Haunted House Novels, Stephen King Flowchart, the Default Haunted House

A Spine-Tingling Reading List of Haunted House Novels
- Claire Fuller, Electric Lit

The Stephen King Universe Flowchart
- Tessiegirl, Art+Charts+Life

How Victorian Mansions Became the Default Haunted House
- Erin Blakemore, Jstor Daily

Starcrossed

Fans of Ravenloft have long used the setting a springboard for creating content more original and interesting than the official products. One of the best kept secrets in the "Ravenloft underground" is Eleanor Ferron's Starcrossed webcomic, which is definitely worth revisiting (or taking a look at for the first time) this Halloween season.

Bloody Tears

The second season of Netflix's Castlevania cartoon is out, just in time for Halloween. Even though the second season is longer than the first season's truncated run-time, its eight episodes are a quick watch. I tried to pace myself, but watched in all within a twenty-four hour span. 

Feels good, man. 

Here's the trailer, if you haven't seen it. 

Anyway, also worth checking out is this rendition of "Bloody Tears":

Goat Worship, Cheddar Goblin, Signs as Women in Horror

A Condensed History of Goat Worship Through the Ages
- Scab Casserole, Invisible Oranges

An Oral History of Cheddar Goblin, the Mac & Cheese-Loving Mascot in 'Mandy'
- Jennifer Vineyard, Thrillist

The signs as women in horror
- Katie Skelly, Medium

Cinderheim on Land Between Two Rivers

So here's a cool thing that happened: Jim Davis, DM of the Land Between Two Rivers used material from my Cinderheim setting in his streamed campaign! Needless to say, I find that super flattering and I got a real kick out of seeing Hamada the Reaver and Niu Bo Wei in someone else's game. 

My stuff shows up at about the 36 minute mark and I get a nice shout-out at 2:31 in the Youtube video embedded above.

Of course, if you'd like to get up to similar shenanigans with Cinderheim, it's currently available here in both pdf and print.

The Haunting of Hill House

I love horror, but the genre often makes me feel like a contrarian; the things that get held up as good examples of the form frequently fail to excite me. I want to like these things as much as everyone else, but in many cases I just don't see what everyone else is seeing. 

Maybe I expect more, maybe I expect something different.

Case in point: after reading the reviews and surveying the general sentiment, it feels like I'm the only one who didn't enjoy Netflix's adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. 

I wanted to like it. I was excited when I heard it was in production. I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt even after seeing all the red flags in the trailer. Unfortunately, The Haunting of Hill House failed to hit the mark for me on all the important targets:

Adaptation. There's really no reason for this series to be tied to Shirley Jackson's novel, aside from banking on name recognition. The series suffers by comparison to Jackson's masterpiece. The elements shared between the series and the novel are neutered and listless in the former. For example, consider the fate of the "cup of stars." In Jackson's novel, the cup of stars is a powerfully written and subtle symbol found early in the book whose significance only grows in the context of the events that follow; in the show, the cup of stars is reduced to an Easter egg--a knowing nod to the audience, a name-check, a moment of cynical branding that possesses none of the original's punch.

Aesthetic. The Haunting of Hill House would have been more effective is it wasn't filmed in a style similar to that of A Series of Unfortunate Events. The house never really feels threatening or even old; it doesn't have a presence on the screen. The mold-like infection meant to symbolically relay the corruption at the heart of the story is rendered sterile and antiseptic. The supernatural moments look unreal, but not in the sense of invoking dream-like, phantasmagorical atmosphere; it's hard to suspend disbelief that the setting wasn't largely created in post-production. The make-up effects are particularly clownish; you know who the ghosts are because they have bluish or greenish faces that would be right at home in a Goosebumps adaptation.

Tone and theme. Horror as a way of exploring familial trauma is nothing new, but it can work exquisitely well. It doesn't work well in The Haunting of Hill House because the soap opera far outweighs any interesting insights into family dynamics, generational discord, or interpersonal connection. What we get instead is...well, the captioned dialog to the left speaks for itself. What's worse is that some of the family drama rings patently false; the drug addiction subplot, for example, references the relatively sanitized and banal tv version of drug addiction rather than the far more potent horrors of substance abuse in the real world. Ditto the mental health subplots.

Seriously: how tired is this imagery?

Unheimlich. Horror lives and dies on its ability to make us feel the power of the abject and uncanny. In its defense, The Haunting of Hill does have a  few moments of unsettling imagery, but these are few and far between. Instead, we get jump scares--the nadir of the genre--and many iterations of the tired image of a face, the eyes gone pupil-less, the mouth stretched wide to emit the same kind of shriek we use to signal hungry velociraptors and spectral incursions alike. 

Storytelling. Look, if you are surprised at the resolution of the bent-neck lady, you need to get out more and yet also find the time to read more. The plot is a study in obviousness and the ending is as unsatisfying as a Hang in There motivational poster.

Fear Street

Bad Books for Bad People
Episode 26: Fear Street

Jack and Kate celebrate the Halloween season with a visit to R.L. Stine's fictional town of Shadyside, a suburban hamlet with more than its fair share or spooky teen-centric violence. For their first venture onto Fear Street, your hosts read and dissect The Wrong Number and The Halloween Party. Surprisingly, the books contain many of the perennial BBfBP favorite themes along with some insight into the psychology and behavior of 90s teens.

Are these books a gateway drug to convert teens into weird fiction fans? Is Zima a very mature beverage? What do Elvira, Psychomania, and Drake in a wheelchair have to do with all of this? Find out the answers to all these questions and more in this month's episode of Bad Books for Bad People.

BBfBP theme song by True Creature 

Find us at BadBooksBadPeople.com, on Twitter @badbooksbadppl, Instagram @badbooksbadpeople and on Facebook. You can discover where to get all the books featured on Bad Books for Bad People on our About Page.

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Your Asshole Dad's Castle, Dracula Illustrations, the Allure of Gothic Horror

Your Asshole Dad's Castle is Back Again
- Eva Problems, Medium

Undead, Undead: John Coulthart's beautiful illustrations for Bram Stoker's Dracula
- Dangerous Minds

The Allure of Gothic Horror
- Seanan McGuire, Tor

The Dark Descent

As anyone who loves reading knows, books tend to come and go but some books stay with you and become an integral part of your experience of the world. For me, one of those books is The Dark Descent, edited by David G. Hartwell.

This book entered my life because my aunt joined a mail order book club. Generously, she let me pick out two books from her first allotment of books for myself. The Dark Descent was one of my picks, and it forever skewed my taste in literature.

(My other pick, Edith Hamilton's book of mythology, was also highly formative--I'll talk about that one another day.)

The Dark Descent is an anthology of horror stories, and frankly it is a masterclass in great short horror fiction between two covers. This book introduced me to a number of authors that I absolutely love; this was my first exposure to Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Michael Shea, E. Nesbit, Karl Edward Wagner, Robert Aickman, Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, Manly Wade Wellman, Richard Matheson, Joanna Russ, Dennis Etchison, Ramsey Campbell, Gene Wolfe, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter de la Mare, Flannery O'Connor, and Oliver Onions.

Look, this is the book that introduced me to Tanith Lee.

Also, this book was my first taste of authors I would go on to teach: Stephen King, M. R. James, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Faulkner, Henry James, Charles Dickens, Robert W. Chambers, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, and Philip K. Dick are all represented.

The good news is that The Dark Descent is miraculously still in print. It doesn't have to be your first experience of these fantastic authors; I have no doubt that it would serve just as well as a repository of dark delights that adorns your shelves.

The Cacophony of the Funereal Moon

I've been prepping some Krevborna adventures lately in advance of starting a new campaign. Which means I've also been assembling a playlist to fit the mood of the new saga. Below are some of the songs in the current rotation. Needless to say, they're perfect for the Halloween season as well. Portal, in particular, might be a good band to put on if you don't want any kids coming to your house to trick r treat.

Myrkur, "Ulvinde"

Chelsea Wolfe, "The Culling"

Portal, "Curtain"

Huntress, "Sorrow"

Carach Angren, "Charles Francis Coghlan"

Cradle of Filth, "Heartbreak and Seance"

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

As anyone who loves reading knows, books tend to come and go but some books stay with you and become an integral part of your experience of the world. For me, one of those books is Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, written by Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a collection of folk tales and urban legend horrors retold in a way that makes the stories accessible without lessening their macabre impact. There are many classic eerie tales retold in the first volume of this series, including "The Hook," "The Killer in the Backseat," and "The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs." If your childhood didn't include these stories, you weren't raised right--but the good news is that reading this book will get you up to speed.

Stephen Gammell's art in the book in unimpeachable. It is horrifying, morbid, and uncanny in roughly equal measure--the seeds of childhood nightmares that would persist into adulthood. Gammell's art is so striking that it has frequently been cited as the reason for the challenges offered for the book's removal from school and public libraries. If you aren't familiar with the art from this series, stop reading right now and do an image search.

There are three volumes in the series, and they are all worthwhile. If you do pick them up, it is imperative you get copies with Gammell's art. A softened version with new art was published at one point to quiet mawkish parents, but those are unfortunately an inferior version. Luckily, the originals were reprinted in 2017 so you should be able to lay your hands on the real deal.

14 Terrifying Facts About Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 
Maureen Monahan, Mental Floss

This Artist Turns Iconic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Illustrations into Custom Toys
John Squires, Bloody Disgusting

Scary Stories Documentary Trailer

For the Del Toro-philes: Scary Stories Film Adaptation
Dave McNary, Vanity Fair

The Ravenloft Remix: Strahd is the Land, but the Land is a Little Lacking

Ravenloft has long been my favorite official D&D setting, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it has problems or doesn't have areas where it could be improved. Over the years I've suggested a number of alterations that I would make to Ravenloft, were I to be placed in charge of it; consider this the second post in a "best of" edition of my Ravenloft Remix. The first post in the series is here.

2) Create cohesion
It has been rightly pointed out that Ravenloft's core feels more like a patchwork of ill-fitting domains than a cohesive setting. Originally, this was by design. The Ravenloft setting was built around the idea that it was a place that D&D characters would visit for a session or two, and then return to more prosaic settings such as the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. The intention was never to create a setting with organic unity; rather, each domain was more or less a separate playground oriented toward a specific Gothic trope that had little connection to a larger, encompassing conception of the setting.

As it turned out, fans of the setting actually did want Ravenloft to feel like a self-contained setting in its own right. TSR shifted its presentation of the setting to accommodate this perspective, but the results were mixed. From the Domains of Dread hardcover onward, TSR changed the focus from characters sucked into Ravenloft through the mists for a couple of horrific adventures before returning to the vanilla fantasy grind to characters who were born and bred in Ravenloft, and thus had actual reasons to fight against the evils haunting those lands.

The 3x versions of the setting published by Arthaus followed that path, but unfortunately added a lot of questionable detail while also having to work under some unfortunate restrictions, such as a Soth-less Sithicus. 4e floated some mediocre "domains of dread" articles, then the planned Ravenloft product got shelved. (I'd love to see a draft of it, but frankly it sounded awful.) 5e has walked back from the notion of Ravenloft as a "native setting"; the Curse of Strahd adventure assumes that the player characters are abductees from the Sword Coast because of the edition's Realms-centric approach.

If I were rebuilding Ravenloft, I would refocus on making it a cohesive setting with creating characters native to the core as the assumption--with the option of visiting characters entering through the Mists. Here is where I would apply my efforts:

• Reorganize the geography based on theme. Ravenloft's geography is already malleable; the shape, arrangement, and inclusion of domains varies wildly over the setting's 2e-era history alone. We could take advantage of that by remixing the placement of the core's domains to make a more coherent cultural landscape. Since so many of the domains are based on themes drawn from the real world, that could be a helpful guide when it comes to placement.
• Expand on the themes already extant. There are great themes built into Ravenloft's domains, but most are woefully underutilized. For example, Bluetspur was clearly meant to be a place to bring in the possibility of Gothic Lovecraftian adventures, but in execution it is totally barren and really only functions as the setting for a single adventure module. (Thoughts of Darkness, which also happens to be a pretty terrible adventure.) What Bluetsput really needs to capitalize on the promise of Gothic Lovecraftiana is Innsmouth-style fishing villages, weird cults, bloodlines infected by the kuo-toa, and an Arkham analog where scholars have been collecting horrid knowledge of the Far Realm. Every domain could benefit from expanding on its thematic elements in a similar way.
• Populate the setting. It is a common sentiment that Ravenloft is far too depopulated to sustain a variety of scenario types. My solution is to add more high population density areas. The approach often discussed on the Fraternity of Shadows board works well: multiply the population figures for the larger towns by ten and make them into cities. Mix urban and rural areas for a greater variety of adventuring possibility.
• Add more interconnection. There should be more movement between domains in Ravenloft, and a greater sense that the domain borders are most often permeable to the land's residents. Make trade and commerce between domains more prevalent. And definitely add reasons to travel by sea! Ravenloft has always badly wanted to feature Gothic Nautical adventure, but the current geography makes it seem insane that anyone would build a masted ship just to trade with a far-off island with a few hundred inhabitants. One way to do this would be to include closely guarded secret paths through the sea Mists that are sought after to secure important nautical trade routes.
• The supernatural is not hidden. The point of Ravenloft is to mix D&D with Gothic conventions, but this sometimes gets lost in the weird restrictions intended to enforce the Gothic side of that genre admixture. (Which doesn't work for the Gothic anyway because it is such a migratory and mutational mode.) For example, those narrow lists of appropriate monsters? Gone. Use any monsters you want. If you can't figure out how to describe a green dragon as a primeval horror of the eldritch forest, you need to learn more words. Strahd is a vampire and everybody knows it; none of this silly "the peasants don't really think about why he doesn't age and is never seen during the day" business. In a world with clerics and wizards, vampires are not going to be something unheard of--lean into the rich supernaturalism of folklore, not away from it.

My Pretty Vampire

Mini-Episode 13: My Pretty Vampire

Katie Skelly's graphic novel My Pretty Vampire blends an array of 60s and 70s references to create a brightly-colored, deceptively sweet-looking comic that explores repressed desires, poisonous relationships, and vampiric murder. Jack and Kate take a pop art journey into the dark corners of the human psyche, taking some side trips into horror conventions, vintage TV, and the films of Jess Franco and Jean Rollin along the way.

How has the landscape of horror media changed due to the increased presence of female critics and creators? When is an owl-headed mask just an owl-headed mask? Can a sex kitten transform into a tigress? What does Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass Whipped Cream & Other Delights have to do with any of this? All these questions and more will be answered during this episode of Bad Books for Bad People.

BBfBP theme song by True Creature 

Find us at BadBooksBadPeople.com, on Twitter @badbooksbadppl, Instagram @badbooksbadpeople and on Facebook. You can discover where to get all the books featured on Bad Books for Bad People on our About Page.

Listen here!

Women Horror Writers, Best Horror Novels, Italian Gothic

23 Great Women Horror Writers to Freak You Out This October
- Emily Temple, Literary Hub

The 50 Best Horror Novels of All Time
- Steve Foxe and the Paste staff, Paste Magazine

An Englishman's Guide to Italian Gothic
- Rob Talbot, Diabolique Magazine

The Ravenloft Remix: Death to Tragic Backstories

Ravenloft has long been my favorite official D&D setting, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it has problems or doesn't have areas where it could be improved. Over the years I've suggested a number of alterations that I would make to Ravenloft, were I to be placed in charge of it; consider this the first post in a "best of" edition of my Ravenloft Remix.

1) Shift worldbuilding efforts from the Dark Lords' pasts to the setting's present 
One of the issues with the original presentation of Ravenloft as a setting was that the bulk of the worldbuilding details resided in the lengthy backstories attached to the Dark Lords of its various domains. This poses several problems: it puts the emphasis on powerful NPCs your players may never interact with, it creates convoluted histories that are difficult to deploy in actual play, and it robs the color from the lands and peoples of Ravenloft.

The solution here is fairly simple: focus worldbuilding attention on detailing opportunities for adventure in the Dark Lords' domains rather than on the tragedy of the Dark Lords themselves. Of course, the tragic failings of the Dark Lords should color their domains, but making them the central (and often singular) object of interest is a mistake.

For example consider the insane backstory that comes with Baron Urik von Kharkov, Dark Lord of Valachan: Kharkov was originally a panther, who was later polymorphed into a man, who fell in love with a woman, but was then returned to panther form, in which he killed the woman he loved, polymorphed back into a man, and later became a vampire. That is too much cruft surrounding a basic idea and strong theme.

Instead, simplify here and make Kharkov a werepanther who killed the woman he loved--that's the core bit that resonates. From that thematic idea, build outward: make the element of barely constrained bestial nature the keynote motif of Valachan. Make outbreaks of animalistic violence a recurring image in the domain, add in adventure ideas inspired by Jacques Tourneur's Cat People and its remake, play up the violence of cannibalism and how it is effecting the domain right now, etc.

In place of overly complicated backstory novellas like Kharkov's biography, I'd do a global revision of Ravenloft by:

• Adding factions. There aren't nearly enough interesting scheming groups in the setting; a Gothic setting, in particular, calls for cults, secret societies, orders of vampire hunters, etc. Some interesting secret societies were added after the original boxed set--such as the ultra-Freudian Dark Delvers, a group of cavers who believe that the "Hated Mother" resides somewhere in the subterranean depths--but nothing was really ever done with them. This is a missed opportunity.
• Add religion. The first presentations of Ravenloft were silent on the topic of religion because that was TSR policy at the time due to the Satanic Panic and a desire for mainstream marketing. Today? That doesn't matter. Add in a Catholic-inspired church for maximum Gothic-ness. Use the already extant lore on St. Markov as a starting point.
• Schemes > backstory. We shouldn't abandon the Dark Lord concept altogether. In fact, we can go a long way toward making it a highlight of the setting if we make what the Dark Lords are up to right now more interesting than their tragic pasts. What are their vendettas, what are the plotting, who are their allies, and who are their enemies? That's the gameable stuff.

September's Horror - Final Week

In the run-up to October I watched a horror movie every day. Here's what I managed to watch in the final week:

Sept. 24 - A Dark Song

Setting the pace according to "ritual time" is such a fascinating idea. The ending is a little pat and the lackluster evils at the end slightly let down the subtle build-up.

Sept. 25 - Teeth

Vagina dentata is such a rich nexus of cultural anxieties that there are metric ton of interesting ideas you could explore with them in film, but unfortunately Teeth is not a film that does any of them particularly well.

Sept. 26 - Tourist Trap
It is amazing what you could put in a PG-rated movie back in the day. This one had been a hole in my infamous horror experience--I've been meaning to watch it for at least a decade--and man, it was worth the wait. 

Sept. 27 - The Relic
Like Jurassic Park but minus the dinosaurs and with the addition of Scully Lite, a tough-talkin' Chicago cop, and an asthmatic, rubbery monster.

Sept. 28 - The Others
Haunted house movies have always been my favorite, and this is one of the best.

Sept. 29 - Machhli Jal Ki Rani Hai
Bollywood soap opera and comedy with occasional gory deaths.

Sept. 30 - The Shining
There's not much that can really be said about the Shining; we're almost at the pop culture saturation point where you don't even need to see it to know the major beats. That said, during this viewing I realized how much work the soundtrack is doing.