Its HALLOWEEN TIME!

 It should be no surprise that we love Halloween!  Samhain.  The days of the dead.   All that.  We LOVE them.  The history, the tradition and the wonder of all things beyond the veil, so to speak. 

We have agreed to participate in a daily post about what we are doing to celebrate the holiday.   We do tend to do something just about everyday of the month of October to remember and celebrate believe it or not. 

We are a few days behind at posting what we are doing, so I'll get right to it.

October 1st - Scoped out all the Halloween shops around town.  Started looking at our decorations and setting them out around the old crypt.  Dane cooked the pumpkin to make the bread to have with our meade!  I am all a twitter about that...

October 2nd - Took the youngest of the brood to said Halloween stores and let him look over the bloody offerings.  He picked what horrible thing he will go as this year!  A zombie military soldier.  Could we be more proud?

October 3rd - Have already purchased movies for our night of a thousand screams.  Our version of the late night double feature picture show.  Kid friendly and we do not throw the popcorn.  That just makes the dust bunnies multiply.  We throw fingers, they can at least pick up after themselves.  So, we will probably preview the movies. 

Every day this month we are also having a 20% off sale with coupon in our shop.  It is off your total order and only one coupon per customer. Use the code Anabel Lee to get your discount.  You can find Skully Rose up there in our picture at our shop!  The sale is being advertised by the Ghouls Guild on Artfire.  We are also participating October 1st thru October 13th in all that madness going on at the Ghouls Guild Blog.  So check all that out!   

One more thing!  Xane's articles will be up weekly at Handmade News and this month's theme is all things Halloween.  So if you want to get your shop spiffy for the holiday check it out!

That's all for now.  We may not post what we do everyday, but we will post something Halloween related daily for the month of October.  We hope you all will TUNE in. 

Happy Halloween! 

Xane


Now where did I put those spare fingers.....

Halloween!

HALLOWEEN

Halloween is almost near;
Ghosts and goblins will soon appear!

To your doorstep they draw near;
A rapping and tapping with devious cheer!

But do not fret,
Do not fear.

That's what the candy is for, my dear!


Illustration :  Xane Dravor
Poem:  Dane Dravor


Hope you like them!  Just a little something for the
upcoming holiday!


Xane and Dane

Zombie Kittie!

Some of you have met Zombo, our zombie clown. Yes, the bites will heal and no he doesn't seem to be contagious. Ahem, after creating Zombo we thought he needed a friend. A pet. Hell someone that the smell of him wouldn't run off. So we came up with Zombie Kittie. Why a kittie? Well that's what was on the road that day. We just scooped him up, put his bits where we thought they looked nice and reanimated his butt. Things seem to have worked out nicely.

If you'd like to see more zombie type peoples and pets, let us know! Go look at our listings on Artfire and order one of your own! I LOVE to make up custom pieces. Zombie squid? Undead school teacher? You want it, you got it! Be the first to order a specific type of zombie and YOU, yes, YOU, get to name the design!

Come on zombie friends, creating things that should never see the light of day is fun! See for yourself at House Morbid on ARTFIRE

Steampunk Airship Pirate/Captain Talisman

I Just added this new piece to my Artfire shop. I have a few more I will be adding soon. These bottles are meant to hold captain's oil. A glow in the dark elixir of my own creation that helps keep the ship airborne and the captain always on strong winds that will carry them to their destination safely. (These pieces can also be left empty or filled with whatever the ordering captain/pirate wants to have inside their talisman)

Steampunk is a great inspiration for me and a lot of my newer pieces.

This picture shows the colors off better.

This is my artfire listing for this piece
Steampunk Airship Talisman

More pieces to come soon!

Xane

Steampunk Airship Pirate Talisman Copyright HouseMorbid 2009

The Hanging Ghost

Welcome again my darklings! I apologies for being a little late in getting this weeks tale up for you but we’ve been in a bit of a rush in the crypt preparing to haunt another state for a few days, but I suppose when your dead time is a relative thing. This week’s spine tingling tale is from one of our local haunts and has more than it’s share of hauntings to scream about. So turn down those lights and get comfy in those coffins for, “The Hanging Ghost”.

The German farmer’s daughter carefully planned her wedding. Hannah kept her plans a secret, though, while her beloved built a home for them to share. When the house was complete, he would ask her father for permission to marry.
The farmer, land-hungry and greedy, had other ideas. Since settling in the backwoods of Rowan County, he’d purchased as much land as he possibly could. He coveted the farm next to his. Acquiring this property would add many acers to his holdings.
The neighboring farm was owned by an old widower who needed a strong young woman to help him with the work. The two farmers worked out a deal – a marriage between the widower and the daughter. The wedding would take place after the banns had been posted at the church for three weeks.
“No! I won’t do it!” Hannah shouted. “I won’t marry a man I don’t love, just so you can have more land.”
“You’ll marry who I say,” her father commanded.
“I won’t,” Hannah said. “I’ll run away first.”
Her father sneered, “We’ll see about that.” He locked Hannah in her room. Until she agreed to the marriage, she would be a prisoner. Meals would be delivered to her, but she could not leave her bedroom.
Hannah cried for days, and kept refusing to marry the old widower. Her father did not relent, and Hannah, unable to send word to her true love, finally realized the she would have to agree to the marriage.
The day before the wedding, Hannah told her father of her decision. “But,” she said, “you will regret this for as long as you live.”
That night, feeling victorious and dreaming of a lucrative future, the farmer did not lock Hannah’s bedroom door.
During the night, the farmer was awakened by the sound of barn doors opening and slamming shut. “The wind must be fierce,” he thought, “to force open those doors.” He grabbed a lantern and ran outside, expecting to be met by a major storm.
There was no storm, no wind. There was not even a breeze. He rushed to the barn, where the doors were madly flapping back and forth for no apparent reason. Then he saw a light, a strange, wavering light, reaching from deep inside the barn. The farmer raised his lantern and slowly entered. There, swinging in the slow circles, surrounded by an eerie glow, was the body of his daughter, hanging from the rafters. Hannah preferred death to a loveless marriage.
The next day, instead of a wedding, there was a funeral at the church.
It was a terrible loss, and the farmer regretted his greed. Neighbors refused to speak to him, and his crops failed. The well went dry. After nearly a year, things got better for the farmer. His crops grew and a new well brought fresh water. Even the neighbors seemed to forgive, or forget.
Except Hannah would not be forgotten. On the anniversary of her death, the farmer was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of barn doors slamming. The strange light again appeared. In the barn, the farmer could hear the creaking of the rafters, just as he’d heard on that fateful night.
These events continued year after year, always on the anniversary of Hannah’s death. Finally, the farmer tore down the barn. He burned all of the wood to ashes. He buried the nails throughout the forest. He pried the foundation stones from the ground and placed them so that none of the stones touched another.
Even that didn’t quiet Hannah. To this day, she makes her story known, announcing her father’s greed and guilt to anyone who will listen.
An elderly woman’s desire for privacy keeps me from disclosing the exact location, but if you’re in eastern Rowan County in late October, you might hear the sound of barn doors slamming. If you investigate closely, you may see an eerie light. If you move close enough to the light, you could feel a slight breeze stirring, as if a young girl’s body were swaying back and forth, back and forth, on the end of a rope.

We hope you enjoyed this little telling of poor Miss Hannah’s plight and hope you’ll swing by for the next installment! Until next time…

Xane and Dane Dravor

Stories taken from: Ghost Tales From The North Carolina Piedmont. Collected and retold by Linda Duck Tanenbaum & Barry McGee.

ISBN 1-878177-13-3

"The Hook" and "The Girl Who Stood On A Grave"

Welcome darklings to this week’s spooky folk tales! Ah youth, how full of life, and filled with a sense of invincibility! It takes most of us a few years to understand how fragile life can be. A few years or the dodging of an anvil before it crashes down on your skull once or twice. Things like that do tend to speed up the realization of your own mortality quite a bit, but enough about silly pranks to play on your siblings. Perhaps the young ones in these stories will be the wiser and avoid becoming a cautionary tale. But, we think it might already be too late for one of them. Take a seat on the rack and find out for yourself, as we present two fun little ditties called, “The Hook” and “The Girl Who Stood On A Grave”.

The Hook

Donald and Sarah went to the movies. Then they went for a ride in Donald’s car. They parked up on a hill at the edge of town. From there they could see the lights up and down the valley.
Donald turned on the radio and found some music. But an announcer broke in with a news bulletin. A murderer had escaped from the state prison. He was armed with a knife and was headed south on foot. His left hand was missing. In its place, he wore a hook.
“Let’s roll up the windows and lock the doors,” said Sarah.
“That’s a good idea, “said Donald.
“That prison isn’t too far away,” said Sarah. “Maybe we really should go home.”
“But it’s only ten o’clock,” said Donald.
“I don’t care what time it is,” she said. “I want to go home.”
“Look, Sarah,” said Donald, “he’s not going to climb all the way up here. Why would he do that? Even if he did, all the doors are locked. How could he get in?”
“Donald, he could take that hook and break through a window and open a door,” she said. “I’m scared. I want to go home.”
Donald was annoyed. “Girls always are afraid of something,” he said.
As he started the car, Sarah thought she heard someone, or something scratching at her door.
“Did you hear that?” she asked as they roared away. “It sounded like somebody was trying to get in.”
“Oh, sure,” said Donald. Soon they got to her house.
“Would you like to come in and have some cocoa?” she asked.
“No,” he said, “I’ve got to go home.”
He went around to the other side of the care to let her out. Hanging on the door handle was a hook.


The Girl Who Stood On A Grave

Some boys and girls were at a party one night. There was a graveyard down the street, and they were talking about how scary it was.
“Don’t ever stand on a grave after dark,” one of the boys said. “The person inside will grab you. He’ll pull you under.”
“That’s not true,” one of the girls said. “It’s just a superstition.”
“I’ll give you a dollar if you stand on a grave,” said the boy.
“A grave doesn’t scare me,” said the girl. “I’ll do it right now.”
The boy handed her his knife. “Stick this knife in one of the graves,” he said. “Then we’ll know you were there.”
The graveyard was filled with shadows and was as quiet as death. “There is nothing to be scared of,” the girl told herself, but she was scared anyway.
She picked out a grave and stood on it. Then quickly she bent over and plunged the knife into the soil, and she started to leave. But she couldn’t get away. Something was holding her back! She tried a second time to leave, but she couldn’t move. She was filled with terror.
“Something has got me!” she screamed, and she fell to the ground.
When she didn’t come back, the others went to look for her. They found her body sprawled across the grave. Without realizing it, she had plunged the knife through her skirt and had pinned it to the ground. It was only the knife that held her. She had died of fright.


Thanks again for popping in to hear the tales we dug up for you this week. We hope they made you giggle with fiendish glee! Until next time…

Xane and Dane Dravor

Stories taken from: Scary Stories Treasury, collected from folklore and retold by Alvin Schwartz

ISBN 0-06-026341-5

From the Master of the Macabre

This week I thought we’d take a break from the ghostly tales I’ve been digging up for you lately and present a work from the most morbid of bards, Mr. E.A. Poe. Today, I’ve drawn up a little lovely from his collected work of poems, so pull up a tombstone and gather round for, “The Sleeper”…


At Midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon,
An Opiate vapour, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! The lake
A Conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps! – and lo! Where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

O, lady bright! Can it be right –
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop –
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully – so fearfully –
Above the closed and fringed lid
‘Neath which they slumb’ring soul lies hid,
That, o’er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!

Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! Strange they dress,
Strange, above all, they length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, my her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold –
Some vault that oft has flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Of her grand family funerals –
Some sepulcher, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many idle stone –
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne’er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.


We’re so glad you dropped by this week I hope this little poem of Mr. Poe’s has set the mood for a most morose and morbid day! Until next time kiddies and remember to keep a watchful eye on those closest to you, as they say; you only hurt the ones you love…everyone else is just target practice.

Xane and Dane Dravor

Poem taken from: Edgar Allan Poe, Selected Works. Gramercy Books, New York, Copyright 1985 by Random House Value Publishing, Inc.

ISBN 0-517-05358-6