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Aug. 12th, 2004 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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darkling_talesLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY lillassea)
Name:
Tess
Where you live:
Cincinnati, Ohio
(but relocating to Yellow Springs, Ohio, a strange and lovely little arts/college town, at the end of the year)
What you do with yourself:
I'm the owner of a small retail business (www.midnight-muse.com), which means that I am chronically lacking in pecuniary nourishment.
Favourite horror or ghost story author, and why:
I love Shirley Jackson, Edith Wharton, Angela Carter...the very occasional Stephen King gem (e.g., "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut") and what I have read so far of E.F. Benson and Walter de la Mare (only a few stories).
Favourite horror-film and director?:
Probably The Company of Wolves (1985, directed by Neil Jordan); it's dark and beautiful more than frightening; ditto The Wicker Man. Kubrick's film The Shining scared me; also the movie Jacob's Ladder for some reason. I enjoy unsettling, enigmatic films like Picnic At Hanging Rock and Mulholland Drive, and I'm intrigued by "real life" stories of mysterious disappearances and anomalous experiences.
How did you get into horror/the supernatural?:
I've been fascinated by ghost stories since I was little, though it was less fun then, because I was so easily frightened. I encountered some "supernatural" English and Scottish ballads (Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, The Wife of Usher's Well, etc.) via the band Steeleye Span, and I suspect they lent a certain darkling dimension to my young sensibilities. I majored in English Literature at my university, and my favorite hundred years of literature and poetry are probably 1840-1940 or so... I particularly love Dickens, Hardy, Wharton, Lawrence, Faulkner, and also Mary Renault.
Ever had any strange,inexplicable and/or scary experiences of your own?:
Only a few, though I love to collect other people's stories. Once I heard an unbelievably loud, deep, fierce growling snarl in my backyard in the middle of the night (I was 19 or so, reading, not asleep), a sound from no animal I can imagine except maybe a wolf as big as a car, with a throat as big around as a tree. It was certainly not a dog, and coyotes make a very different sort of noise, even assuming a coyote would come that far into the suburbs. There was no sound from the yard, including the sound of an animal's movements in the dry fallen leaves, either before or after the growl. It just came thunderously out of the silent air, faded to nothing, and never repeated itself.
I frantically woke my mother and asked if she had heard anything, and she said sleepily, "It was just a chainsaw." So I know she did actually hear the same noise. It had a certain similarity to a single strong pull on a chainsaw; that kind of fast-building rumbling roar and slow rattling fade. But it wasn't a chainsaw; it sounded exactly like an enormous animal.
Have your say! What do you think about the community? How could it be improved?
I think it's a wonderful idea and I look forward to reading it!
lillassea)Name:
Tess
Where you live:
Cincinnati, Ohio
(but relocating to Yellow Springs, Ohio, a strange and lovely little arts/college town, at the end of the year)
What you do with yourself:
I'm the owner of a small retail business (www.midnight-muse.com), which means that I am chronically lacking in pecuniary nourishment.
Favourite horror or ghost story author, and why:
I love Shirley Jackson, Edith Wharton, Angela Carter...the very occasional Stephen King gem (e.g., "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut") and what I have read so far of E.F. Benson and Walter de la Mare (only a few stories).
Favourite horror-film and director?:
Probably The Company of Wolves (1985, directed by Neil Jordan); it's dark and beautiful more than frightening; ditto The Wicker Man. Kubrick's film The Shining scared me; also the movie Jacob's Ladder for some reason. I enjoy unsettling, enigmatic films like Picnic At Hanging Rock and Mulholland Drive, and I'm intrigued by "real life" stories of mysterious disappearances and anomalous experiences.
How did you get into horror/the supernatural?:
I've been fascinated by ghost stories since I was little, though it was less fun then, because I was so easily frightened. I encountered some "supernatural" English and Scottish ballads (Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, The Wife of Usher's Well, etc.) via the band Steeleye Span, and I suspect they lent a certain darkling dimension to my young sensibilities. I majored in English Literature at my university, and my favorite hundred years of literature and poetry are probably 1840-1940 or so... I particularly love Dickens, Hardy, Wharton, Lawrence, Faulkner, and also Mary Renault.
Ever had any strange,inexplicable and/or scary experiences of your own?:
Only a few, though I love to collect other people's stories. Once I heard an unbelievably loud, deep, fierce growling snarl in my backyard in the middle of the night (I was 19 or so, reading, not asleep), a sound from no animal I can imagine except maybe a wolf as big as a car, with a throat as big around as a tree. It was certainly not a dog, and coyotes make a very different sort of noise, even assuming a coyote would come that far into the suburbs. There was no sound from the yard, including the sound of an animal's movements in the dry fallen leaves, either before or after the growl. It just came thunderously out of the silent air, faded to nothing, and never repeated itself.
I frantically woke my mother and asked if she had heard anything, and she said sleepily, "It was just a chainsaw." So I know she did actually hear the same noise. It had a certain similarity to a single strong pull on a chainsaw; that kind of fast-building rumbling roar and slow rattling fade. But it wasn't a chainsaw; it sounded exactly like an enormous animal.
Have your say! What do you think about the community? How could it be improved?
I think it's a wonderful idea and I look forward to reading it!
