Winter set in very early that year, and it was extraordinarily cold. By late fall, they were cutting ice two feet thick on the canal, and storing it in the great ice houses which then lined the banks. A certain man had died, when the weather was at its coldest, and I was one of the three men chosen to keep the night watch.

The body was laid out in the parlor of the home on an old-fashioned bier, which was too short, as he was a very tall man, and was covered with a black pall, which hung down over the feet. There was no fire in the room, and the window was opened about two inches, with the result that the corpse was frozen as hard as marble. Notwithstanding this, the undertaker left a jar of some embalming fluid, with which the body was to be covered every two or three hours. We three sat in another room, and punctually at the proper hours performed this gruesome function, whiling away the rest of the time as best we might.

Just as the clock struck midnight we heard one of the women come downstairs to prepare some coffee and food for us, and I suggested that before we partook of it we should attend to the body again. We crossed the wide hall, the wind moaning in gusts around the house, and the freezing atmosphere already chilling our blood, and entered the parlor. I went in first, the candle in my hand. I had taken two or three steps when I stopped, simply appalled. One leg of the frozen corpse was rising and falling beneath the pall, silently, but unmistakably, as though kicking in convulsive agony. Peterman, a powerful young German, who was next to me, caught sight of it the next moment, and, throwing his hands, with a cry of “My God!” fell fainting to the floor.

How long I stood gazing at the ghastly movement I do not know. The hot tallow fell unheeded from my hand, until it formed a little mound. At length I was aroused by Peterman coming to his senses, and commencing to vomit terribly. This changed the current of my thoughts, and I ran out for a basin. Before I could return he saw the leg move again, and fell in another swoon. Finding him thus, my fear suddenly left me, and I was determined to solve the mystery. I walked to the bier and pulled back the pall.

I found there a lean and savage black cat, gnawing at one of the frozen legs, and the arching of whose back, in the effort to tear the flesh, had caused the horrible appearance. Though I knocked it away and kicked it, the brute, with eyes glowing like coals, sprang back each time to its awful meal and I dared not touch it with my hands for fear a bite or scratch from those tainted fangs and claws should cause blood poisoning. It was literally mad with hunger. At length I fetched a long, heavy bootjack, and beat it over the head with that until it lay still, when I threw it out of doors. The only way it could have gotten in was through the window, but how it squeezed through such a narrow aperture is a mystery. Peterman was sick in bed for months after the shock, while as for our third companion, he ran at Peterman’s first scream and did not appear at all.

Sidney Journal, December, 1897

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil thanks Mr Rich Wallace of the Shelby County Historical Society for unearthing this dire eyewitness account of an event which occurred in Cynthian Township, Ohio in the fall of 1880.  In a case of art imitating life, the Ohio author, Ambrose Bierce [1842–1914] wrote the equally dire “John Mortonson’s Funeral,” published in Can Such Things Be? [1893]  The ignorant and superstitious held that if a cat jumped over a corpse, the dead person would become a vampire.

For more tales of malign cats, please see this post at the Haunted Ohio blog. The story above is also found in The Face in the Window.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Facebook,” where she daily provides more anecdotes of an educational or amusing nature as well as hints on fashion.

tomjacksonline.blogspot.com

Snow, ten centimetres deep, covered the top of the black coffin. At 7:00 a.m., just after dawn, a tall man, dressed in a black overcoat, and wearing a scarf, gloves and a black Astrakan hat, stepped out of a government Mercedes and walked briskly up the snow-covered path to where four undertakers stood by a recently dug, ten-metre-deep empty grave. The head undertaker greeted the man. ‘We’re ready, sir,’ he said in Russian. The tall man nodded, and watched on as the four men prepared to lower the wooden box down into the cold, black hole. The light fluttering of snow turned into heavy flakes, and settled on the men’s dark clothing in seconds. They brushed the snow from their faces and took hold of the straps that supported the coffin, lifted it up, and lowered it into the grave. Once it had reached the bottom, they released the straps and let them drop with a solid plop onto the top of the coffin. Each picked up a spade and shovelled earth, as fast as they could, from the nearby mound into the hole. It took them five minutes to make the grave undistinguishable from the snow-clad surroundings. The head undertaker dropped his spade. An icy blast blew snow into his face. He ignored it, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small slip of paper. He handed it to the tall man. ‘Please sign, sir,’ the undertaker said.

The man obliged, handed the paper back, turned up the collar of his coat, covered half his face with his scarf, and left. ‘It’s done,’ he said into his phone as he walked away to his waiting car.

Prologue to Assassination Continuum – the 2nd story in the trilogy, The Harry Fingle Collection. Due out in September. Read more at Wattpad.

~~~

Four of my shorts are free on my other blog for a limited time. Hop to http://nickwastnage.blogspot.com/ .

by Fiza Pathan

After you laid me in my coffin of white pearls;

After you buried me, in the grave of forgetfulness,

I tried to shake my soul from this consecrated mud.

My face decomposed into sorrow,

And my bones became nourishment to the elements.

But this heart, this weary heart of mine,

Did not die, in this box of wood.

Without your love I can no longer live

Without your love I can no longer even die.

Just as you thought you could claim my virtues

I thought that my greatest virtue was my trust in you.

You broke my cord of life, and the blood of sadness

Flowed into my mouth as retribution.

Without your love I can no longer live

Without your love I can no longer even die.

On this road towards my gravestone of mourning

So many lovers have bent in sorrow and have turned away.

The ghost of each of them still lingers on the precipice

Of the cliff that binds me to death.

Now there is no one on this road leading to me

The soul has surrendered to the skull’s immortal groan.

The truth of truth is, I lived and died.

In one lifetime, I’ve buried an aeon of remorse.

Without your love I’m dying in crumbles

Ashes cloud my eyes in mockery.

The mud is sweet and moist just as my aching heart.

But every ghoul that walks the Earth in shambles

Has with it love’s curse.

Yet I whom you once thought gone will arise once again.

Out of the soil, the machine of your eternal doom will appear.

It will snuff out your breath in its smoking hot furnace

It will cut your limbs with its sword of hate.

Without your love I can no longer live

Without your love I can no longer even die.

So much was the love that ever was.

Doom speaks a thousand languages,

Which only the walking dead can comprehend.

Danny Arthurs
Watercolour and pigment markers on paper
2012

Real landmark: Coffin Road

It was late July; my family was gathered for a small reunion at my uncle’s house where we all pitched tents around the pond behind the house. Little did I know the days of this simple family reunion would turn out to be the scariest memory I’ll ever encounter.

I was a ten year old little girl at that time, big blue eyes with long brown hair down my back, and a knack for getting myself in trouble. Back then, my family was a tight knitted group of folks that used to do everything together. Nowadays we barely see each other unless a family member is dying. Regardless what my relatives do today, I still remember those few days of innocent happiness on that July weekend.

On the first night of the reunion, when the sun had set over the horizon, the entire family gathered around the lamp lit wooden pavilion next to the pond. The children sat in the center while the adults lounged on fold-out chairs around them. When I saw my uncle stand in front of the whole group, I knew my favorite moment of every reunion was about to start. Everyone was silent while we waited for him to paint the canvas of his latest story.

“Now this story I’m about to tell you is a true story. It happened when I was only thirteen years old, so not much older than some of you kids.” He paced the pavilion watching each of our eager little faces. “If you were to drive fifteen miles east of here, you will find Coffin Road. My brothers and I always called it Vampire Road mostly because of the strange things that happen there.

“On a night just like this one, a woman was driving alone on Coffin Road. No cars where behind her or in front of her nor did she pass any incoming cars. As she drove along she happened to spot something in her rearview mirror. She kept looking back and forth from the road in front of her and to the mirror. Maybe she was imagining it but this thing was following her.

“Now, her car was going about thirty to forty miles per hour and this thing following her was not the headlights to a motor vehicle. While she decided to ignore it for a few seconds, she quickly took a look in the mirror. The thing was closer! At this point the woman was getting reasonably freaked out because at every glance in the mirror the thing was advancing closer. In her attempt to escape, she increased the speed of her car to about fifty miles per hour. Regardless of her efforts to speed away, the thing was closing the gap between itself and the woman.”

My uncle made an abrupt pause. He liked to build suspense and feed off of everyone’s struggling anticipation. I hugged my knees to my chest as my eyes remained glued to my uncle, fixated. My mind was shouting, “What happens next? What happens next?!”

“At this moment, the thing is has revealed itself. What the woman thought was a shadow was a hooded figure briskly walking closer to the back of the car. The woman’s heart was beating rapidly as she kept staring at this unbelievable sight! She couldn’t look away as her foot floored the gas pedal. Then suddenly: BAM!” shouted my uncle. All the kids jumped and yelped at once.

“She smashed into a tree on the side of the road! The following day she was found by the local authorities.”

“Was she okay?!” yelled one of my younger cousins.

“No!” my uncle laughed, but then he got serious, “There was something strange about her death because there was absolutely no blood at the scene of the crash. In fact, upon examining her body for a cause of death, she didn’t have a single drop of blood left in her body. I’ve even been able to talk to a doctor that examined her right after the crash. He said there were absolutely no scratches, bruises, or other injuries inflicted on the woman. So answer me this: how did the blood get out of her body? It’s still a mystery today. Some say if you travel down Coffin Road at the right time you can see the same figure following your car.”

My dad nonchalantly stood up and stretched his arms.

“So who wants to take a little road trip?” he said casually to us kids. We all replied in an uproar of declines to my father’s request. There was no way I was going anywhere near that place!

The next day a few of us decided to fish in the pond. I’ll never forget the fond memory of almost falling into the pond fully clothed while hanging onto the dock post for dear life. In hindsight I could have just let go because I knew how to swim. My special reason for hanging on was I didn’t want my sandals to fall off my feet in the water.

I put a worm onto my own fishing hook for the first time that day. I even caught a few small fish along with a catfish. Before I knew it, the sun was already falling and it was late evening. We couldn’t keep fishing by that time because we had run out of bait. My uncle was planning a trip with my twenty year old cousin to the local gas station after dinner time. By local I mean the closest structure within a twenty mile radius. When my uncle asked if I’d like to join them for the trip, I happily agreed to the little adventure. After dinner, the sun was gone and everyone was gathered around campfires. We told everyone that we would be back soon.

I sat in the back seat behind my uncle while my cousin took shot gun. Driving down the empty country roads I remember marveling up at the starry night sky spotting the only constellations I knew: the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt. If I looked between the driver and passenger seat I could see the yellow headlights illuminating the grey road as far as they could in the moonlit darkness. Everything was going well until my uncle decided to be a jerk.

“Oh!” he exclaimed slowing down the car to a stop. “Oh, oh, wait a minute.” He threw the car in reverse the stopped until the car was in front of a green road sign. “Well guys? How about a little detour?”

“Dad, don’t go that way.” My cousin replied sighing. “Let’s just keep heading the way we were.”

My uncle looked back at me and grinned.

“What do you say?” he asked me. I didn’t know where we were so I just shrugged my shoulders. “Aw come on! It will be fine.”

As we turned left on the road I got a glimpse of the road sign: Coffin Road. At first my adventurous side kicked in. I was excited yet scared, looking left and right for anything unusual or interesting. After a while I started to become more uneasy. This road was longer than I expected. Plus my uncle failed to mention the road was all gravel and surrounded by trees. He was driving slowly at first, mostly because of the gravel and also because he wanted to make the moment last. The crunching of gravel under the tires was unsettling and to this day I can barely stand it.

“Whenever there is another road, turn onto it.” My cousin pleaded.

“I honestly don’t know when there is another road. Actually I don’t think there is one for a while!” teased my uncle, “Don’t worry and enjoy the ride while you… hold on a… minute…”

I saw my uncle looking in the rearview mirrors, but my cousin wasn’t going to fall for his trickery.

“Nice try, Dad.” He said looking behind him. “There is nothing there.”

I looked out the back window as well and saw just the moon in the sky and silhouettes of the trees we passed. Just as I turn back around, my uncle speeds up the car little by little. I was beginning to think my uncle takes his stories a little too seriously.

“Alright, let’s get off this road.” He said. I swear I could sense trembling in his voice. At the time I would have awarded him with excellent acting skills, if only he were acting.

“Do you know when the next road is?” he asked my cousin. “Is there a map in the back seat?” he asked me.

“Dad, maybe we should just turn around…”

“NO!” he shouted sternly. “We are just going to keep moving forward and find the next road. Damn, where is next road?”

At this time we are going double the speed we originally started at. The stones and pebbles were clinking off the metal frame of the car harder, faster, and louder. I don’t remember what my uncle and cousin were arguing about, but I do remember this distinct ringing sensation in my ears. The loud banging and clinking from the gravel were muffled. Wiggling my fingers in my ears didn’t help return them back to normal. I could only see the lips moving of the two in the front seat, but no sound came from them. My uncle constantly kept pointing to the mirror and the back window. I turned around once more and still saw nothing but darkness and the dirt kicked up from the car. The second I sat down my hearing snapped back to normal. Immediately after, both my cousin and uncle screamed as the car swerved to the left, throwing me to the right side of the back seat.

When I came to I noticed the car was at a weird downward angle. We had landed in a ditch for runoff water. I must have been there for some time in the back seat blacked out. I still can’t be sure. All I know is when I sat up it was still night and the headlights were still on. Both the driver and passenger seat doors were open and neither of the two was in the front seat so I assumed they left the car already. I managed to open the left side door and stumble out. My legs were shaking; the adrenaline was coursing my body. I couldn’t spot either my uncle or cousin until I looked across the street. I was relieved when I saw one of them standing in the moonlight. I guessed it was my cousin because the shape was more slender and my uncle was far from skinny.

“Hey!” I called out, waving my arm in the air from the opposite side of the road. He waved back slowly then pointed to the car. I expected he meant my uncle was over by the wreck so I returned to the car, eager to stay close to the headlights. I had a revelation when looking back at the car. I never closed any of the doors; however, they were all shut. I almost dismissed the idea until I noticed two shapes of people sitting in the back seat. They weren’t moving.

The ringing in my ears returned once I turned my attention to the opposite side of the street. It was empty now because the figure was on my side of the road, staring down at me from under its hood. It proceeded calmly to remove the hood from its face, mocking me with its true identity. Its skin was as black as a moonless night, its eyes were pure white, and his sharp toothy grin spanned from ear to ear. A broken noose was tightly knotted around his neck. Its large mouth moved as if speaking but I heard no noise, just the ringing.

The rest of the story is history because I can’t recall how I ended up back to my own house. I remember the funeral for my uncle and cousin; however, everyone insisted I never took that drive with them to the gas station. I’ve tried to rationalize my experience many times, but there is no denying what happened to me. On rare occasions I still get that ringing in my ears as if it is keeping a close eye on me. It’s similar to that dead dark silence before falling asleep at night, except two white eyes are looking at you from the other side of the room.

For a little while Elbert held a good job as a movie extra, now and then with a speaking role, when the background called for tormented creatures. He always looked very intimidating, though Elbert, on account of his size, spent most of his time sitting and reading. It was one of the few things he could do that didn’t frighten people. Elbert complained that he frightened people.

He died young. Giants do. He did a damn decent thing for his folks by buying his own casket with his movie money, and even figured out how to get a forklift onto the cemetery grounds to unload him. A few years before he died he told me he thought of donating his bones to science, but science had never figured out a way to shrink him to a less painful stature, so they could go soak their heads. They weren’t getting him dead or alive.

“You think God’s gonna be as big as you, when you get up to heaven?” I asked.

“He better be big,” said Elbert. “He better be big, and look like Cary Grant, and dance like Fred Astaire, and smile like Groucho Marx.”

“All that?” I said.

“How else is he gonna show me how to do all that? I’d look damn silly if I tried that stuff down here.”

New album from Sniff and Morriarchi released through Bad Taste records. Released at the end of March i’ve been meaning to post this for some time but i’m real busy at the moment and my shit to post pile is growing daily. Featuring man like JMan and Trellion this 11 track album bangs hard, like anything Bad Taste are putting out this year. If you dig Trellion and Figment’s The Shadow People (Released on Bad Taste earlier this year, listen and read our review here) you’ll be ready for these next moves…

“The Everyday Riddle
By Maggie McGinity

I don’t know why someone would want to
Come to this tomb,
This wreck of a room,
Where the flowers feel as dead as their master.

I don’t know why someone would dare to
Step foot inside
Where dreams go to die,
Failing faster and faster

I don’t know why someone would wake up
This numb and tattered core
I don’t know what all your words
Are for

I don’t know why I walk like a coffin,
Killing others’ fantasies often.
Why worry about losing my breath
When half my days I feel like death?

I don’t know why someone would come to
This well-lit grave,
Poor-promise-paved,
Where flowers look as dead as their master.

I don’t know why someone would enter
This storm and strife.
All good things in life
Can’t last here.”

Answer my quote?

“What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?”
-”Hamlet,” by William Shakespeare

So it’s almost been a week since my first stag do (I survived), it is less than a week until I go to Budapest for the main stag do (I may not survive) and soon I can say less than a month until the wedding (I will not survive).

albinorob will bring you the stag do reviews shortly but tonight, while my bride to be is on her first hen night, I thought I would bring you some more Funny as Fudge

The video below is a well known one with over 65 million views on YouTube, but these are all well deserved views. When I first watched this video I was crying with laughter, I almost used it as the first Funny as Fudge but thought I would go for something less ‘popular’, although Bad Lip Reading now has over 35 million!!

Anyway, enjoy the video below and remember that while I found it funny I also fully understand that I would totally shit myself if this happened to me!

The same channel has a second video (with over 16 million views) which while not as funny  is still worth a watch, so enjoy

cheers all

oaf out

Prints and T-shirts

https://www.facebook.com/pages/PIRANHA-FTW/406632252766216?fref=ts

The owner is a man
older than time.

With face made kind
by seeing too many
untimely deaths.

He waves at me as
I go past his shop.
I wave back.

Sometimes I stop.

He gives me water
cool as heaven from
an earthen jar he keeps
next to him.

We chat.

“How’s business, uncle?”

“Super” He laughs
“People are dying like
there’s no tomorrow.

I laugh at this
and pedal away.

The lights come on
in high rises
as darkness falls over
the city that doesn’t sleep.

This city
that does everything
like there is no tomorrow.

Against all evidence to the contrary, I find it soothing to believe that Johnson’s baby bedtime bubble bath and wash makes you sleep. At any rate, it takes a comfortingly long, mantra-like length of time to say. When you get in the bath, the first thing you do is hold up a handful of bubbles for me to blow. When you first learnt to blow bubbles, you did it for everything you picked up. No examination was complete without a quick blow. Now, it’s just bubbles (and flowers).

I decided to harness this interest for the greater good and invested in a new piece of furniture to help you reach the kitchen sink. Marketed by ’Little Helper’ as a ‘Little Helper FunPod’, this retails at £179.99 but is far cheaper on Gumtree. Daddy and Nano refer to it as ‘the coffin’. Arto calls it ‘the pulpit.’  You seem to see it as a swimming pool without water and attempt to recify that at every opportunity.

From the EP “Brainstorm”
Beat by Andreas (Delario) Wallevik, bass by Yngve Elde

]]> http://nbclatino.com/2013/04/21/couple-turns-passion-for-woodwork-into-deadly-profession/ Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:05:40 +0000 Ignacio Torres http://nbclatino.com/2013/04/21/couple-turns-passion-for-woodwork-into-deadly-profession/ BAKERSFIELD, CA – A local couple turned their hobby of woodworking into a full-time job, but they aren’t making the ordinary pieces you might expect. The owners of 18th Street Carpentry in Bakersfield, California, Andrea Soler and her fiancé, offer a unique style of an item most people don’t think of often, but is necessary.

They build handmade wood caskets.

After hearing there was an interest in handmade caskets, a Bakersfield couple decided to take on the task. From hot pink and camo to the traditional design, they can do it all.

Soler said, “We do round tops, we do flat tops, we do different styles of casket.”

“Someone can literally walk in here and say, ‘hey, you know, I would like a hot pink casket.’ Not that that’s probably very common, but, you know, ‘I’d like something hot pink with a certain specific kind of interior’ and we can provide that to them,” said Soler.

The couple has been involved in woodworking for years but after their family brought up the idea, they decided to start a new business.

“We dropped everything we were doing and just started following this dream that people really are looking for this and that we can bring it to the public,” said Soler.

Soler says building a casket is is much different than building other items.

“It’s a lot more meticulous kind of work. There’s not a lot of hammering and nailing going on in here it’s all very, very fine, fine delicate work that he’s doing.”

Whether you’re in the market for the traditional design or a unique casket, they’re up for the challenge.

The price of a standard casket purchased online or through other retailers is about $1,000. Eighteenth Street Carpentry offers the basic design for $650.

Comic opening page. All pages designed by Cris Loghin

“The Desperate Case of Bateson George” is a short story written by polish scriptwriter Mateusz Wiśniewski . This 6 page comic was made for The Silence 2013 – international silent comic competition (Ligatura comic festival). The idea behind the contest is to promote the comic book art form in which the only mode of narration is through images.

Here is how Mateusz introduces the plot of this wordless comic: “Taphephobia is the term for an irrational, paralyzing fear of being buried alive. But is anxiety of premature burial really just nonsensical? Aren’t we terrified by a vision of losing a free space or losing breath in everyday life? Such approach could change the way you think about the meaning of being placed in a grave while you are still alive”.

To add more about the subject I’ll quote a very interesting post from http://www.obit-mag.com/:

“The fear of being buried alive even became a sales pitch for embalmers after the Civil War, when the process became common. If a person was not really dead, the strong chemicals used in embalming were sure to kill him. (Cremation works, too.) Victorian Americans in 1896 formed the Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive to advocate for giving suspected dead bodies a chance to resurrect.  One publication at the time recommended burial only after the sight and smell of putrefaction were evident. But perhaps the most interesting manifestations of taphophobia are “safety coffins” or “escape coffins.” The simplest such coffin was “Bateson’s Belfry,” named after its Victorian-era creator George Bateson of England. It consisted of a bell on top of the ground above a buried casket with a rope that was attached to the deceased’s hand.  Dossey notes that Bateson was so afraid of being buried alive that “in 1886, driven mad by his dread, he committed suicide by dousing himself with linseed oil and setting himself on fire.”

Last minute update: I just found out our comic won 3rd place in Silence 2013! We are also the only polish team in the finals Happy time!