Lost Carcosa

For some people, it is a means for delivering important documents to their clients, or to their lawyers. For others, it is a way to share family moments and class photos with the grandparents and other relatives. For some, it is a hat. The U.S. Postal Service document mailer makes a great head cover for those early morning naps in the Boston subway system. Get yours today at your local U.S. Post Office. Don’t be fooled by those plain manilla envelopes found elsewhere. Get an official, high-quality envelope from your nearest Postal Service representative.

Taken in the Park Street Station of the Boston Red Line subway system.

Heres an awesome picture that those fine people over at Ecotoplasmosis found on Flickr.

I really love this sort of stuff!

Ectomitasatic!

A city for the dead in the Caucasus mountains.

Town of the dead, North Ossetia, somewhere in Caucasus mountains. A great plague wandered across area of current Ossetia in 16-18th century AD. Clans built houses for sick family members and kept them away there, while providing with food. People died there in slow, alone agony. Once they died, the made place for others. the “houses for dying” are filled with bones.

Found via DarkRoastedBlend on Flickr

Sockthulhu. Found at Ectomo, via Flickr.

Fangoria has posted up some photos and trailer links for writer/director Richard Griffin’s film adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror.

“THE DUNWICH HORROR is really for horror fans who have grown tired of the endless cycle of ‘torture porn’ movies and want to return to the atmosphere and suspense of the classic horror films of the ’60s and ’70s,” he continues. “The quality of the acting and the production values will surprise a lot of people. When it seems like all indie films are basically ‘10 teenagers trapped in a house by a killer/zombies,’ this movie has over 30 locations, dozens of speaking parts and a complex plot. A lot of hard work went into the making of THE DUNWICH HORROR, and the fans will see that.”

Travel to Fangoria for a good read, some photos, and links to the trailers!

Sure, it might appear to be a cute, tiny, harmless sea slug… but really it is evil incarnate, newly spawned, waiting for the stars to be right to dine on our sanity and souls!

Found over at Cephalopodcast’s flicker page!

I was only able to make it to one day of the Pulp Uncovered Festival, and unfortunately, Swan Point Cemetery was closed by the time we got out there, but I enjoyed the events thoroughly!

The day started off with an H.P. Lovecraft walking tour that ended up being canceled due to liabilities caused by all the snow and ice. Fortunately for those of us that showed up, S.T. Joshi showed up and basically said “Screw that! I’ll take them on a tour myself.” S.T. Joshi is a really fun guy, packed full of all sorts of HPL knowledge, and to be led around Providence by him was excellent fun. It was probably a better tour because of him, what with all the little stories and anecdotes he had for many of the places, such as the Charles Dextar Ward house, and the Shunned house, or how Lovecraft triumphantly scared one of his best friend’s girl friends in a graveyard.

After the tour was a trip to the LADD Observatory, where H.P.L. had free reign of the premises at an early teen age. Here we listened to Joshi talk about Lovecraft’s hobbies, achievements, and talked about Sleep Paralysis, which is known to cause people to see dark figures or clouds emerging from corners intent on harm. It was speculated that Lovecraft may have suffered from this, and it may have been a cause of his nervous breakdowns.

A trip to the John Nicholas Brown Center rewarded us with a talk on ethnicity, sexuality, feminism ,and identity in Pulp Fiction past and present. I tried recording this, but unfortunately my cheap ass recorder was too wimpy to pick up any good audio. Sorry John. I’m fairly certain you would have loved to have heard this one.

With an hour and a half to kill, we headed to Swan Point Cemetery where H.P.L. is buried, only to find it had already closed 40 minutes early. Bummer. I’ll have to make another trip out sometime. Maybe in the Spring or Summer.

Back to the John Nicholas Brown Center, we were entertained by the readings of some 10 minute plays, put together by theater majors in the style of the old Pulps. Amazingly fun stuff it was!

Overall, I have to say the trip was a rousing success! Listening to and meeting S.T. Joshi was completely awesome and seeing the H.P.L. landmarks in Providence was neat as all heck.

Links!

• S.T. Joshi
• Pulp Uncovered
• A few pictures I took in Providence!

Halloween night in Salem, MA is nuts. Seriously. Its one gigantic block party taking up most of downtown Salem. Theres tons of people, music, food, and costumes. To make things better, it was a warm 64 degrees Fahrenheit.

Theres also a whole lot of touristy garbage that you can buy which does get kind of annoying after a bit. Theres only so many inflatable Spiderman toys you can see before it starts to cut into the spirit of Halloween. But ignoring that, the costumes are always great. True, some people make half-assed excuses of costumes, but theres a heck of a lot of nice ones. And by the way… a ski mask and a hoodie does not make a costume.

I got some comments on my sign, and some good responses on my mini-Cthulhu. This year I was Josef Hawksmoore, Librarian Extraordinaire, and scholar of the Occult. With my box, containing the clay idol of Cthulhu, which I had liberated from the Congo, I roamed the streets of Salem, holding my sign up in warning of the coming apocalypse!

“Ph-nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’Lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”

“Cthulhu Loves You (medium-rare)”

Theres a few photos for your enjoyment over in the photo gallery!