Skionar

Goodnight

"Morris Kantor drew inspiration from the material culture of historical New England—ladder-back chairs, colonial portraiture, marine painting, wallpaper—in this fantastical rendering of a supposedly haunted house in rural Massachusetts. A shadowy figure lurks at the composition’s darkened right edge, an unknown presence encroaching on the comforts of the sitting room. Kantor later recalled that such a setting, with “its peculiar moldy smell, the fading beauty of old plaster discolored by time and living … turned my imagination to the past, to the people who had lived there and gone.” A Russian immigrant, the artist engaged with the stories and objects of American history as catalysts for his Surrealist, dreamlike musings." -AIC

Morris Kantor, Haunted House, 1930, oil on canvas,
94.3 × 84.5 cm (37 1/8 × 33 1/4 in.), Art Institute of Chicago

My great uncle the archaeologist Louise Stephenson Clarke, who ran the Fitzwilliam during the war and left all his money to his butler.

All that polishing and Victorian precision engineering. Automation has removed a raft of jobs perfect for people with OCD etc

Just watched the whole thing and it briefly lifted my gloom, the self-sufficiency of everyone then is so profoundly beautiful. In their eyes you can see they see a different horizon.

Full harvest supermoon in Aries in about an hour from now, here in Shoreditch. Meanwhile tea, mooncake and plums to celebrate a Chinese-English household. Goodnight

Mooncake Festival tonight
🌕

Goodnight

Attitude. Fab.

The tomb was designated the “Tomb of Cerberus” after the incredible mural of Hercules fighting the three-headed dog that guarded the underworld.

October 5: Apologies for the bad news, but today is one of the 3 unluckiest days of the year in the Roman calendar. Definitely let people know that the underworld opens up to the living today (mundus patet) and so you just can’t leave your house, especially to sail (also on August 24 & November 8).

Oh maybe not the Avengers then, the dates don't match. Maybe it was the other way round!

Here are some recent books I bought. I spend too much on books, but what can you do

I buy at least six a month minimum. I need no encouragement! 😅

They're very wise in Lancashire

Good morning. I won £30 on the UK Lottery.

Thank you for your kind words, G

Goodnight

The pews of English churches are wooden bestiary. A carved chronicling of all the country's imagined animals. Here are dragons! Here are antlered dormice, here are winged hares! Prayers distracted by wonderful beasts. – Lucy Hay, architectural historian, 'Wooden Wonders', BBC Two, 1979

And gifts!!

The Buried Alive by John Galt (1821) We’re closing in October and I’m preparing for our annual #AScareADay challenge. I’ll be putting up the full list in the next week but today I’m posting one of our upcoming …

Today’s #AScareADay, got me reading The Buried Alive by John Galt (1821) ⚰️ A beautiful story about everyone’s worst nightmare- to be conscious while dead. It ends on an electrifying note ⚡️

Read it here: romancingthegothic.com/2025/09/19/t...

It's #HALLOWEIRD season!

'When Hell Laughed' was written by Christine Campbell Thomson (1897 - 1985) under her pseudonym Flavia Richardson. She also edited the NOT AT NIGHT series.
M.R. James was *not* a fan of them (see 4th picture).

#halloween #spooktober

yeah man 👇

A photo of a copy of the 1985 Virago Modern Classics edition of Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison. The cover shows the tapestry "The Unicorn in Captivity."

"Once they were visited by the Grendel family, curious-shaped and rather watery folk who looked askance at Halla because she reminded them of the awful fate that had befallen their grandmother and their elder uncle, at the hands of the man Beowulf."

I'm in no hurry

Fabulous, Anne!

Seem to remember one of them had that fraud ghost picture on the cover, though I suppose that may not be his doing. I did write to him as a teenager but he never really registered on my radar as someone who was interesting, let alone accurate. I've pointed out some of his mistakes in the past

I get so depressed by people posting pics of Peter Haining anthologies. He was a FRAUD - attributing stories to the wrong people, making shit up that's still read as gospel, passing shit off, The damage he caused is still being uncovered and dealt with to this day.

I write about this in #HALLOWEIRD

To clarify, most will be books painstakingly acquired over the years from auctions and specialist sellers, with the odd artefact thrown in

They really don't make it easy for carers either, even though other half is officially so in my GP and hospital records, there's no easy way to get the Covid/Flu double which I managed myself for my own agues last week

Health allowing, I am planning an M. R. James post from 1st December every evening to Christmas Eve. This will include items and artefacts from my own collection, some of them extremely rare #Book #ghosts #DeadDecember 👻📚