Genre: Coming of Age, Horror, Halloween Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks Original Publication Date: 9.17.1962 Pages: 314
One of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes, now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre.
For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.
Few novels have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury’s unparalleled literary masterpiece Something Wicked This Way Comes. Scary and suspenseful, it is a timeless classic in the American canon.
Something Wicked This Way Comes – A Review (Part 3)
Part 2: Departures
The end game begins with the two boys completely under the influence of Mr Dark. They are frogmarched through town, as if they’re being shown off, and they are unable to do anything but comply. They are taken to the carnival where Mr Dark gathers the crowd for one last trick of the night – the infamous bullet trick. He asks for a volunteer to fire the weapon. There are seemingly no takers… then Will’s father steps forward.
It’s a wonderful moment. I almost felt like cheering. And now we come to the face-off. With the help of the crowd, Will’s father manages to free Will from the carnival’s clutches long enough to get him by his side to help aim the weapon. It’s a wonderfully tense scene, and we can almost see Mr Dar begin to sweat. Things aren’t quite going his way. And things get worse for the carnival. Using the crowd’s laughter, Will’s father takes his shot… and kills the Dust Witch.
The dad and Will flee into the mirror maze to search for Jim, another wonderfully tense little scene where Dad looks to son and son looks to Dad and they see they are mirror images of each other.
“And then, at last, he gave the maze, the mirrors, and all Time ahead, Beyond, Around, Above, Behind, Beneath or squandered inside himself, the only answer possible.”
Dad laughs, and the maze trembles. He takes note, and laughs again, the spell of the carnival finally broken.
The mirror maze collapses in shards and fragments. Jim is not among them; he is running in the dark as the carnival closes down, with both the autumn people and Dad and Will looking for him.
They find Jim at the carousel. Jim takes the ride into his future, still under the carnival’s influence, but is stopped and thrown off by Will’s love for her, leaving Jim in a stupor on the grass with Will watching over him while Dad heads for a final confrontation with Mr Dark.
It all comes down to this; a father standing between the boys and the darkness.
Mr Dark has disguised himself as another boy, but Dad sees through him, sees his fears. He hugs the boys close, the power of love starving the dark. The boy succumbs, the carnival falls with him… but Jim is still in a death-like trance.
But Dad knows what is needed. Joy and laughter will bring the boy back; he gets Will to join him in capering and singing and dancing. The power of their love and joy brings Jim back to them.
“They yanked Jim. Jim flew. Jim came down dancing.”
The carnival has fallen to ruin around them. Only the carousel remains, a last temptation for all three of them. They turn their backs on it, and make for home.
“Then, as the moon watched, the three of them together left the wilderness behind and walked into the town.”
I thoroughly enjoyed this reading, and I hope you’ve enjoyed my real-time walk through it.
I’m older now than Will’s dad in the book, and it’s a different experience reading it now than it was when I was Will’s age. The nostalgia factor is strong now, and Will’s dad’s thoughts on aging and death resonate strongly. But as ever with Bradbury, it’s the magic that’s the thing, magic that brings back youth.
And I feel young again.
Boo-ology: William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with more than twenty five novels published in the genre, and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies. When he is not writing, he plays guitar, drinks beer, and dreams of forture and glory.
Genre: Coming of Age, Horror, Halloween Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks Original Publication Date: 9.17.1962 Pages: 314
One of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes, now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre.
For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.
Few novels have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury’s unparalleled literary masterpiece Something Wicked This Way Comes. Scary and suspenseful, it is a timeless classic in the American canon.
Something Wicked This Way Comes – A Review (Part 2)
Part 2: Pursuits
Part 2 opens with Ms Foley, who is clearly now under the carnival’s spell. She reports the two boys to the police for attempting to burgle her, and neglects to mention the nephew who clearly isn’t her nephew. Will and Jim get into trouble, but even then Jim seems more concerned with the carousel, and the possibilities of instantly becoming a grown up. Will tries to explain to his father, but stops when he realizes he would be leading the man into Mr Dark’s net. This is something the boys must face alone, even if Will is becoming more and more worried about losing Jim entirely. The interplay between stolid, sensible Will and Jim’s wild side is masterfully done. When I was a lad reading this, I knew I was most definitely a Will, even while I knew a part of me would always want to be a Jim. I had a friend who was definitely a Jim. He passed away last year, still running ahead without me, and reading this now brought it all back to me. Bradbury, nostalgia, and emotion… a heady mixture for a boy at any age.
“Here comes the carnival. Death like a rattle in one hand, life like candy in the other. Shake one to scare you, offer one to make your mouth water. Here comes the side show, both hands full.”
That same night, or rather, in the early hours of the morning, the boys wake up to find that one of the carnival’s denizens, the Dust Witch, is searching for them, hovering silently over the town in a hot air balloon. Once again Bradbury paints us a quick word picture of her, and once again we are immediately terrified. He’s got his hooks deep in us now. Will, showing us a bravery even beyond what we knew was in him, lures the witch to a deserted house and, in a brilliantly taut scene, dispatches the balloon with an arrow, driving her away.
“Nothing much else happened, all the rest of that night.”
The next day Will and Jim meet a frightened young girl. It is only later that they realise it is Ms Foley, made young again by the carousel, but by then it is too late… they cannot find her, and the carnival, via a parade, has come right into the center of town, looking for them. The boys must hide.
They take position under a grille in the sidewalk, only to be discovered by Will’s father. But things get complicated when Mr Dark arrives to question the man about the boys. Mr Holloway shows remarkable calm in the face of the Tattooed man’s insistence, and refuses to betray the boys to him. The Dust Witch arrives to complicate matters, but Mr Holloway banishes her simply by blowing cigar smoke in her face. Now aware that something is indeed awry in the town, Mr Holloway tells the boys to stay hidden then meet him at the library later.
In just the past twenty pages or so, both elder and younger Holloway have shown their mettle, revealing inner strengths. But it is Jim we’re getting most worried about at this point, the one of the pair who now seems somewhat younger than the other. Act 2 is about to come to a head, and we’re not sure yet where it’s going.
Our three heroes meet later in the library, where Will’s father tells them that he has discovered that the same carnival, and the same people, have been coming to town for a very long time. They are about to discuss how they might fight this menace when they are interrupted. The boys hide again as the father confronts Mr Dark. We get a terrifying set of scenes where Mr Dark overwhelms the father, breaking his fingers in the process, finds the boys, and sends the Dust Witch to kill the father. At this point it seems that Mr Dark has won completely.
Then the whole book turns on a single pivot. Will’s father laughs at the absurdity of things as the Witch tries to stop his heart… and the laughter causes her to pause, so he laughs again, loud and hard, and the Witch quails away from him. He has found the tool he needs to give them a fighting chance.
The witch flees, and Will’s father, nursing a broken hand, heads out into the night to search for the boys.
At the end of Act 2, we are left in despair, with the boys in the hands of Mr Dark. But there’s hope. Will’s father has proved his mettle again, and we are now all rooting for him as we head for the final confrontation.
Boo-ology: William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with more than twenty five novels published in the genre, and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies. When he is not writing, he plays guitar, drinks beer, and dreams of forture and glory.
Genre: Coming of Age, Horror, Halloween Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks Original Publication Date: 9.17.1962 Pages: 314
One of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes, now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre.
For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.
Few novels have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury’s unparalleled literary masterpiece Something Wicked This Way Comes. Scary and suspenseful, it is a timeless classic in the American canon.
Something Wicked This Way Comes – A Review (Part 1)
“There are times when we’re all autumn people.”
This is a book I have lived with for most of my reading life.
I first came across it in a small town library at home in the West of Scotland. I think I was about 13, the same age as the boys, and it immediately resonated with me… not because of the small town Americana, which seemed too different from my industrial town Scottish upbringing, but because of the boys. It’s a book about friendship, but not just about friendship. It’s a book about growing up, but not just about growing up. And it’s a book about good, and evil, and magic.
But it’s not just about those things.
Above all else, it’s a book about life, and joy, and hope. And that’s why I’ve found myself drawn back to it again and again over the intervening years, particularly when dark clouds gather in my soul.
The book splits naturally into three main sections, and I’ll deal with them in turn but first, Bradbury’s own prologue introduces the boys in his usual poetic but economical fashion.
“Both touched toward fourteen; it almost trembled in their hands. And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young any more.”
Part 1: Arrivals
We’re first interested to the boys, Will and Jim, through the eyes of a travelling lightning rod salesman. In a series of trademark word pictures, Bradbury paints us the boys lying on the grass outside their houses, then has the salesman take center stage to ominously refer to a coming storm. He even gives Jim a ‘magical’ lightning rod to stave it off, but the dies have been cast; we’ve already been set up for the coming of something that will, like a thunderclap, change the boys’ lives irrevocably. It’s a remarkable, very short, first chapter, but it has already done its job. I’m, once again, hooked and off and away to adventure with the lads.
Our next arrival is seen through the eyes of the lads when they visit the local library. Will’s dad, Charles Holloway, is the janitor there, but more than that, he knows all the books immediately. He has become a father late in life, and, in these early stages at least, appears to cut a rather sad and lonely figure among the shelves. There is some chatter between the three of them of black and white hats, more foreshadowing of things to come but with such style we hardly notice among the magical prose and the sounds of music in the wind before the coming storm.
There’s a smell of licorice and cotton candy in the air as the town closes down for the night. The boys are running for home, hoping the storm will come and they’ll see the lightning rod in action. We start to get intimations of their characters. Will is the serious one, Jim’s more patient, always wanting to see more, more of the town’s theatre folk in action, more of danger, more of life. At the same time Will’s father catches sight of another arrival, the first cart of a Travelling Show, one that stirs old bittersweet memories in him from his own boyhood. We’re only 30 or so pages into it but Bradley’s way with emotions linked to nostalgia is already tugging at our heartstrings.
Our next arrival is the train bringing the carnival. The passage describing its whistle has always stuck with me.
“The wails of a lifetime were gathered in it from other nights in other slumbering years; the howl of moon-dreamed dogs, the seep of river-cold winds through January porch screens which stopped the blood, a thousand fire sirens weeping, or worse! the outgone shreds of breath, the protests of a billion people dead or dying, not wanting to be dead, their groans, their sighs, burst over the earth!”
Damn, I wish I could write a paragraph like that, just once.
The boys cannot contain themselves. They escape from home in the early hours of the morning and head for the carnival. And it is here the temptations begin. The first to be tempted is Miss Foley, one of the boys’ teachers. We get the first real hint of the darkness to come as she is almost swallowed by the mirror maze while chasing a younger version of herself. The boys save her, but Will is horrified, while Jim appears strangely fascinated.
The boys find the discarded bag of the lightning rod salesman from earlier, and return to the carnival in search of him. We get our next arrival, and the most important one, when they meet an illustrated man, Mr Dark. Jim is immediately both fascinated and scared, but ignores Will’s entreaties to go home. They stay, and watch the merry-go-round run backwards, and an old man, Mr Cooger, becomes a boy. They follow the new boy, who tries to pretend he is Mr Foley’s nephew, but when confronted, runs back to the carnival.
We get another of Bradbury’s wonderful scenes as the merry-go-round goes forward again. Mr Cooger gets older again, then Will knocks the switch, sending it into fast forward, causing Mr Cooger to age a hundred years in a few seconds. The boys flee again to fetch the police, but on return to the carnival they are met with Mr Cooger in a new guise as Mr Electrico. Mr Dark charms the police force and offers the boys free tickets to the rides.
But much of the charm of the carnival has gone for them.
They want to go home.
So, the first act is done, the players have been revealed, and the stakes laid down. We’re starting to see how this might go, and we’re getting worried for the state of the boys’ friendship, given Jim’s impetuous nature. There’s more strange magic to come; it has saturated the air in the small town, and Bradbury has us squirming on his hook.
It’s already a tour-de-force, and I’m delighted to be along for the ride (s).
Boo-ology: William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with more than twenty five novels published in the genre, and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies. When he is not writing, he plays guitar, drinks beer, and dreams of forture and glory.
Meghan: Hey Ramsey!! Welcome back to Meghan’s HAUNTED House of Books. It’s always a pleasure to have you here, and I thank you for taking time on this busy book-release day to join us here.
Yes, you read that right, everybody. Fellstones is out today. You can pick it up by following the link below: Flame Tree Publishing
Sorry about that. What were we talking about? Oh yeah… What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Ramsey: I have to say it has no great significance as a festival in Britain. There were attempts a few years back to situate it as an alternative Autumn event to Guy Fawkes Night, since it was felt there were too many accidents at private firework displays on 5 November. When I was a child it wasn’t celebrated locally at all, and so my only sense of it was through fiction—specifically, some of the great tales of Ray Bradbury. Ray made October uniquely his, both capturing its flavours and adding individual ones of his own. While you can read them at any time, they have a particular relevance to Halloween, and so I’ll name them as my favourite aspect thereof.
Meghan: Do you get scared easily?
Ramsey: No longer, but as a child I was—by films, by books, by my domestic life. I must have been three, maybe a little older, when I saw my first film, Disney’s Snow White. Elements in it terrified me—the unstable face in the magic mirror that doesn’t reflect the person in front of it, and even the sight of darkness beyond a window in the dwarfs’ cottage while they perform their song and dance, because I was sure something would appear out of the dark. M.R. James gave me many uneasy nights jut a few years later. As for my everyday experience, my parents were estranged when I was three but continued to live in the same house, which meant I hardly ever saw my father face to face—he became the footsteps on the stairs at night, the presence beyond a door that I dreaded might open. All this was exacerbated by my mother’s schizophrenic fantasies: for example, that he would poison us or creep into the bedroom to commit some terrible act. The neighbours were conspiring against her and writing a nightly radio soap opera that contained references to her and secret messages addressed to her, and so on. I had an interesting childhood, which has subsequently produced much literary material.
Meghan: What is the scariest movie you’ve ever seen and why?
Ramsey: Apart from Not I, that terrifying Beckettian tour de force performed by Billie Whitelaw (and enacted less intensely by Julianne Moore), all my candidates are the work of David Lynch. Some scenes in Fire Walk With Me affected me so profoundly I was close to leaving the first time I saw it, but I’ll go with Lost Highway, the first extended section of which in particular frightens me afresh on every viewing. I’ve concluded Lynch uses every element of film—lighting, camera placement and movement, staging, especially sound—as skillfully (if possibly instinctively) as Hitchcock, to convey the uncanny at its most indefinable and disturbing.
Meghan: Which horror movie murder did you find the most disturbing?
Ramsey: The protracted finale of Megan is Missing, a film I analyse and defend at length in Ramsey’s Rambles. The scene is appallingly convincing, not least in its banality.
Meghan: Is there a horror movie you refused to watch because the commercials scared you too much?
Ramsey: The trailer, do you mean? No, never. As for the other kind of commercials, I’d do my best to avoid any film interrupted by them and see it uninterrupted elsewhere.
Meghan: If you got trapped in one scary movie, which would you choose?
Ramsey: Night of the Demon, my all-time favourite, since you can avoid falling victim to the demon if you know how.
Meghan: If you were stuck as the protagonist in any horror movie, which would you choose?
Ramsey: The same, for the same reason.
Meghan: What is your all-time favorite scary monster or creature of the night?
Ramsey: The original King Kong, the greatest of all monsters in the greatest monster film.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Ramsey: Alas, for reasons outlined above, I have none. Oddly enough, I’ve often been at World Fantasy Conventions in America over the season, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen signs of the celebrations. Ah, hang on—in Baltimore in 1980 all the check-in staff at the Park Plaza were dressed as witches and pumpkins and the like. I think it was a pumpkin who proved loath to let Steve King have his room because he presented not a credit card (he had none in those days) but cash.
Meghan: What is your favorite horror or Halloween-themed song?
Ramsey: Horror uncanny enough for Halloween—Schubert’s Opus 1.
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Ramsey: Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable—one of the books I celebrated in an essay in The Book of Lists: Horror. It may be a protracted cry from the afterlife, or a narration by a limbless body displayed in a jar on a street, or by something even more featureless. I read it in a sitting one afternoon and have been haunted by it ever since. If it isn’t horror, I don’t know what is.
Meghan: What is the creepiest thing that’s ever happened while you were alone?
Ramsey: The room next to my workroom (where I’m writing this) has seen various uncanny manifestations over the decades we’ve lived in this house, and here’s the most extreme. Jenny and I had discussed befriending the room by spending the night up there together. During one of my attempts to let her sleep without my snoring I wakened at about two in the morning to discover that she’d decided to try the experiment. It was only when I opened my eyes and reached for her that I realised the silhouette next to me, its head on the other pillow, wasn’t Jenny. I tried for a very long time to move and cry out. Apparently I achieved the latter. In our bedroom on the floor below Jenny heard me make some kind of protest, but I’ve often exhorted her not to wake me if I’m having a nightmare, because I believe these dreams contain their own release mechanism, and I resent being taken out of them before the end. Jenny headed for the toilet on the middle floor, and when she returned I was still making the noise. Perhaps I was dreaming, in which case it had to be the longest nightmare, measured in objective time, that I’ve ever experienced. It consisted purely of lying in the bed I was actually in and trying to retreat from my companion. I admit to never having been so intensely terrified in my life. After minutes I found myself alone in the bed. I made myself turn over and close my eyes, but had a strong impression that a face was hovering very close to mine and waiting for me to look. Meanwhile, downstairs, Jenny felt an intruder sit beside her on our bed.
Meghan: Which unsolved mystery fascinates you the most?
Meghan: What is the spookiest ghost story that you have ever heard?
Ramsey: I heard Graham Watkins tell this tale onstage at an American convention. He investigated haunted places, and had arranged to spend a night at a deserted mansion notorious for manifestations. He chose an upstairs room as his base of operations, and for several hours he heard ordinary domestic noises from downstairs—people talking, kitchen sounds and the like. After some hours he lost patience with them, as I recall, and declared as much aloud. At once there was silence, and he realised he’d alerted whatever was there to his presence. And then all the noises recommenced—directly outside the room he was in…
Meghan: In a zombie apocalypse, what is your weapon of choice?
Ramsey: My brain.
Meghan: Okay, let’s have some fun… Would you rather get bitten by a vampire or a werewolf?
Ramsey: A vampire, since it might give me a chance to experience immortality until I tired of it. A trip to Vasilema should do the job.
Meghan: Would you rather fight a zombie apocalypse or an alien invasion?
Ramsey: Aliens—the less boring option, I’d hope.
Meghan: Would you rather drink zombie juice or eat dead bodies from the graveyard?
Ramsey: Neither. I find disgust nothing except tedious.
Meghan: Would you rather stay at the Poltergeist house or the Amityville house for a week?
Ramsey: Amityville if I wanted a quiet time, since the entire thing was a cynical hoax (which I said in a review as soon as I’d read the original book).
Meghan: Would you rather chew on a bitter melon with chilies or maggot-infested cheese?
Ramsey: I’ll take the melon.
Meghan: Would you rather drink from a witch’s cauldron or lick cotton candy made of spider webs?
Ramsey: If the cauldron conferred magical powers I’d take the risk.
Fellstones takes its name from seven objects on the village green. It’s where Paul Dunstan was adopted by the Staveleys after his parents died in an accident for which he blames himself. The way the Staveleys tried to control him made him move away and change his name. Why were they obsessed with a strange song he seemed to have made up as a child?
Now their daughter Adele has found him. By the time he discovers the cosmic truth about the stones, he may be trapped. There are other dark secrets he’ll discover, and memories to confront. The Fellstones dream, but they’re about to waken.
Four children learn the origins of Halloween customs while trying to save the life of their friend.
Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays.
These days I love decorating, getting dressed up and giving out sweets to the small monsters that come to my door.
When I was little, I loved going Trick-or-Treating, but I also loved making my own costumes, reading scary books (Goosebumps were a favorite) and watching spooky films.
My absolute favorite of these was The Halloween Tree, and it’s this film that I want to talk to you about today.
Beware spoilers below.
The Halloween Tree was released in 1993 on ABC before being released on VHS and making its way across the pond to the UK where I found it on the shelf of my local rental store. It is based on the 1972 book of the same name by Ray Bradbury and while there are some changes, mostly the animated film stays true to the book.
Ray Bradbury voices the narrator and the film even boasts voice talents of Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Moundshroud.
Plot Summary The film opens with the narrator describing a small towns Halloween preparation and we meet our main characters, Jenny, Ralph, Wally and Tom. The small group plan to meet their friend Joe (known as Pip). But when they go to meet him at his house, they see him being loaded into an ambulance, the poor lad has appendicitis.
They decide to visit him at the hospital and take a shortcut through the woods but they see a ghost-like vision of Pip running away from them and are convinced this whole thing is a hoax. They follow Pip all the way into a spooky mansion.
Inside the mansion they meet Mr. Moundshroud who is saddened by the fact that none of the children understand the deeper meaning behind their respective costumes, mummy, witch, monster and skeleton. He also reveals that Pip has pinched a pumpkin with his face carved into it from Mr. Moundshroud’s tree of jack-o-lanterns and Mr. Moundshroud is now pursuing him.
Tom begs for the group to be allowed to go with Mr. Moundshroud to retrieve Pip’s ghost. They are initially refused but eventually the old man relents and the group is challenged to retrieve the pumpkin and learn about their costumes in order to get Pip back.
The group goes on marvelous adventures to ancient Egypt, Stonehenge, Notre Dame Cathedral and lastly, Mexico to witness Día De Los Muertos. During these adventures the group comes within a hair’s breath of catching Pip but he always escapes until Tom finds him in Mexico and apologizes. Tom had wished for something bad to happen to Pip so he could be in charge of the group for once, Pip forgives him but crumbles to dust.
Mr. Moundshroud announces the children failed and Pip now belongs to him. But each of the children offer up a year of their lives to Mr. Moundshroud in exchange for Pip, Mr. Moundshroud agrees and they seal the contract with candy. The children are returned home and see Pip has come home from the hospital.
The film ends with Mr. Moundshroud and the jack-o-lantern tree turning to smoke, all except Pip’s pumpkin which his friends rescued with their sacrifice.
My Thoughts This was a favorite of mine when I was young and even as an adult, I enjoy watching it. I feel films like this paved the way for other stories such as Over the Garden Wall which is wonderfully creepy.
This is a classic horror story, with very real stakes and very real consequences for our characters. But it also has real heart, and shows a strength of friendship and love that resonates with us even as adults. All of Pip’s friends care about him so deeply that they are willing to exchange their own mortal time to keep him alive and safe.
It is also delightfully informative without feeling like you’re being lectured at. It exposed my young and infinitely curious mind to a whole host of cultures, history and information I would have otherwise been ignorant to.
Overall, this is a classic movie with well-established stakes, highly motivated and compelling characters, told with heart and style. A must see for small and big kids alike.
Boo-graphy: Katie Marie is a horror enthusiast and writer from Norfolk, England.
She has been published in several anthologies and magazines, and her Novella, A Man in Winter, was recently released by Brigids Gate Press.
Katie started writing while studying at Aberystwyth University in the early 2000’s and several years later she has received a Masters Degree and published many short stories, a novel and novella.
Arthur, whose life was devastated by the brutal murder of his wife, must come to terms with his diagnosis of dementia. He moves into a new home at a retirement community, and shortly after, has his life turned upside down again when his wife’s ghost visits him and sends him on a quest to find her killer so her spirit can move on. With his family and his doctor concerned that his dementia is advancing, will he be able to solve the murder before his independence is permanently restricted?
A Man in Winter examines the horrors of isolation, dementia, loss, and the ghosts that come back to haunt us.
Meghan's House of Books 