My introduction

[joysilence]

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hellbound_heart)

Name:
Keri

Where you live:
Bradford, UK (although all being well, not for much longer)

What you do with yourself:
I have an MA in English Literature, although I specialised mainly in Victorian. I have worked as a student support worker, a shop assistant, a scribe, a factory hand, but I'm currently cleaning an office for a living because I can't find anything better. I make dreaded hairpieces, too.

Favourite horror or ghost story author, and why:
My all - time fave is Poe: he writes in such a claustrophobic style and keeps piling and piling on the suspense. Plus, his settings and characters are sumptuous: 'Ligeia' is amazing. I also have a soft spot for the old Gothics, even though they've lost some of their terrors today after being done to death. I like Ann Radcliffe a lot, especially 'The Italian'.

Favourite horror-film and director?:
I very much like Hideo Nakata, the Japanese geezer who directed 'Ring' and 'Dark Water'. He has a knack of creeping out perfectly ordinary homes and locations, and he knows just when to 'cut', leaving a suspense that is always lost in remakes.

How did you get into horror/the supernatural?:
Well, my birthday is the day before Hallowe'en, so I was always given scary birthday parties. I was just a very creepy little girl, who claimed to be able to talk to dead relatives, routinely practiced mirror-writing and could always be found with my head in my dad's old copies of Vampirella and Macabre.

Ever had any strange,inexplicable and/or scary experiences of your own?:
I had one last year! Me and my boyfriend were climbing up to the Swastika Stone on Ilkley Moor, which is an eerie place in its own right. As we were about five minutes from the top, all of a sudden the atmosphere became very oppressive. The birds and insects went silent, and we both felt terrible headaches, the type you get before a storm? We looked ahead, and there was a young woman walking in the same direction as ourselves, heading up to the stones. She was about three minutes ahead of us, and we watched her climb up onto the rocks, then disappear down the other side. She hadn't been there before, and when we reached the rocks, there was no sign of her, and nowhere, on such a featureless moor, for her to have gone.

Have your say! What do you think about the community? How could it be improved?
All good so far!

(no subject)

[joysilence]

LJ-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!