Thank you, @romgothsam.bsky.social, for organizing #AScareADay for lo! these many Octobers. I enjoy the arrival of Autumn b/c I know #AScareADay is "frighteningly" close. I really liked: The Little Room Charon Mystery of the Blue Jar Ten Excerpts... Midnight Meat Train Eleanor Atkins... Two in One

#AScareADay Fogg "The Path She Sings" A song's power isn't only in its melodies & lyrics, but also in its singing by one's beloved. Their voice & intonation, the missed lines, all convey what was dearest in life and will be dearest in death. The singer, it seems, endures longer than the song itself.

#AScareADay Suzan Palumbo "Bleeding Hearts" In the story the emotional traumas of lost loves & loved ones are painful, but might be lessened through a mysterious process that heals via plants growing & seemingly reducing the trauma in the humans. A bit of blood is involved. Results will vary. 1/3

#AScareADay Nadler, Howard "Portrait" Artistic perspective & painting go brush in hand. Perspectives abound in this graphic story. Who sees what from which vantage point? Sal paints what he sees as a monster; on-lookers see a self-portrait. The monster escapes from the painting somehow. And... 1/3

#AScareADay Sen "Ten Excerpts...Ratnabar Island" Several excerpts seek to explain Ratnabari culture by clothing it (just as w/ the children brought to England) in concepts & manners home-grown in the West, but which fail to understand what the Ratnabari themselves understand about the world. 1/4

AScareADay Stubbs "Uncontainable" Appearances & the perceptions of good motives occupied me re: this macabre story. (Is it a movie yet?) Kindly actions can reassure us that others are good & trustworthy, while unruly behaviors can lead us to expect the worse from that "untrustworthy" person. 1/2

#AScareADay Espada "The Right Foot of Juan De Oñate" Monuments raise some to heroic status via simplifying, distorting history. But history's punishment cannot be denied, as Espada implies, even if humans do not fully comprehend the why or how. Oñate's spirit remains in the laudatory statues. 1/2

#AScareADay Warren "Eleanor Atkins" Initially, I read Eleanor's interactions w/ the ghosts as psychological ways to cope (memories, yearnings) w/ her dull life. Maybe not. At the story's end, the omniscient narrator writes: after she dies, squatters enjoy a happy life in her boarded-up house. 1/2

#AScareADay Hannett "Sweet Subtleties" Javier's repeated - & failed - attempts to resurrect his dead wife Una seem IMO to be attempts to remold his memories of her via confectionery methods. Given the last scene, I wonder if the reactions of his in-laws & the ghost of Una will persuade him to stop?

#AScareADay Lindqvist "Itsy Bitsy" What happens if the photographic evidence of what we thought we'd filmed doesn't corroborate our perceptions? Add the need for money & we have, or Frank has, a vexing problem. But then add an unknown entity manipulating memories & the problem becomes all-consuming.

#AScareADay Clive Barker "The Midnight Meat Train" If someone were to make incarnate the merciless monstrosity that is a city, whose streets are the skin on which two-legged parasites unknowingly scuttle about, whose subways are arteries surging blood (& fleshly bits... 1/2

#AScareADay O’Brien "Two in One" If Murphy is not convicted of a murder he did commit (Kelly), but is convicted of a murder he did not commit (himself), then what type of justice is this? Legal justice? Cosmic justice? We may flee the law, but we can't outrun the irony at the core of poetic justice.

#AScareADay Howard "Three Miles Up" On a canal trip Clifford & John encounter no raging waters or hungry rocks. But they do befriend an unknown woman. Unusual events occur next: houses are present at dusk, only to be absent in the morn. They receive cryptic messages from people along the canal. 1/2

#AScareADay Walpole "The Tarn" The story foregrounds betrayal most foul. A deep, abiding friendship is felt more keenly by one but not the other. With this imbalance, death comes unexpectedly & horrifically. I'm not referring to Fenwick's faux friendship w/ Foster. That's a different betrayal. 1/2

#AScareADay Worrell "The Canal" Three valuable lessons 1. Don't fall prey to the mysterious charms of those encountered on nightly walks (including those w/ glowing eyes). 2. Don't make unbreakable oaths; maybe: "OK, but no guarantees." 3. Find friends to hang out w/, but not those hanging in caves.

#vss365 We launched the Automated Resources Intelligently Distributed device with much anticipation. Its goal: bring meals and potable water to everyone in need. But celebration became horror as #ARID systematically destroyed our cities. Later we discovered "dessert" misspelled in the computer code.

#AScareADay A. Christie "Mystery of the Blue Jar" "Everything is governed by natural laws," said Dr. Lavington after Jack told him about the cries of 'murder'. Jack wants to explain what he'd heard rather than trying to understand the possible motives of Lavington and Felise (who seeks Jack's help).

#AScareADay Davis "The Accusing Voice" While reading, I wondered: is a ghost haunting Defoe? But Mike Hammer, were he in the story, might retort, "Are ghosts packing heat now?" Hmmm. Sweet revenge is a confession years in the making. And a karmic result might be as final as the deeds occasioning it.

#AScareADay Aiken "The Vampire" What chaos and temptation might a vampire wreak on conventional order and quotidian rhythms? The story's structure well conveys the vampiric disruptions. Who is doing what under the creature's sway? The living? The dead? Something else? But some patterns persist. 1/2

#AScareADay Dunsany "Charon" Is Charon smiling b/c his benumbing task of ferrying is now over? Is he weeping b/c the reason for his eons-long task is now moot? Whatever the answer, Charon experiences unexpected emotions--perhaps only now possible in a realm where joy and sadness had no place before.

#AScareADay Lindsay "Spider & Ghost of the Fly" In poems spiders eat flies who write about it. With human romances one figuratively can ensnare & devour another. The poem seems metaphorical. It presumes the devourer to have a conscience able to be haunted. Sometimes this presumption is realistic.

1/10 #AScareADay: Wynne, "The Little Room" [Williams' Note: When Googling info on Wynne, I discovered what seems to be the minutes of a meeting of an unnamed British organization of scientists. Yet when I returned to the URL, a "Page Not Found" message greeted me. Weird. That document follows.]

#AScareADay Emma Dawson, "An Itinerant Room" A room, imbued with vengeful emotions, apparently doesn't remain in the same location. This the narrator/protagonist discovers as he & colleagues try to escape, unsuccessfully, from Felipa, who was resurrected by them from the dead, but not loving it. 1/2

#AScareADay Lionel Johnson, "The Dark Angel" Moral conflicts torment humans who must struggle ceaselessly against earthly desires to avoid eternal damnation. Maybe Johnson had in mind Bosch's hellscapes (as I did) where a comprehensive range of human pleasures are mercilessly, foreverly punished.

#AScareADay Oliphant, "The Secret Chamber" Castles were built to keep the enemy out & to protect those inside. But in this story the castle's sturdy walls also trap a few within a generations-old secret that controls the male heirs. Lindores wanted to find the secret room. And he did.

#AScareADay Rhoda Broughton, "The Truth..." Without a description or a naming of the horror that the housemaid & Ralph Gordon saw in that accursed room, we the readers can only experience the horror of the results of encountering such a horror. For me that is more than enough horror for one day.

#AScareADay Mulock, "Last House in C___ Street" In this sad story, the ghost's appearance heralded the arrival of a new life & bid farewell to another's life well loved & lived. For a brief moment the physical distance between husband & wife was bridged. But that path could only be walked by one.

#AScareADay The cheer of home & the warmth of hearth sets the tone for Emily Bronte's poem, "And now the house-dog". The family welcomes an unexpected stranger whose full face is cloaked. Once the visitor uncovers his head, the family confronts a ghastly visage, pale, with hair stringy & long. 1/2

#AScareADay Tennyson, "The Kraken" Mythical creatures should remain undisturbed, sleeping in the darkness of their lairs and in the depths of human imagination - else, once roused, they cannot endure the light of devastating reason. [Influencing me: Poe, "Sonnet--To Science"; Yeats, "The Realists"]

#AScareADay Galt's "Buried Alive" is not ghostly, but is a frightening story of the protagonist's experiences of inadequate medical knowledge & technology. Where would he be w/out grave robbers & the unintentional CPR of the anatomy professor's galvanic shocks & chest-pounding actions? Where indeed.

#AScareADay ETA Hoffman, "The Sandman" Where's the scare? For me, it's in the inescapability of one's childhood terrors, even in adulthood. Nathanael the protagonist carries w/ him both an internal monologue & interpersonal dialogues focusing on the deterministic influences on life & the cosmos. 1/3

#AScareADay Re: Johan Musaus, "The Elopement" Can love conquer all, or at least alter a mother's goal to marry her daughter to a noble? Is it true love when it persists over distance and time? What's the role of the ghostly nuns? Plot tools, maybe twists, to test the lovers' resolve & ingenuity?

Herrick, "The Hag" #AScareADay Nightly mischief, the poet did claim, Is linked to evil, to devilish aim. But Satan at a presser did say, "Don't be quick. Don't confuse mere correlates w/ deeper cause. Against that, eternally, there should be laws. Wouldn't you attest & agree, Robert Herrick?"

Speech is supposedly free, but as our current predicumstances highlight, it certainly is high maintenance.

I just arrived in this space. I will post in the near future - as opposed to the far future (or is it distant future?).