give in. It’s got to go on the mix somewhere.

2) Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival. This tune was linked forever to the werewolf mythos through “American Werewolf in London.” If you don’t want to be SO obvious about it, use the very servicable cover version of Bad Moon Rising by Raspuntina.

3) “Hungry Wolf” by X off Under The Big Black Sun. Classic X, driving beat, tight harmonies that made it almost as much as folk as punk. Personified wolves.

4) Will the Wolf Survive? by Los Lobos (get it? “the wolves”) A band from the other side of L.A. uses wolves as a metaphor for the difficulties of human life. Relatively profound lyrics and a catchy tune.

5) She Wolf by Shakira off the album of the same name. A bouncy latino-pop track from that lady who, I swear, has an extra vertebra in her spine.

6) Dire Wolf (Remastered LP Version) by the Grateful Dead. The studio version is on “Working Man’s Dead” and that rendition at least has relatively clear lyrics for those unfamiliar with the tune. A gabillion live recordings as well, most of them with a bit more verve and life. A jaunty rhythm and an odd, singable chorus “Don’t murder me.” the song tells tale of a card game with a 600 pound wolf.

7) Born To Be Wild by Steppenwolf. This has no explicit werewolf references, other than the “wolf” in the band’s name which is actually an artsy reference to a German novel. Blue Oyster Cult does a version and live they used to ride a motorcycle onstage. The idea of a biker gang of werewolves actually has been turned into a movie “Werewolves on Wheels (1971)”

8 ) “My Werewolf Mama” by Lenny Bruce – This track often is played by Dr. Demento but I wrestled including it because it’s just so darned corny.

9) I’m a Werewolf, Baby by The Tragically Hip from their first EP Tragically Hip – The Hip are a solid act. Their lyrics are literate, their music is blues-y and raucous rock and their fan base is rabid– that is, if you’re from Canada. North of the border they’re more popular than the Beatles but in the U.S. hardly anyone has heard them. This track isn’t their best tune by far but heck, it fits on the list.

10 ) Lil’ Red Riding Hood by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs – I knew this song primarily through a version my brother in law would croon. Research it unearthed some fun details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lil’_Red_Riding_Hood

11) “Du riechst so gut” by Rammstein – This track is a bit of a stretch but the video is all over the RotKäpchen (er, little red riding hood, in German) thing. If you’ve got the ability, stream the video too. The title translated is “you smell so nice”

12) Werewolf by the Five Man Electric Band. Obscure track from the mid 1970′s that I think I can bet no one at the party will have heard. Tells the tale of a boy gone feral and his family’s attempts to cope. Using a gun.

13) I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1989 Digital Remaster) by the Cramps. Heck, if you’re pressed for time, you could drop on a whole album of the Cramps. There’s a movie link of course to Michael Landon (Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie) in the title role.

Nightmare #292 – Too Realistic Hell House

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(Male) In this dream, I went with my buddies to one of those “Hell House” productions. They’re basically a haunted house done by a church so everything is heavily slanted toward religion. Compared to some I’ve heard about the one in the nightmare was pretty effective.

One by one, we were let into the first floor of this small factory. Ruined equipment. Strange stains on the walls. Just a bizarre vibe. We all sort of mulled around. On the floor, there were painted outlines like where corpses had been removed by the police. They were everywhere. Some of the lines were strong, like the death was recent and others were faded and scratched out like they’d happened a long time ago. On the walls of the factory, written in brown paint – I don’t know if they were going for dried blood or what – were ominous phrases like: Here another one died without the love of christ in their heart. It was interesting but things got a little dull.

Until all of a sudden a woman screams and collapses. All hell breaks loose. There’s panic and the real sense that nobody really knows what should happen next. A crowd forms. The woman isn’t just dead; she’s fallen apart. Her torso has become separated from her head and arms and legs. Someone in the crowd gathers up her parts and puts them on a gurney after someone else paints her outline on the floor. At that point I realize that this is all part of the show.

One by one, we’re each escorted out of the factory. I ask why and the person says Don’t you want to know what happened to her? Sure why not. It’s all part of the show, right? But as soon as I step out of the room, I’m grabbed roughly and tossed in some kind of a restraint. It’s pitch black, well-padded and there is plenty of air which means someone has really thought this through. It’s scary but not panic inducing. I scream as loud as I can and it’s entirely muffled. I start singing “I wanna be sedated” at the top of my lungs partially for the benefit of my friends who must be right beside me but the novelty runs out when I realize they probably can’t hear me.

I’m being moved somewhere, very quickly and the next thing I know, I’m lying on my back in a hospital room. And this place is creepy as shit. Everything is gray and black. There is some kind of veiled window high up which made me think I was in a basement. The room is done up like a WWI hospital. I’m the only patient. There is absolutely no way that this scene is part of the cheesy hell house I was just in. Standing next to me is a nurse – or at least what I take to be a nurse. She’s got a fright wig mass of hair. She’s long and gaunt and her face is so emaciated it might as well be a skull.

She leans in close to tuck the covers over me and says “I’m sorry, dear. You didn’t make it.”

Nightmare #291 – Motorcycle Gang Chase

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(Male, 40′s) I haven’t ridden a motorcycle in years but in this dream – no, it was a nightmare – I was on my old cycle. Except it wasn’t my bike. It had turned brown and it had shrunk. My bike used to be an old Touring model Harley, a big bike but the one in my dream was smaller than a Sportster. And it was in rather fragile condition too. The clutch wasn’t holding and it had extremely erratic acceleration. Which meant that I couldn’t exactly predict how fast I could be moving at any given instant. But still this was “my” bike. I was coaxing this thing along.

I was in the neighborhood where I grew up, riding along a street a couple blocks away from where I lived. Everything was dark. My bike was oddly silent which is particularly strange for a Harley. I used to love the sound of it, the way it vibrated in my chest. I took a right turn onto a divided highway. I thought I had plenty of time to turn out into traffic but the bike just stalled. It sort of glided, moving of its own accord regardless of how I tried to make it go faster.

Then all of a sudden I was in the midst of a motorcycle club. I didn’t recognize them but they didn’t lok friendly. They were riding real motorcycles, tuned and precise, not like this withered piece of junk I was pushing along. They were swarming around me, up to no good. I had no club affiliation so I wasn’t wearing any colors but then again, I had no protection from a club either. I wanted to get away from them but I also didn’t want to antagonize them either. The road had turned to dry dirt, like a wide motocross track with huge hills. I was never good on that kind of surface. I skidded around like a maniac oly barely able to keep from hitting these other bikers. I was able to get my bike going in the opposite direction from them and I thought just maybe they’d continue on where they were headed and let me go.

But then two of them started to follow me. One came up on my right and the last thing I remember was that my bike veered off so I cut this guy off and he started to go down. I figured I was finished.

Nightmare #292 – Ghostly Dance Floor

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(Male, 40′s) It’s my own fault. I ate a couple slices of pizza right before bed. I just can’t handle green peppers anymore. This nightmare was an EPIC length ghost story. I hope I made it sound half as scary as I thought it was.

It was night and I was waiting for my girlfriend at a church. I was inside the church, an old style, stone church, not much different from the one I grew up attending in fact it felt like that church even though there was no room in that building like the one in my nightmare. It was getting late and I couldn’t really remember why I was waiting, what was keeping my girlfriend. I couldn’t remember much about her in fact (sorry, dear!) She might have been a professor so I thought maybe she had a night class and then I thought maybe she was a high school principal so she had a long meeting … but I wasn’t 100% certain of anything, only that I was waiting in a pretty large room – one large enough to be a dance hall – so late at night that all the electricity had turned off.

Yeah, that was the first real scary thing. It was like the electricity was timed to turn off at 10:00 or something. I couldn’t turn the lights on even if I wanted to. There was a surprising amount of ambient light, however – through the windows, through the open doors – not enough to see into the corners but enough to make out the general contours of the room. And there was enough light for me to realize that the floor was extremely dirty. There were actual clods of dried mud, like a large group of people had come in from hiking cross country and stood around in this room until the mud fell off their shoes. I didn’t have anything better to do so I grabbed a broom and started to sweep up. I figured that might make the ghosts happy.

Because by this time, I was pretty sure there were ghosts everywhere inside this church. I was hearing strange sounds that I kept telling myself was just the furnace… though now I think about it, a building that shut off the electricity at night probably shut off the heat too. It was white noise that was sculpted almost to sound like music but it also sounded like human voices singing. I also thought I saw lights – shimmering crescents of light – out of the corner of my eye, over where a big storage closet was. But I started sweeping, if for no other reason than to keep my mind off the creepy things in the room. And that’s when the really weird stuff started.

I would no sooner get a pile of dirt swept up and it would dissolve into the floor. I thought at first a breeze had blow it away – which would have been scary enough but it actually was dissolving IN to the floor. I didn’t really care too much. No need to find a dust pan, I guess. But right about this time I realized that there were two large trees growing out of the floor over by where this storage closet was. They were cedars, with long rope-y bark. The diameter of the trunk was over a foot so these were quite strong trees. They came right up through the tiled floor, like the church had been built around them. There was definitely paranormal activity being active over there so I approached to check it out. I was extremely scared but I kept moving closer. A bright bluish glow had started coming out of the closet. Then a dimmer orangeish glow started from one of the trees.

I started hearing a voice-over in my head, like a book-on-tape or a long interview on NPR. The author had written a book called “The Apple and the Cedar” and it was about these very trees. I didn’t have too much faith in his patient, long-winded analysis because for one thing, he entirely mis-indentified one of the trees. The author seemed to think the trees were harmless and they were part of some grand circle of death and re-birth. I was pretty sure that he wasn’t telling the whole story, that there was actually something slightly more dangerous about these trees but I knew what I had to do. I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew it. The long ropes of bark were strangling the trees. If they were going to live, the bark needed to be pulled away. I didn’t know if removing the bark would antagonize the ghosts / spirits but I felt I simply had to do this. I started unknotting the bark from around the trees. It was hard work. Every now and then I’d see a flash of light out of the corner of my eye and hear an angry buzz in my ear so I knew the ghosts were paying attention. I just couldn’t tell what they were thinking. But as I unwrapped the cedar, the light it gave off grew more intense. I could see the buds of new life growing on the undersides of the stems.

That’s the last thing I remember about the dream, looking up at the branches of this cedar, branches that reached all the way to the ceiling and beyond, an seeing all the beautiful new growth on them. As it sounds here, this was a positive ending but I woke up quite disturbed. I didn’t ever figure out whether the ghosts were angry about what I’d done with the cedars. I sat up in my bed. It felt like my whole house was haunted.

Party: Jell-O Blood Worms

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Worms are the ideal finger food, high in protein, plentiful on earth, green-friendly.

But if the folks you’ve invited are simply not cool enough to devour the real thing, try these amazing simulations. The technique is elegant and the effect is perfect.

These squiggly wonders are jell-o formed in drinking straws. Once set, run straws under warm water for a moment to loosen and use a rolling pin to extrude.

Yuck and yum!

Nightmare #290 – Frozen Sleep

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(Male, 50′s) I had the absolute WORST night of sleep last night. I’d wake up every hour or so, look at the clock then settle back to sleep. One time when I woke up but not fully, I realized I was actually sleeping in the middle of a field. There was the stubble of weeds all brown and brittle because it was late autumn. I tried to move but I found I was half buried in the ground! Then I realized that instead of blankets I was covered in about 4 inches of snow. It was light, powdery snow but it was bitterly cold.

I reached over behind me and pulled on what I thought was a blanket. But it was a suitcase. It was open and the lid fit right over top of me which gave me a little protection from the cold gray wind. All of a sudden my mother was there, even though she’s been dead for a year. She put her hand on my shoulder.

“It’s OK, dear. Lie back down. Get some rest.” she said.

What I thought was a suitcase was actually a coffin. I must have been dead. But instead of fighting it, I settled back to sleep, more of that crummy sleep.

Nightmare #289: Old Zombies

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(Male, 30′s) This wasn’t a nightmare like it was scary, just really really depressing.

It was long after the zombie apocalypse. Maybe 20 years. Humans had survived but so had zombies. We just couldn’t come up with a way to totally wipe them out. So I was walking down the street and I had to be careful to avoid the half dozen zombies that were just shuffling around. They weren’t really a threat. They felt like homeless people – a little smelly, shabbily dressed… well, homeless people with rotting faces, I guess.

But what was really depressing is that there was a general sense among the surviving humans that it was just a matter of time until we’d die out too. I know this is my rational wide-awake mind trying to make sense of things but maybe there weren’t enough people left of the right age to re-populate the planet. At least, we all were wandering around, bored and hungry, not really that much different than the zombies.

Credit Sequence (Fan-Made) for “Walking Dead” adaptation

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I’m not that a true-fan of zombies as a mega-genre but this credit sequence has enough crack-snapple-and-bop to get me interested in seeing the actual adaptation of the long-running comic “Walking Dead.”

Walking Dead Credits

And of course, here’s the actual trailer:

Walking Dead Trailer1

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid83327935001?bctid=59356961100