"Halloween Spirits" by Aaron McNees

   "Jack O' Lantern", Clayton Bright

One fine Halloween evening in 1993 as i was getting ready for a night of reveling, raucousness,revenge and candy, i was taking a shower and shaving and cut myself rather deeply upon the neck. As the blood ran down my arm, i marveled at its quantity and a strange whim overtook me and i said, aloud " I offer this blood up to the Halloween Spirits"

It ran in a strait line down my arm and headed to the drain, where the water made a vortice. As it ran, i noticed i could not see it hitting the drain and indeed was disappearing before it got to the drain at about six inches from the swirling whirlpool below. eventually it creeped me out and i got out of the shower and had to use direct pressure to get it to stop while i got ready for Halloween, i was going as a "free agent" of the grim reaper. The cut was not deep but it stung and i was a little pale in the face and my makeup came out quite deathly. I had a good time and chalked it off to the strangeness of surface tension and imagination.

The next year, 1994, as i readied for Samhain again, i was very careful in the shower and neither invited spirits of any kind into my shower nor did i attempt to shave deeply, i was just shaving the sides of my face for a rough Goatee and never touched my neck at all with the razor blade. Never the less, I still bled profusely with the water again disappearing down the drain into the dark vortex of the subterranean tunnels that run below. Needless to say, i hurried from the shower and got ready quickly, feeling some dark force was watching and toying with me just a little bit.

All Hallows Eve, 1995- i got in the shower saying nothing, no lights but a small white candle and Did Not Shave. As you might have guessed , my neck bled anyway and looked particularly creepy in the dim candle light.

Since then, i have had no further episodes, altho i still do not shave in the shower on Halloween and make sure the door is open and the lights are on.

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originally posted October, 2006

                    †  Photo by Pierre Robert  †   

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"The Fog" by Aaron McNees
There was a small cemetery outside of Austin, past Oak Hill, that lay beside a small white dirt road off Circle Drive, it was very old.I believe it was named Oliver Cemetery. There was an old white  ranch house with horses next to it.My friend and I had been riding around the back roads of Oak Hill, and were getting high and feeling very care free, when we found a road called " Oliver Cemetery Road", and decided to investigate. Or rather, i did she only went down it because i wanted to seethe tombstones and make "etchings" with a pencil and paper by holding the paper against the grave marker, and rubbing it with the pencil.We got out of the car, and i made a few etchings, but they didn't turn out very well, the tombstones were easily over a hundred years old and had been deteriorating, covered with green mold. So many were of children' s graves, life was hard on the prairie back then, and children often did not make it to 10 year sold.It was sad and October and weirdly creepy, and the horses peered over the fence to watch us, so we went to the  car so i could finish smoking my joint...about half way thru it, the sun started to set and we went for a little walk to see the horses again and perhaps give them some of our picnic basket sandwich crusts. The horses were gone, the wind started to blow, and a dark cloud flew low over us.The sun had just set, and everything was in a grey-bluish light, the headstones almost glowing in the diffused unearthly twilight. I was just finishing up the roach in the ashtray and we were getting ready to leave soom anyway when night fell all at once and we joked around, that's weird and stuff, woohaha and all that. As we made spooky noises and played, the thickest fog i had ever seen in my life just rolled in and made billowing swirls around the car, enveloping it completely. This fog wasn't like the kind you see normally in Central Texas or  Houston or even Louisiana, it was like the kind i remember my grandfather describing in England in WWII as he fished dead bodies out of the Atlantic. The Cemetery was at the bottom of a bowl-shaped depression, and the fog hovered and swirled. We could see nothing beyond it, a deathly white. I fancied seeing shapes in it, skulls and faces and flitting around, when i looked to her ashen face, white  as the impenetrable fog, and she was shaking.Quickly i recalled my Aunt and Mothers cemetery advice " If you become frightened in graveyard at night, never tell your companion how scared you are, for if they are also afraid your fear will double and you will both panic and then something could happen."I didn't want 'something to happen', so I just asked her simply and  gently as possible, "Are you ready to go?" " Uh-hhh huh-hh-h-h..." and she turned the key to the ignition.
Thank God, it started!
I just knew the zombies were about to break the windows and pull us out screaming into that evil mist.
The sensation of Evil was palpable in the air, it was as thick as that cursed fog.
The next day, we were talking about how the horses seem to know something was going on, when we read in the paper about a horriblecase of satanic ritual abuse at preschool in Oak Hill. The children had been taken to that cemetery as part of the rituals they had performed, and it turns out there had been a coven holding black mass there for years.
-shivers-
i have a link to the story in texas monthly about the criminal case of the daycare facility, but hesitate to place it here- if you are familiar with  Operation Monarch, then you have my utmost sympathy. God bless you and remove your sorrows.

 if you wish to have your nightmares, then i will send you the link. I don't recommend reading it.

postscript: We encountered this same fog lost as sin on hwy route 6 in east Texas. It was pea-soup thick, and we were so completely lost around Beaumont. As we panicked, the radio started playing this eerie church bell music, except it was without melody, and my friend began to scream turn it off. I had a premonition, and leaned forward to the radio. i tried change the station, punching each button so hard it hurt my  finger. This was an old radio with mechanical preset buttons. It was on every channel. I tried the volume, but it stayed a constant atonal ringing of deadly chimes. at last, turning grim, i hit the am/fm button. we were on a lower frequency than those. finally i tried to turn the damn thing off, but it played on insolently mocking alien cathedral chamber "music". I knew what we were listening to, men describe hearing them on the battlefield before they die.  It was The Bells Of Doom. Again remembering my Mother's sage advice, as my ex began screaming for me to turn it off, I pretended to be angry with her and growled,  " Be quiet, I like it." She glared at me but i think she knew that i was just bluffing and scared shitless, so she didn't ask any more questions which was good, because i would have hated to tell her that i thought we were going to die .
Eventually we pulled over and the rain came and washed away the fog( as well as the bells), and we left in the pouring rain, so glad to leave the strange pocket dimension we had struggled with.
We found our way back to the hwy and were so glad to have made it home alive.

<shivers again>

	Currently Listening October Rust By Type O Negative Cinnamon Girl

it was a good run
gotta listen to that spirit...
"...on a cool September morning riding the back alleys in search of treasure, he  wondered almost aloud if he did indeed have a familiar spirit that helps him find metal, and just how such things were supposed to be viewed from the strict christian viewpoint he felt some kind allegiance to but instead always felt happier when he just listened to the mysteries and voices inside his own head ... and right then as re rolled down the alley (in neutral, of course to save gas)  he knew he loved that familiar spirit much as he would love a black kitty cat and there lo and behold was a stainless steel coca cola fountain drink dispenser...and the amazing thing was, he had no surprise whatsoever by this point, just an overwhelming feeling of joy and laughing at his waif 135lb self wrestling this 350lb sacred monolith into the back of his truck which was running on fumes and and water vapor....of course he got it in the truck, his back barely even complaining. he was happy, and for the moment, he was free
....but to stay that way, he needed to get off the road with treasure and expired numerical stickers upon his windshield....that, and the truck was dangerously low on gas.
such of course, was the story of his life." ~ from the scrap metal diaries

 SEAS GIVEN AS SIGNIFICANT WAVE HEIGHT...
WHICH IS THE AVERAGE HEIGHT OF THE HIGHEST 1/3 OF THE WAVES. 
INDIVIDUAL WAVES MAY BE MORE THAN TWICE THE SIGNIFICANT WAVE HEIGHT.  
  GMZ080-032130- NW GULF N OF 25N W OF 90W INCLUDING 
THE FLOWER GARDEN BANKS NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY 
1030 AM CDT SAT SEP 03 2011  
TROPICAL STORM WARNING E OF 94W  
THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH SUN 
TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS WITHIN 240 NM E AND 95 NM W OF CENTER
 WITH WINDS TO 50 GUSTS TO 60 KT. SEAS 12 FT OR GREATER WITHIN 240 NM E 
SEMICIRCLE WITH SEAS TO 15 FT. ELSEWHERE E OF 96W NW TO W WINDS 20 TO 
33 KT EXCEPT SW TO W WINDS S OF 27N. SEAS 8 TO 12 FT. W OF 96W NW WIND
S 15 TO 20 KT. SEAS 4 TO 7 FT. WINDS AND SEAS HIGHER AND VISIBILITIES 
RESTRICTED BELOW 5 NM IN NUMEROUS TSTMS AND SQUALLS E OF 94W.
... SURF"S UP, dude.

going to be without internet for the next two weeks, so just know that i care about y'all very much, we're moving to new house and new phase of our lives. i'll let you know when i get back and in the meantime just come visit my store.
peace and love,
aaron