Grave Beginnings: 12

Posted: October 12th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments »

Amityville_Horror_NE

On February 5, 1976, the Ten O’Clock News on New York ‘s Channel Five announced it was doing a series on people who claimed to have extrasensory powers. The program cut to reporter Steve Bauman investigating an allegedly haunted house in Amityville, Long Island .

Bauman said that on November 13, 1974, a large colonial house at 112 Ocean Avenue had been the scene of a mass murder. Twenty-four-year-old Ronald DeFeo had taken a high-powered rifle and methodically shot to death his parents, two brothers, and two sisters. DeFeo had subsequently been sentenced to life imprisonment.

“Two months ago,” the report continued, “the house was sold for $80,000 to a couple named George and Kathleen Lutz.” The Lutzes had been aware of the killings, but not being superstitious, they had felt the house would be perfect for themselves and their three children. They moved in on December 23. Shortly thereafter, Bauman said, they had become aware that the place was inhabited by some psychic force and that they feared for their lives. “They talked of feeling the presence of some energy inside, some unnatural evil that grew stronger each day they remained.”

Opening paragraphs from The Amityville Horror
by Jay Anson
Art by N.E.

Grave Beginnings: 11

Posted: October 11th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments »

spooky_forest_by_tallon

Connecting Readyville and Woodbury was a good, hard turnpike nine or ten miles long. Readyville was an outpost of the Federal army at Murfreesboro; Woodbury had the same relation to the Confederate army at Tullahoma. For months after the big battle at Stone River these outposts were in constant quarrel, most of the trouble occurring, naturally, on the turnpike mentioned, between detachments of cavalry. Sometimes the infantry and artillery took a hand in the game by way of showing their good-will.

One night a squadron of Federal horse commanded by Major Seidel, a gallant and skillful officer, moved out from Readyville on an uncommonly hazardous enterprise requiring secrecy, caution and silence.

Passing the infantry pickets, the detachment soon afterward approached two cavalry videttes staring hard into the darkness ahead. There should have been three.

Opening paragraphs from A Baffled Ambuscade
by Ambrose Bierce
Photo by Tallon-1

Grave Beginnings: 10

Posted: October 10th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments »

letrightonein_TomHumberstone

It makes you think of coconut-frosted cookies, maybe drugs. “A respectable life.” You think subway station, suburb. Probably nothing else comes to mind. People must live there, just like they do in other places. That was why it was built, after all, so that people would have a place to live.

Opening paragraph from Let the Right One In
by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Art by Tom Humberstone

Grave Beginnings: 9

Posted: October 9th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments »

IHaveNoMouthAMTalk

Limp, the body of Gorrister hung from the pink palette; unsupported hanging high above us in the computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main cavern. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor.

When Gorrister joined our group and looked up at himself, it was already too late for us to realize that, once again, AM had duped us, had had its fun; it had been a diversion on the part of the machine. Three of us had vomited, turning away from one another in a reflex as ancient as the nausea that had produced it.

Gorrister went white. It was almost as though he had seen a voodoo icon, and was afraid of the future. “Oh, God,” he mumbled, and walked away. The three of us followed him after a time, and found him sitting with his back to one of the smaller chittering banks, his head in his hands. Ellen knelt down beside him and stroked his hair. He didn’t move, but his voice came out of his covered face quite clearly. “Why doesn’t it just do us in and get it over with? Christ, I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.”

It was our one hundred and ninth year in the computer.

He was speaking for all of us.

Opening paragraphs from I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
by Harlan Ellison

Grave Beginnings: 8

Posted: October 8th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | 2 Comments »

 

This is not for you.

 

 

Opening line from House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski
Submitted by Scott Slemmons, who I’m declaring our first ever Friend of Perry (FOP)! Scott has been a longtime supporter of this blog, and I’m proud to bestow this honor upon him. Go check out his site at Hero Sandwich!

Grave Beginnings: 7

Posted: October 7th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments »

True! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees – very gradually – I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

Opening paragraphs from The Tell-Tale Heart
by Edgar Allan Poe

Note: Today is the anniversary of Poe’s passing beyond this mortal veil, so stroke a black cat and raise a glass of Amontillado in his memory.  In pace requiescat!


Grave Beginnings: 6

Posted: October 6th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | 1 Comment »

Griswell awoke suddenly, every nerve tingling with a premonition of imminent peril. He stared about wildly, unable at first to remember where he was, or what he was doing there. Moonlight filtered in through the dusty windows, and the great empty room with its lofty ceiling and gaping black fireplace was spectral and unfamiliar. Then as he emerged from the clinging cobwebs of his recent sleep, he remembered where he was and how he came to be there. He twisted his head and stared at his companion, sleeping on the floor near him. John Branner was but a vaguely bulking shape in the darkness that the moon scarcely grayed.

Griswell tried to remember what had awakened him. There was no sound in the house, no sound outside except the mournful hoot of an owl, far away in the piny woods. Now he had captured the illusive memory. It was a dream, a nightmare so filled with dim terror that it had frightened him awake. Recollection flooded back, vividly etching the abominable vision.

Opening paragraphs from Pigeons from Hell
by Robert E. Howard

Grave Beginnings: 5

Posted: October 5th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments »

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. He staggered into the “Coach and Horses” more dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down. “A fire,” he cried, “in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!” He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn.

Opening paragraph from The Invisible Man
by H.G. Wells

Grave Beginnings: 4

Posted: October 4th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments »

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

I felt that from the moment I woke. And yet, when I started functioning a little more sharply, I misgave. After all, the odds were that it was I who was wrong, and not everyone else – though I did not see how that could be. I went on waiting, tinged with doubt. But presently I had my first bit of objective evidence – a distant clock struck what sounded to me just like eight. I listened hard and suspiciously. Soon another clock began, on a loud, decisive note. In a leisurely fashion it gave an indisputable eight. Then I knew things were awry.

Opening paragraphs from The Day of the Triffids
by John Wyndham

Grave Beginnings: 3

Posted: October 3rd, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments »

Jonathan Harker’s Journal

3 May. Bistritz. __Left Munich at 8:35 P. M, on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible.

The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.

We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called “paprika hendl,” and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians.

I found my smattering of German very useful here, indeed, I don’t know how I should be able to get on without it.

Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country.

Opening paragraphs of Dracula
by Bram Stoker