#Serenades of the Netherworld

[majestativa]

Phantom elite, we gather for the journey Now I am transcending.

[fandomfourever]

20 First Lines

Thanks for tagging me @lalaurelia :D Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening, then tag 10 of your favorite authors! 1. Golden light flickered at the end of the hallway, making the shadows jump and dance across the walls. (They Smile When They Are Low)

2. The Netherworld was a vast and ever-changing dimension, filled with beings small and large, weak and powerful. (Four Men and a Baby)

3. Another put-upon sigh echoed throughout the hotel room. (Second Chances)

4. Ostriches. (Jumanji: Full Circle)

5.  If there was one thing Beetlejuice knew for a fact, it was that the afterlife was one big disappointment after another. (Home With You)

6.  Jim Gordon swore as the car rattled and clanked to a stop on the side of the road. (You Make My Heart Beat)

7.  Daryl Dixon lived on the edge of a forest. (Wishing On A Star)

8.  Daryl stared at the fallen walls of Alexandria as they grew smaller and smaller, before finally fading into the distance. (A Bond Eternal)

9.  “Ah, shit, I’m running late,” Jim muttered, glaring at his watch as if it was somehow at fault for his lateness. (You’re My End and My Beginning)

10.  Alone. (Gotta Get Back In Time)

11.  Everything was cold and dark. (Spring Switch) (collab)

12.  Oswald didn’t know what had started this argument. (Five Times Jim and Oswald Accidently Hugged, and One Time They Didn’t)

13.  “Last one in is a rotten egg!” Ivy shouted as she sprinted into the water, arms flung up joyfully. (Love Is Better In The Summer)

14.  Charles Adair had gone about his day as usual. (Sing A Song of Me and You)

15.  Jim snuck quietly through the dimly lit, pipe filled hallways of one of the Court’s many secret hideaways. (We’ll Figure It Out)

16.  Cold and hard were the first sensations Oswald became aware of when he awoke. (The Future Was Just The Start)

17.  Spiked eggnog was the only good thing about Christmas anymore.(It’s A Not So Terrible Life)

18. Lights flashed. (Moonlight Serenade)

19.  Graffiti blurred in the corners of Jim’s eyes. (That Which Binds Us)

20.  Oswald Cobblepot glared ahead as he was led unceremoniously through the bleak halls of Arkham Asylum by a couple of smug looking guards. (Strange Is The Life We Lead)

Patterns... Let’s see. I seem to mostly gravitate towards a short opening line. Setting a mood or scene. Mostly simple statements. As for my favorite opening line... probably that top one there from They Smile When They Are Low. 

I’m not entirely sure who to tag that hasn’t already been, that I also know write fic. But uh, if you see this and want to do it, please feel free!

[rustybutterknife]

Lydia headcannons pt. 2!

She’s half Mexican!

She celebrates la dia de los muertos (Day of the dead) every year with her dad and Delia

She’ll just talk to her mom’s grave about how things have been so far, how everyone’s doing, and what crazy things her and Beetlejuice have been up to

She also does the thing where she expects foods to be in the wrong containers (Soup in a butter container, sauce in a cream cheese container, an old guacamole container filled with beans) because of how used to it she is

Then she’s like “oh yeah, they’re middle class, suburban, and white.”

She’s fluent in Spanish!

She takes Spanish class because she just wants to get her credits without having to do much work

She’ll talk in Spanish when she’s angry, and in that really fast Spanish. You know the kind.

Nobody can understand her, except for Delia, who’s a polyglot.

She found this out by accident when she was ranting to a friend on the phone in Spanish

Delia just asks her about it casually in Spanish and Lydia is like “!!?”

She used to love Pocoyo as a kid

She owns black platform crocs that she has decorated with the little croc charms

One of them is of pocoyo

She’s made a hobby of making the most obscure shirts ever

Beetlejuice has one that just says “Do you fear god?” With a beanie baby worm on it, courtesy of Lydia.

She had a scene phase, which turned into an emo phase, which then turned into her current goth phase.

She still owns a few hair clips and kandi bracelets because they’re cute

She wears a rainbow one every once in a while

Speaking of rainbow

Pride!

She’s goes to pride with Beetlejuice every year!

He’ll be decked out from head to toe in pride gear with a big ass bi flag

Lydia however just goes in summer friendly goth attire, a lesbian flag tied around her shoulders like a cape, and a little button of a puppy with a trans flag bandana on her shirt!

Beetlejuice hugs almost every mama bear (an LGBT organization where moms give hugs at pride) at pride

First time he did it, he almost cried because holy shit, this man is SO touch starved

(Also he wasn’t used to being accepted in the netherworld but that’s for a later post)

Lydia took a photo of it and taped it to her wall

They both try and get as much free shit as possible

They once had a contest to see who can get the most bead necklaces

Lydia came out with 32

Beetlejuice ended with 53 somehow

They just have a giant box filled with bead necklaces, the special ones (different shaped beads, ones with little things at the end, etc) put in a separate box.

When it comes to the kink floats, Lydia always covers shields her eyes because fetish

Beetlejuice, however, fucking wolf whistles and is like “YEAAAAAH BABEY!!”

The first time they went to pride, there was a man in a harness, leather pants, and a dragon mask cracking a big ass leather whip.

“Damn, I wish Adam could do that to me.”

“B E E T L E J U I C E”

She calls Adam and Barbra her “dadam” and “maman”

They absolutely love it

(*cough cough* the children we didn’t have *cough cough* look it up on YouTube *cough cough cough*)

She goes to Barbra for advice

They don’t always know, so she’ll sometimes to go Beetlejuice.

Usually a bad choice.

Like 9 out of 10 times it’s bad

But those 1 in 10 moments?

Tender.

She’ll sometimes do duets with Beej, who can play the ukulele (as seen in “The whole being dead thing”)

It’s usually very soft and tender songs

She gets Adam and Beetlejuice to sings “breathe” from In the heights with her

They absolutely butcher the Spanish but they’re trying

She does eventually learn to play the ukulele on her own

But that makes it her 3rd instrument

She knows how to play the violin and piano!

She’s 12/10 at both

She learned violin at 6 and piano at 8

Ukulele, she struggles a bit at first because “HOW DO I POSITION MY FINGERS LIKE THAT HOLY FUCK”

She gets the hang of it pretty quickly because ukulele is one of the easiest instruments to learn (or so I’ve been told. I’m still struggling, but I don’t play too often so that’s most likely why.)

She quit violin for a couple of years before figuring out that “holy shit, I can play more than just classical music!”

She’s learned megalovania on all 3 instruments

She’ll sometimes just randomly get up in the middle of the night to play a song or two.

It’ll just be 2am and all you hear is discord on the violin

Barbra and Adam don’t mind

Delia doesn’t mind too much

Charles very much minds because he’s a light sleeper and a coward

He doesn’t tell Lydia though

She’s serenaded a couple of girls in her days

[dustedmagazine]

Dean McPhee / Mary Arches — Devon Folklore Tapes Vol. V: Ornithology (Folklore Tapes)

The latest in a long series of folk music revivals to hit the UK has taken a detour away from traditional song (with the mighty exception of Shirley Collins’ unexpected and joyous return to recording) and into more esoteric explorations of the nation’s past. I suppose that’s no different from the “hidden reverse” (to steal David Keenan’s excellent term) of Coil, Nurse with Wound and Current 93 that flourished in the eighties and nineties, but with a more reverent adherence to source histories and myths such as the Pendle witch coven or Black Dog ghost apparitions, and access to cheap and easy-to-use technology, the current set of very disparate UK artists are excavating deeper and throwing more and more eccentric reports from the country’s netherworld our way. Perhaps the most thoroughly-researched and sonically exploratory label operating in the field is Folklore Tapes, whose founders David Chatton Barker and Ian Humberstone have travelled the length and breadth of Britain, delving deep into the stories, legends and practices of several counties. 

Mainly for practical reasons, given Chatton Barker and Humberstone met and lived for some time there, the rural county of Devon formed the backbone of their early releases, especially as they hit a folklore goldmine by studying the works of 20th century folklorist Theo Brown, uncovering a wealth of stories, customs and rituals from the county that they were then able to work on, and explore in sonic form. The first two volumes of the Devon Folklore Tapes series (initially released, unsurprisingly, on cassette, but subsequently reissued on glorious vinyl) featured the two co-founders themselves, but since Volume III: Inland Water, they have handed the reigns of these explorations over to like-minded artists, be they the field recordists and found sound manipulators Sam McLaughlin and David A Jaycock (Inland Water) or young female folkies Magpahi and Paper Dollhouse (Volume IV: Rituals and Practices). Generally, the results — and having been to Devon this was no surprise to me — are spooky and mystical, as the wild landscapes of South-West England are given a vivid reimagining. (As an aside, I strongly hope this article inspires non-British -and indeed British- readers to visit some of the country’s less well-known nooks and crannies. I’m a Londoner, and even I think it’s overrated at times.)  

The central characters of this recently-reissued vinyl edition of Volume V are, as the title makes clear, birds. Our winged friends have long fascinated the people of all countries, who invested benevolent or malevolent traits in various species based on their behaviors and song calls. As recently as last year, avant-garde and folk fiddler and recordist Laura Cannell created a musical evocation of seabird flight off the coast of East Anglia, pretty much on the opposite side of the UK from Devon, that was one of the most potent and beautiful albums of 2016. So the power and beauty of avians continue to capture the imagination, and Yorkshire-based guitarist Dean McPhee has a similar approach to Cannell in that his six-string becomes an evocation of and response to birds, in his case their songs. 

What results is a sort of conference of the birds, if I can be so bold as to cite two of the greatest albums ever made by Dave Holland and OM, respectively. Or, more accurately, a conference with the birds. McPhee takes inspiration from two avant-garde artists of the twentieth century, Jim Fassett and Dr. Peter Szoke, who composed music based on slowed-down recordings of bird song, but more specifically from a woman named Beatrice Harrison, who duetted with a nightingale on her cello for a popular radio broadcast in the 1930s. McPhee swaps the cello for his electric guitar and loops the sounds of birdsong so he can snake his slow-burning drones and solos around their tweets and chatters. It’s a simple methodology, but one that achieves immediately affecting results not unlike the mournful instrumental folk drone of composer Richard Skelton. 

Mary Arches uses a broader palette, returning to the found sounds and musique concrète so prevalent on the Folklore Tapes series. Her inspiration comes appropriately from the aforementioned Theo Brown, who recorded the frightening story of the “White Bird of the Oxenhams”. As the legend goes, several members of the 17th-century Oxenham family were visited by a frightful white bird and promptly died. Arches reconstructs this macabre tale through lengthy compositions featuring a wealth of acoustic instruments as well as ghostly voices and other field recordings, plunging the listener into the past and dragging him or her through the nightmarish vista.

Whether serenaded sweetly via McPhee’s electric guitar or recreated in oblique avant-garde tapestries as forebears of doom by Arches, the birds on Devon Folklore Tapes Vol. V: Ornithology are a potent and mysterious presence at all times, their natural state transcended to reveal the strange intricacies beneath. The vinyl edition comes with extensive and informative liner notes to make the experience of listening to these songs even more interesting, and it marks another triumphant entry in the ever-expanding library of a unique and essential label.

 Joseph Burnett

[johnpalisano]

The Possession of Anneliese Michel

In my new novel, Damned by the Ancients, nine year old Heidi Mortimer b

ecomes the target for the long dead Dr. Emeryk Quintillus. So begins a battle between the forces of evil and frightened parents fighting for the life, and soul, of their beloved child.

In real life, there have been numerous accounts of children and young people being possessed by evil spirits and one of the most extreme of these is the shocking case of Anneliese Michel.

Her story provided the inspiration for the film, The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Anneliese Michel was no child, but a 23 year old, devoutly Catholic German girl suffering from mental disorders and epilepsy. From the age of sixteen her behaviour began to undergo worrying changes and it was at that time she was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy by a consultant neurologist. She was prescribed medication but, sadly, the pills did not work well for her. She began to believe herself possessed by a demon. She said it appeared to her, spoke to her and told her she was damned and would rot in hell. Desperate, her religious parents decided to seek help outside the medical profession.

They turned to the church but the priests they consulted refused to perform an exorcism, stating that she clearly needed medical help. Anneliese insisted she was possessed and her behaviour continued to deteriorate. She would speak in tongues, eat coal and spiders, demonstrate a strong aversion to religious images, had convulsions and would even drink her own urine off the floor, lapping like a cat. On occasions she would bark like a dog and was known to have bitten a bird’s head off.

Finally, her parents found a priest, Father Alt, who said she didn’t look like an epileptic and successfully petitioned the Bishop for an exorcism to be performed on her. By now, Anneliese was convinced she was possessed by five demons, Lucifer, Cain, Adolf Hitler, Judas Iscariot and Nero. She endured the torments of 67 exorcisms conducted by Father Alt and exorcist Arnold Renz, sanctioned by Bishop Stangl, during which the demons would argue with each other, their voices emanating from Anneliese’s mouth, in low growls.

At this time, Anneliese would frequently say she was, “dying to atone for the wayward youth of the day and the apostate priests of the modern church.”

She broke her knees through her fervent practice of kneeling to pray repeatedly throughout the day. Even with that terrible pain, she continued the practice.

Anneliese Michel finally died of starvation and dehydration in 1976, having refused all food and drink over a period of time. At her death she weighed just 68 pounds. Two years after her death, her parents and the two priests were found guilty of causing her death by negligent manslaughter. The priests were sentenced to six months in prison (later suspended) with a further three years on probation. Her parents were not given a custodial sentence as it was deemed that they had suffered enough.

To this day Anneliese’s grave is a popular tourist attraction and there are many who continue to believe that she truly was possessed by devils.

Demons of a different kind are at work in Damned by the Ancients. Here’s what to expect:

INFINITY IN DEATH   Vienna, 1908   Gabriele Ziegler is a young art student who becomes infatuated with charismatic archeologist Dr. Emeryk Quintillus. Only too late does she realize his true designs on her. He is obsessed with resurrecting Cleopatra and has retained the famed artist Gustav Klimt to render Gabriele as the Queen of the Nile, using ashes from Cleopatra’s mummy mixed with the paint. The result is a lifelike portrait emitting an aura of unholy evil . . .   Vienna, 2018   The Mortimer family has moved into Quintillus’s former home, Villa Dürnstein. In its basement they find an original Klimt masterpiece—a portrait of Cleopatra art scholars never knew existed. But that’s not all that resides within the villa’s vault. Nine-year-old Heidi Mortimer tells her parents that a strange man lives there.   Quintillus’s desire to be with Cleopatra transcends death. His spirit will not rest until he has brought her back from the netherworld. Even if he has to sacrifice the soul of a child . . .

Damned by the Ancients is available from:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Apple

Google

Kobo

Kensington Publishing

About the author:

Following a varied career in sales, advertising and career guidance, Catherine Cavendish is now the full-time author of a number of paranormal, ghostly and Gothic horror novels, novellas and short stories. Cat’s novels include the Nemesis of the Gods trilogy – Wrath of the Ancients, Waking the Ancients and Damned by the Ancients, plus The Devil’s Serenade, The Pendle Curse and Saving Grace Devine.

Her novellas include Linden Manor, Cold Revenge, Miss Abigail’s Room, The Demons of Cambian Street, Dark Avenging Angel, The Devil Inside Her, and The Second Wife

She lives with her long-suffering husband, and a black cat who has never forgotten that her species used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt. She sees no reason why that practice should not continue. Cat and her family divide their time between Liverpool and a 260-year-old haunted apartment in North Wales.

You can connect with Cat here:

Catherine Cavendish

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Catherine Cavendish returns with The Possession of Anneliese Michel The Possession of Anneliese Michel In my new novel, Damned by the Ancients, nine year old Heidi Mortimer b…