It’s time for Winter Tales! To commemorate the old tradition of telling ghost stories around Christmastime, I’ll be sharing mostly winter-themed spooky stories here from the beginning of December through Epiphany. So grab a hot drink and curl up in your favorite armchair to savor some old-fashioned thrills and chills!
My first story this year is “A Musical Mystery,” an anonymous contribution to The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, for April 1875. It’s the tale of a creepy winter night visit to a mortuary, when a mysterious customer comes to purchase a coffin. For himself. A coffin shaped like a violoncello-case.
Earlier today, my husband, who knows he can’t spell, asked me how to spell “dilemma.” I spelled it to him out loud, the way I have always spelled the word: d-i-l-e-m-N-a. And I reflexively added, “Google it, to make sure.”
“Here it is,” he replied. “Two Ms.”
“What?!? No, it’s ‘M-N’”, I said.
“Google says two Ms.”
“No!”
I looked it up myself, positive that this was an instance of a mispelling/malapropism that had become more or less standard, or at least widely used, like people writing “for all intensive purposes” when they mean “for all intents and purposes,” or the surprisingly common “defiantly” in place of “definitely.”
And I learned that in fact, it is, and has always been, “dilemma.” A quick trip to our actual, physical Oxford Dictionary of American English confirmed this.
(I’ve updated the original post, too). I’ve switched things up so that Micro.blog now syndicates a feed from my personal microblogging site, Short Thoughts.
I’m going to use Short Thoughts the way I used Twitter, to announce new posts from all my blogs, as well as random short musings. It won’t be much: at most one or two posts a day, and probably often less.
If you are interested in such a feed, there are two ways to follow it.
You can join Micro.blog, and follow me there. This approach allows you to reply to my posts, as well as to follow other people in the community who interest you. You can join for free, just to follow and converse with other people, or sign up for a monthly fee to get a hosted blog site of your own.
If you use an RSS reader, like Feedly, you can subscribe directly to Short Thoughts. If you do it this way, the posts will have weird numerical titles, but it should still be quite readable, and you won’t see all the chit-chat of conversations happening on my Micro.blog timeline.
Or you can just bookmark Short Thoughts on your brower, and check the page periodically. Whatever works best.
Part of my series on never-made occult detective TV shows.
What it was supposed to be:Dead of Night, a series about a trio of occult/paranormal investigators. What we got: An extremely low-budget one hour pilot. Investigator: Jonathan Fletcher (Kerwin Mathews) and Sanjiv Rao (Cal Bellini), joined by Angela Martin (Marj Dusay) Why the axe: I don’t know the exact reasons, but the pilot did not impress.
A struggling secretary from San Francisco inherits a spooky old mansion, Blaisedon, on the Hudson. She can’t sell it, because strange phenomena in the house drive off potential buyers. She hires psychic investigators Jonathan Fletcher (Kerwin Mathews) and Sanjiv Rao (Cal Bellini) to find out whether the house is haunted, and by whom.
This plot of this supernatural gothic melodrama has potential. And the show is produced and written (though not directed) by Dan Curtis, who brought us Kolchak (The Night Stalker and Night Strangler TV movies), Dark Shadows, The Norliss Tapes, and that wonderful Karen Black anthology film, Trilogy of Terror. So it has a great supernatural and occult investigation pedigree. Unfortunately, it’s filmed (or to be precise, videotaped), set dressed, scored, and for the most part acted like a soap opera. Judging by the flubs that got left in the final print, I can’t imagine they did more than one or two takes of anything.
Part of my series on never-made occult detective TV shows.
What it was supposed to be:Bedeviled, a series about a psychiatrist who fights against demonic forces. What we got: Two TV Movies of the Week: one outstanding, the other not bad. Investigator: Dr. David Sorell (Louis Jourdan) Why the axe: A number of reasons, leading to NBC going with Rod Serling’s Night Gallery instead.
Paul Varney spots a strange apparition in a beautiful old mirror that he purchases from an antique shop. When Paul later dies, his fiancee Barbara believes that she can see him in that old mirror — and he’s calling her to join him. Dr. David Sorell must free Barbara from the spell she’s under before what would have been the couple’s wedding day, when Paul has promised to take her away.
Fear No Evil was produced by Universal for NBC, and holds the distinction of being the first US television “Movie of the Week.” It is an excellent movie. Coming out as it did soon after the release of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), a movie that popularized the theme of devil worship, it of course delves into demons and covens, too. But it also has a lot of the qualities of a good, classic, old school ghost story. That puts it right up my alley.
Up until now, I’ve publicized my blog posts on Twitter and Facebook. This is not a terribly effective strategy, for a variety of reasons most people summarize as “The Algorithm.” And as time goes by, my appetite for logging on to those sites has dwindled to non-existent — again, thanks to “The Algorithm.” And yet, I still feel the need to let the world know when I’ve written something. So, I’m going somewhere different.
All my blogs — Multo, Ephemera, Dark Tales Sleuth, and even NinaZumel.com — are now syndicated at Micro.blog, at the link https://micro.blog/MultoGhost.
UPDATE 31 Oct 2022: After a couple of days, I decided I didn’t like the terse “just the title and a link” view that syndicating my blogs gave me. So I built myself a little microblogging site, Short Thoughts, on Github Pages and syndicated that instead. I’ll be using that site the way I used Twitter, to announce new posts with a short introduction, across all my blogs.
If you’d like a feed of all my blog post announcements, with less chit-chat than might occur at Micro.blog, you can subscribe directly to Short Thoughts via RSS.
Part of my series on never-made occult detective TV shows.
Chamber of Horrors (1966)
What it was supposed to be:House of Wax, a period horror/detective series. What we got:Chamber of Horrors, the feature film. Investigator: Anthony Draco (Cesare Danova) and Harold Blount (Wilfrid Hyde White) Why the axe: “Too gruesome for TV.”
Baltimore, late 19th century: wealthy, upper-class Jason Cravette kills his fiancee and marries her corpse. When his crime is discovered, the police capture him with the help of amateur detective and wax museum owner Anthony Draco, who runs House of Wax. Cravette is convicted and condemned; on the way to prison he escapes by chopping off his own handcuffed hand and jumping off the train. He then procures a gruesome collection of hooks and blades to replace his missing hand, and returns to Baltimore to get gory revenge on all who were responsible for his conviction — including Draco.
This isn’t actually occult detection; it’s non-supernatural horror/crime, but it’s similar to the film I covered in the last post, Dark Intruder, in many ways. The two movies are often mentioned together, and it seemed natural to watch it and compare. Chamber of Horrors also has a few things in common with Fear No Evil, one of the subjects of my next post. And it’s a truly fun movie.
Part of my series on never-made occult detective TV shows.
Dark Intruder (1965)
What it was supposed to be:Black Cloak, a period occult investigator series. What we got:Dark Intruder, the pilot, reframed as a 60 min “movie” packaged as part of as a drive-in double feature. Investigator: Brett Kingsford (Leslie Nielsen) Why the axe: “Too scary for TV.”
In public and to his friends, Brett Kingsford (Leslie Nielsen) is a wealthy playboy socialite in late 19th century San Francisco. In private, he investigates cases of the occult. Police Commissioner Harvey Misbach asks for Kingsford’s help with a series of brutal killings. At every murder scene, the killer leaves behind a mysterious carving of a two-headed Sumerian god — and each time, the second head emerges a little further out. At the same time, Kingsford’s friend Evelyn expresses concern about her fiance Robert’s strange mood and erratic behavior.
If you are a fan of the occult detective genre, you are are likely familiar with Carl Kolchak, the intrepid journalist who investigated supernatural phenomena in two TV movies (1972 and 1973) and one season of a TV series (1974-75). But Kolchak wasn’t the first attempt to put occult detection on the small screen. I recently indulged in a little binge of television pilots about paranormal investigators that predate Kolchak, but failed to get picked up. After these pilots were rejected, they were extended and given new life as TV, or even theatrical, movies, granting us lucky viewers a glimpse of what might have been, once a week, for a season or so….
The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (1964)
What it was supposed to be:The Haunted, a series about an architect who consults as a paranormal investigator. What we got: An 80 minute TV movie, The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre. And now, the 60 minute pilot, too. Investigator: Nelson Orion (Martin Landau) Why the axe: “Too scary for TV.” Also, political upheaval at CBS.
Nelson Orion (Martin Landau) is an architect/building restoration specialist for a living, paranormal investigator by avocation. He looks into the case of a wealthy young man who believes that his dead mother is haunting him — by telephone. The truth turns out to be far more sinister.
Multo (Ghost) 