Edgar Allan Poe's Gaslight Greenwich Village

Edgar Allen Poe. How many times have I seen this typo? Enough to drive me mad? Possibly. Sure it's not the most egregious thing in the world (certainly not as bad as the time I saw "Edgar Allen Pie," though that at least was sort of hilarious) but it's frequent enough to get on my nerves. 

"Edgar Allan Poe lived at 47 Bond Street in 1845." Have I heard tour guides say that with a straight face in front of a crowd of people? Yes, yes I have. 

Have I visited the so-called "Poe Room" in NYU's law school and only to leave sad and disappointed? Indeed.

Did I actually sit through the movie The Raven, and did it drive me slightly mad? Yes.

And did I seek out a factual literary and historical Poe tour of the West Village that would not only focus on the author's creatively significant time in the city but also redress these many, many wrongs? And did I find when I searched nothing but a vague, generic Greenwich Village tour that offered to illuminate the works of Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Thomas Paine, and Edgar "Allen" Poe in one feel swoop? Yup.

So I sat down and I cracked open my books and I wrote a script for my own tour. A tour that would combine the true facts in the case of Monsieur Poe while also providing a historical account of the Village in the mid 19th century.

And here's what I came up with.

“Edgar Allan Poe’s Gaslight Greenwich Village" is a 90-minute walking tour that focuses specifically on the writer’s time in New York in the 1840s. On this literary and historical walking tour, guests will visit the site of three of his former homes, trace a path into the past to gaslight-era Washington Square Park, learn of his contemporary rivals and admirers, and see where he wrote some of his most famous works. They'll discover the places that inspired Poe, find out where he read "The Raven" for the first time in public, and even see where he was once treated for a head cold! Interweaving some of his most famous tales with Greenwich Village's macabre secret histories, this tour is guaranteed to delight fans of Poe's literary grotesques and arabesques!

The tours run on Sunday October 21st and Sunday October 28th from 2-3:30 pm. Tickets are $25 per person (or $20 if you book in advance online) and the tour departs from 85 West Third Street, one block south of Washington Square Park between Thompson and Sullivan Streets, in Manhattan. Visit Ghosts of New York for schedule and ticket info.

If you're in NYC on either of these dates, I hope to see you on my tour!

31 Days of Halloween: Revenge of the Links of Doom

So many exiting developments today!

Photo Credit: New York Public Library, via Bowery Boys

First and foremost, one of the single best things about autumn in New York City is almost here: the Bowery Boys' annual Halloween podcast airs next Friday! The Boys select and retell all the best Gotham ghosts in their inimitable witty style. An absolute must for anyone interested in the ghost stories of this city, from well-known classics to stories so obscure and surprising even I had to look them up!

Triumph for my own countryman abounds in Too Much Horror Fiction, which Books of the Dead called "the best horror fiction blog on the net." This awesome Canadian blog will show you things like French-language covers of Stephen King novels, and help you find that cheesy-but-impossible-to-forget cover art from your 1987 paperback edition of "Witch Child."

Speaking of cover art, I have to take a moment to recommend Scarlett Rugers Book Cover Design. If you're an indie writer, you'll have heard this advice before but let me add my voice here: do not skimp on paying a pro designer. Scarlett's redesign made my book look 100% more awesome:

Copyright Scarlett Rugers 2012

This next link isn't really scary, unless you consider the fearsome specter of gentrification scary... which I do, so what the hell, here's a list of NYC's best lost bars, including Mars Bar and Bill's Gay Nineties. The city recently lost Kenny's Castaways, which was basically history in a glass. Oh well, more room for places like Wicked Willy's pirate-themed bar.

William Hope/National Media Museum

Moving on to more cheerful topics, here's an array of photos of the dead. The supernatural photos of William Hope, who made a living superimposing "spirit" photos of departed love ones on top of regular portraits, exploited people's grief and put many a shilling in his pocket. Florence Cathcart would not have been amused.

Finally, a few suggestions for Friday night amusement. The BFI presents tales of Gothic horror and romance, to "electrify you with the pleasures and terrors of the irrational" (which most readers of this blog know I try to do at least on a daily basis) while Armand Rosamilla offers up free scary stories that should hopefully make everyone's Friday night frightening and uncomfortable. Which is something else I enjoy doing.

31 Days of Halloween: Nethermead

For today's 31 Days of Halloween I'm going to shamelessly plug a spooky little horror movie adapted from my very own short story, "Nethermead."

I'm tremendously excited to announce that Nethermead has been adapted into a short film by Soren Bailey and will screen at Indie Screen in New York City this Saturday, October 13th.

Nethermead, which was featured in my horror collection Boroughs of the Dead, tells the eerie tale of a woman who gets lost while walking in Prospect Park at dusk. Is she mad? Is she dreaming? Is she dead?

You can read the story in full, for free, over here Flashes In The Dark. 

It's a creepy, ambiguous little tale and I can't wait to watch the film. It'll be my first viewing of the finished production, and it should be a lot of fun to see how the director interpreted my personal brand of insanity. Soren and I worked together previously on Postures, a comedy short about a yoga cult.

If you aren't in NYC, the film should be up on Vimeo soon enough, and I'll be sure to link to it when it's up. In the meantime, here's a clip of it on YouTube.

If you are in the city and want to attend the screening, please RSVP on the film's Facebook page... and be careful walking in the park after dark....

31 Days of Halloween, Day 10: Lights in Other People's Houses

Need a ghost story be frightening? How do you define the spectral tale? In my view, if it gives you shivers or conjures up spirits in your mind, it counts as a ghost story. If it lingers long after the telling, and makes you feel as though you were being followed, it counts. If it changes the atmosphere and temperature in the room, it counts. Oh, and if it happens to contain a ghost... why, yes, that counts too.

Lucy Wood's short story, "Lights in Other People's Houses" certainly conjures and lingers. The standout tale in her collection Diving Belles and Other Stories relates the yearning of a woman for the sea, and the unintended consequences of waiting too long to unpack old boxes.

The story begins with a lonely woman, Maddy, who lives in a town where she knows no one, save her boyfriend, Russel. Maddy grew up by the sea and feels completely stranded living inland. An epic heatwave only makes her crave the water even more. But she can't go home again -- her parents have moved out of the ancestral home, and suddenly she finds herself tasked with the unpacking of a lifetime of detritus now cluttering her new house. Quite unexpectedly, as she goes to sort through the boxes, she find a "pale gaunt man" sitting on the floor rifling through them.

The pale gaunt man is the ghost of a wrecker, those beachcombing salvagers who lured boats into shallow waters to crash on the rocks and spill their treasures. Some wreckers merely waited for ships to crash and seems the ghost was one of these, though actually it's never quite clear. Either way, it's an aptly creepy and dramatic occupation for a ghost (it made me think of the villains in Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn).

The wrecker refuses to leave. He stands in a bathtub full of water for hours at a time and takes over the guest bedroom; by day he goes through the boxes. The wrecker's presence begins to fill the house with water, to warp the building like a damp piece of cardboard, the walls and ceilings dripping. Salt and sand begin to drift over the carpets. Smooth pebbles appear underfoot; tiny shells run out of the taps.

In the midst of all this, the heatwave continues. The wrecker mutters to himself about the weather, nattering on about full moons, high tides, and low pressure. Maddy's mind eventually becomes befogged and her reality takes on a somnolent confusion that mirrors the stranded spirit's. The story has that same lingering, oneric quality, a deep and unsettling dream.

As in much Wood's writing, maritime metaphors abound. The wrecker-ghost brings "a restlessness and clamoring [into the room], as if he had just disturbed a colony of nesting seabirds." When the wrecker wanders around the house murmuring, "Where's all the sea mist? Where's all the water?" we know, of course, exactly what's going on with lonely, parched, transplanted Maddy. Wood handles this perfectly, making it evident without making it obvious. 

The cumulative effect of Lucy Wood's writing is incredibly impressive: reading this story I could feel the damp sea mist curling into the corners with a faintly oily quality; I could see the dim heat of the lamplight in a hot summer night. The whole story was the literary equivalent of dragging sand from the beach into the bedsheets. (You thought you brushed it all off but there it goes, trickling out from your shirt-seams...)

Ghosts are just some of the strange and mythical creatures populating Wood's universe; fairies, mermaids and giants also roam the landscape, and I highly recommend the whole collection. The other standout for me was "Of Mothers and Little People," which I loved so much my mom might just unwrap a copy of Diving Belles in some colorful Christmas paper soon enough.

The Murderer in My Backyard

31 Days of Halloween continues with the thrilling and sensational tale of How I Found a Murderer in my own Backyard!

As I alluded to yesterday in my post on Poe sites in New York City, I happened to find a pretty incredible grave while walking in Green-Wood Cemetery. Now I walk in Green-Wood a lot, since I live across the street from it, and I thought I knew it pretty well.

This discovery was doubly exciting because, while I knew of the existence of this grave, I hadn't yet gotten around to hunting for it, and I actually wasn't looking for it at all yesterday. So I was amazed when suddenly, as I turned the corner on Oak Avenue, there it was! I didn't even see it -- my keen-eyed companion did.

"That's a cool gravestone," he said.

In response I gasped and exclaimed, "Oh my god do you know who that is!?! It's Harvey Burdell!"

Now that's not a name you come across every day. But for NYC history buffs, especially those like myself who value sensational thrills above nearly everything else, it's kind of awesome. Because Harvey Burdell was one of the city's most famous Victorian-era murder victims.

And his murderer rests in the same cemetery!

See!? Chills! Thrills!

It's all here!

Here's the story... picture it, New York, 1857:

Harvey Burdell was a dentist who lived in a town house at 31 Bond Street when his landlady, a gold-digging widow named Emma Cunningham, decided she was going to marry him. He was, at least financially, a stable, secure guy -- who wouldn't want that? The fact that Budell was a total womanizer and reputedly traded dental work for sex didn't faze her. She wanted a husband and made her intentions known. But Burdell wasn't about to buy the cow. From all accounts he liked his life just fine the way it was.

Well -- on January 30th, 1857, screams were heard coming from Burdell's office. No one bothered to investigate and the next morning his hired boy arrived at work to find the dentist dead in his own chair, strangled and stabbed and covered in blood.

A sensational trial ensued, naturally. Evidence piled up against Cunningham -- forensics suggested the killer was left-handed, for instance, and she was also left-handed -- but her lawyers used the "weaker-sex" defense and said no woman ever could've committed such a horrible, bloody crime.

It looked like Cunningham was going to get away with it. She was even able to produce a phony marriage certificate proven she and Burdell had secretly been married before his death, and it looked like she'd be able to cash in some insurance money with it. Though she spent some time in the Tombs while awaiting trial, she was ultimately acquitted.

But she got greedy.

After getting out of jail, Cunningham tried to fake a pregnancy to get even more cash out of the settlement and even went so far as to approach a doctor and ask for a baby she could pretend was hers. In a soap-worthy set up, she even staged a fake delivery, screaming behind a closed door for the benefit of the neighbors. But the doctor sold her out. He "delivered" her ... right into the hands of the police!

Cunningham was charged with fraud, her marriage claim to Burdell was invalidated, and she died in poverty and alone. And now? Now she is buried in the cheap seats in Green-Wood, in an impossible-to-find grave in a public lot, next to a bus station.

Spinster Travelogue: Poe in New York

This weekend I went traipsing around New York in search of Poe. The timing was appropriate -- not only is October 7th the anniversary of his death, but I am also in the midst of planning an E.A. Poe walking tour.

The only extant Poe dwelling in New York City is located in the Fordham section of the Bronx. It wasn't considered New York when Poe lived there (from mid-1846 to 1849) but rather a small village 13 miles out of town. Poe would instruct people to address letters to him at "New York City, because there is no post office at Fordham."

He liked the little cottage, and enjoyed the neighborhood. He made friends with professors at St. John's University (now Fordham University) and took long, rambling walks over High Bridge, which must've been fairly breathtaking at the time.

But all was not well, of course. Virginia's health worsened again during this period and she spent a miserable winter shivering in the drafty cottage. A visitor to the house was appalled to find her on a straw mattress with Poe's overcoat as her only warm covering; the family cat was sitting on her chest and seemed almost aware of its all-important body heat, and Poe rubbed Virginia's hands while Mrs. Clemm (her mother) rubbed her feet.

This kind visitor, a Mrs. Grove, took up a subscription when she got back home to the city and succeeded in procuring a feather-bed, warm blankets, and the aid of another well-off and kind-hearted lady, Mrs. Shew. Mrs. Shew was also a nurse by training, and she tended to the sick Virginia as best she could. Alas, on January 30th, 1837, Virginia died in this room:

It was rather incredible to see the cottage first-hand. The whole place isn't larger than my 400-square foot apartment, but one could imagine it being cosy and comfortable with a fire flickering cheerfully in the fireplace, and the warmth and comforts a little money could've provided to the family. But there weren't a lot of Sunday chicken dinners in this household. And there wasn't any fuel for the fire. The bareness of the house brings home the fact of Poe's poverty in a way that I think is very representative of what his reality would have been: there is no squalor here, merely a lack of the simplest necessities.

In any case, though the entire visit to the house took about ten minutes, it was worth it to get a first-hand sense of Poe's environs. I highly recommend a visit to any Poe fan who finds themselves in New York.

Two other Poe-related sites I just had to visit this weekend were the graves of Elizabeth Ellet and Rufus W. Griswold. These two flies in Poe's ointment now reside permanently in Green-Wood Cemetery, which is across the street from my home in Brooklyn.

Ellet was one of the "literary ladies" who caused Poe so much trouble in New York. There was some business about amorous letters she claimed Poe wrote to her that, frankly, I find too trivial to recount, but essentially she sent nasty anonymous notes to Poe's sick and dying wife and Virginia on her deathbed claimed that Ellet had been "her murderer." This jackanape has a fairly nice grave in Green-Wood, though I didn't get a great picture of it (it was raining, my iPhone camera sucks, and, well, I'm a crappy photographer).

Finally, the grave site of Rufus Griswold I found in an unmarked plot, so here's a rather unimpressive photo of a tree:

Nonetheless, an interesting little bit of Poeania, right here in my backyard.

Oh, and on an related note, I found one of the most exciting graves ever, simply by accident. It's such a great grave and such a great story that I'm actually going to save it for another post. So stay tuned for that, and in the meantime, in honor of the day, here is an interesting contemporary obituary over at World of Poe.

Return of the Links of Doom

More creepy goodness from around the web....

Even the poster for Room 237 is scary

An article from the scare-mongers at The Atlantic on why you should let you children watch scary movies: "fear makes up a big part of entertainment for young people—and when done right, can be empowering."

If you're in NYC this weekend, why not take the kids down to Green-Wood Cemetery's Open House? They'll be opening up never-before-seen historic tombs, including that of Charles Feltman, inventor of the hot dog! And then I think they lead you out back where they dump you into a giant sausage grinder and you're never seen again! Or educate you about history or something. I don't know, it's one or the other.

In the leave-the-kids-the-hell-at-home category, we have a screening of Room 237, the new documentary about The Shining, playing at the New York Film Festival on Monday. If you can't make it or don't live in the city, IFC Midnight has picked it up so you should soon be able to stream it from the comfort of your own home or abandoned hotel.

A spooky tale of an encounter with a ghost librarian at the Sweetwater County Library, in Wyoming. I'm sort of obsessed with librarian ghosts. As Borges said, "I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." I'm always trying to cram a few ghostly libraries on to my walking tours, so this story thrills me, of course, since it backs up my claim that ghosts love libraries. (I'm convinced they do. Theaters, too.)

Finally, the good folks at Spooky Isles have convinced me that I need to move to the UK to truly make a living as a ghost tour guide. The whole place is just one great Isle of the Dead. They've got articles on Peterborough Ghosts, Five Haunted Places to visit in Dublin, and a story on the Desecration of Clophill Church, which sounds like something straight out of an M.R. James tale...

Haunted Hell's Kitchen: The Landmark Tavern

Today's going to be a beery day: I'm going to a tasting to kick off Oktoberfest, and frankly look forward to starting this weekend a little early. In honor of this momentous occasion, I offer up a piece on the little gem known as The Landmark Tavern, one of NYC's oldest -- and hauntedest -- bars.

A haunted bathtub!

There are many reportedly haunted bars and taverns in New York City, and many of their stories are well-known by now: The White Horse Tavern, The Bridge Cafe, McSorley's, and the Ear Inn all have their share of ghosts. But not too many people know about the Landmark Tavern.

Situated in the farthest reaches of Hell's Kitchen, all the way over at 11th Avenue and 46th Street, the Landmark is an out-of-the-way place with an incredible history.

The bar dates back to 1868, when it was opened as a saloon. After the requisite stint as a speakeasy during Prohibition, it continued in the vein of an old-time bar and restaurant complete with authentic, British-style pub food. A grown-up sort of bar, unpretentious, and redolent with the cool, musty, beery, cellar-like air particular to such establishments. Perhaps, though, that cool air has another source.

There are, according to legend, two ghosts of old still lingering in the Landmark. The first is a young Irish girl who perished of typhoid fever in the 19th century. The fact of subsequent centuries appears to have evaded her, for she still believes she is at home, living out her days on the third floor of 626 11th Avenue. There she is, they say, and there she remains, wandering forlornly up and down the halls.

While the wisp of a girl is slightly tragic and affecting, the boisterous spirit of a murdered Confederate solider is far more active – and entertaining. The solider was either knifed or shot in a bar fight (depending on your sources) and continues to be rowdy to this day. He apparently knocks over books on the shelf in the second-floor party room, startling more than a few staffers and guests.

Even more exciting, the actual bathtub in which he died still remains… in that very room! They say he staggered up to it and sat in it to die... perhaps he mistook it for a coffin. You can still see it now, that selfsame bath. Though the looks of it may dissuade you from ever wanting to bathe again.

Last but not least, some say the ghost of Hollywood star George Raft, who patronized the Landmark in life, also haunts the place. But we at Ghosts of New York take that with just a touch of salt. People are always claiming to be haunted by the very famous. It strikes us as just a touch too coincidental. You can’t believe everything you hear, can you?

Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)

In today's installment of 31 Days of Halloween, we turn to monsters.

Canonical monster movie Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) was re-released on Blu-Ray yesterday as part of Universal's Classic Monsters box set, which includes Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and Phantom of the Opera. (Creature is also available on this set in a 3D version, should your television be so equipped.) It sounds like a pretty indispensable box set for any movie geek, and so far reviews are good.

I'm excited about it not only for obvious reasons but also because Creature From the Black Lagoon is one of my favorite monster movies ever. When I first saw it, I was struck by its eerie gorgeousness; some of the film's underwater sequences are strikingly graceful and dreamy. And I found a wonderful through-line connecting this 1950s B movie to a classic European folktale. All told, the whole thing was rather transcendent -- and I didn't even watch it in 3D.

Those who know me know that I am obsessed with water. I'm weirdly obsessed with being a sea captain, Moby-Dick is my favorite book, and I am generally happiest in a pool, ocean, or lake. I think you're either a water person or you're not and that, like witches, true water-people recognize each another.

There are two water-people in Creature: the first is, naturally, the lagoon-dwelling Gill Man. The second is scientist and monster-love-interest Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams). Kay proves her aquatic bent after the team of scientists sails into the remote and dangerous lagoon in their search for prehistoric fossils and she jumps right into the water for a swim -- something no right-minded person would do. While the men talk amongst themselves on the boat, Kay wriggles and frolics in the silvery water, the sheer joy of movement illuminating her face, a sense of total freedom animating her lovely limbs as they glide through liquid.

Then comes the iconic scene that catapults Creature... into the realm of the sublime.

The creature takes notice of her. Like the viewer, he is captivated by the beautiful motion of the swimming girl. He swims closer to her. As she glides around oblivious on the surface, he mirrors her in the depths below, matching his movement to her's. His ungainly monster's body looks almost graceful as they dance together in the water.

It is a gorgeous, heartbreaking scene; poor lonesome monster. This love affair will not end well, my prehistoric holdover. There will be strapping 1950s scientists who will come in with spears and nets and they will try to take you. We know this; but I can tell you that every single person in the audience is rooting for you, mister monster.

Sigh....

Here we can see the similarities between the film and the European folk tales I referenced above. It is tempting to categorize this tale as "Beauty and the Beast in water" (or "King Kong in the Pond") but I think it hearkens back to a different and much more specific tradition.

Growing up I heard many version of the traditional Czechoslovakian cautionary tale of the Water Man or Vodník. The Water Man lived in rivers, lakes and ponds, and would pull either naughty little children or beautiful ladies down into the depths below for company, depending on which version you were told. The Water Man was green and scary, ancient and sometimes evil, so you'd better not lean too far over into the water.

Nearly every culture contains stories of mermen and maids, and none of them are without danger. Hans Andersen wrote a sorrowful version of the tale; the ancient Greeks lusty and threatening ones. One can obviously see the preventative purposes behind such narratives -- they all warn of what can happen when you let yourself enter the mysterious, landless, realms of the deep.

Psychologically, these stories are also fairly obvious but none the less effective. If water represents the unconscious, then the monster is the thing we know least but suspect most about ourselves. And of course, water is supposed to symbolize sexuality as well as oblivion and death. Hence the Water Man and the Creature personify not only our fears but our darkest desires. Naturally Kay cannot admit she's bored by both her misogynist boss and her dull-macho boyfriend and that she'd much prefer to chuck them both and go off into deeper waters.

So there you have it. I thought Creature From the Black Lagoon was a moving, beautiful romance. Then again, I thought Dead Ringers was a touching tale of brotherly love.

31 Days of Halloween - Links of Doom

A roundup of links today, because there's a lot of goodness out there in the ether, from ghost stories to dark fairy and folk tales to spooky renditions of Shakespearean witchcraft... with a few vampires murderers thrown in for good measure.

Kristina Wojtaszek's first in a five-part series on haunted folklore over at Enchanted Conversation: "Buried beneath unfathomable layers of time and lore lay the bones of an ancient and surprising story: an evolutionary lineage that descends straight from the thrones of the gods and goddesses of old." (A side note: Wojtaszek is also one of the contributing authors in Specter Spectacular!)

For the horror film connoisseur who think they've seen it all, Notcoming's annual 31 Days of Horror, features a review of a horror film each day, of films that "will not be mainstays of the horror genre, although they possess aspects of the genre’s more salacious or famous entries to which they will be associated."
Gullah ghost stories over at HooDooQ reinforce the old rule that makes us NYC types jealous as hell: Southerners really do have the best ghost stories.

A dispatch from a Jack the Ripper conference, because you know you want to know what goes down at these things.

Colleen Mondor offer the most tremendous roundup of YA horror over at Bookslut, a list that makes me jealous of my younger self and all the dreamy spare hours she had for reading and whiling away (imagine finishing your day at three o'clock every day!). 

But since you're a grown up now and chained to a desk until 6 o'clock, why not throw on some headphones and pretend you're working on a spreadsheet while really listening to Philip Pullman's retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. 

And finally, to top off another perfect, dreary October day, watch Orson Welles' stunning Macbeth on Blu-Ray, now available from awesome indie distributor Olive Films. The stark, atmospheric black and white is beautiful to watch, and the creeping sense of menace and doom lingers long after watching.

It Begins

Happy October everyone!

Of course I love October. How can I not love a month dedicated to horror and beer? Exactly.

In honor of this very best of all months, I present to you a very sporadic, guaranteed to be inconsistent, "31" Days of Halloween, during which I'll try to blog nearly every day about all things ghoulish (and maybe even beer-y).

I begin with an interview with Tim Krepp, tour guide and author of "Capitol Hill Haunts." Check out his book on Amazon, and if you're in the D.C. area, be sure to check out his blog and Facebook page for live event listings.

And of course don't forget to check back here frequently for more Halloween-y goodness! (And if you're a writer, filmmaker, critic, historian, what-have-you, with a passion for all things ghastly, feel free to contact me to tell me what you're working on, or just why you love Halloween -- I'd love to hear about it and share it here!)

XO,

SA

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Tim Krepp and Capitol Hill Haunts

Numerous ghosts haunt Washington D.C., from Dupont Circle to the Navy Yard, Gallaudet University, Georgetown, and beyond. But perhaps the most haunted locale is right near the Capitol Building. Tim Krepp literally wrote the book on the subject, and he answers my penetrating journalistic questions here!

1. How did you become interested in ghosts and ghost stories in the first place?

Hmmm, I guess because as someone who's always loved history, I want an opportunity to go back a talk directly to the participants. You really were that into the play you couldn't turn around, Mr. Lincoln? No, knock down that dirty, old Penn Station and build a new one, people will LOVE it in 50 years. So perhaps it's more heckling than a spirit of inquiry, but ghosts seem like a perfect shortcut for historians, especially where the, um, conventional, record is skimpy. Not to mention who first told the story and to whom are interesting data points in their own rights.

 

2. Do you think DC has a disproportionate number of ghosts? or just the right amount, given its history?

Yes, sadly disproportionate! So much of our history has been destroyed to build the Federal buildings and grand vistas that we've lost quite a bit of the real fabric of the city, where people lived and died. The White House, Capitol, etc., used to be surrounded by houses and shops. That's all gone. You can hardly blame ghosts for not sticking around when entire neighborhoods were bulldozed. No ghost wants to haunt some sterile neoclassical marble clad monstrosity. For true DC ghosts, you've got to get off the Mall and into the real neighborhoods. 

 

3. Is any part of you a believer? What have you seen that has made you believe, if anything? what have you seen that has made you skeptical?

Yes? No? Maybe? I maintain a studious agnosticism, with perhaps a slight wistful bias. I like to say that my role is to share the stories and help listeners fit it into the real "history" of a site or person. I'm skeptical of many a story, but more than a few give me the chills. But no ghosts have chosen to reveal themselves to me. Yet.

 

4. Paranormal pop culture is bigger than ever. How do you feel about that?

I'm looking to tell fun stories to people who want to hear them, and perhaps in the process explore a little of our shared history. Ghost stories are a gateway drug to exploring our past, which I love to do. If it can hook a few more folks, why not?

 

5. What do you think is the best way for people to experience a "haunted" location? a guided tour? alone in the dead of night? or some other way?

Alone, at night, reading my book by candlelight! Seriously though, there's a lot to be said for letting your mind fill in the gaps. Any good ghost story, or any story for that matter, is like yeast. You sprinkle it in warm water and let it grow on it's own. I love giving a tour, but on a tour, you aren't' thinking, you're just receiving information. Reading, especially alone, gets the mind going on its own. 

 

6. You've said the truth shouldn't get in the way of a good ghost story (on your blog). What do you think the elements of a good ghost story are?

Details! But not all of them. Details capture what it was like to hear a ghost, or what life was like in, say, John Quincy Adams's Washington. But you can't footnote yourself. You have to stay focused on the story at hand and not wander off on tangents. Hence, my line about truth not getting in the way of a good story. You wouldn't introduce a ghost story as a master's thesis, you shouldn't attempt to do the reverse.

 

7. What is your take on "dark tourism" (the phenomenon of visiting macabre, haunted, or deathly sites, such as battlefields and the sites of mass murders, tragedies, etc.)?

We all digest the past in our own way. Some of it's plainly exploitative (I'm looking at you, Gettysburg!), but I don't think we should be too judgmental. It's hard for the mind to comprehend the miserable things we've done as humans to each other, and sometimes a good, campy, ghost tour let's us explore horrific events and not lose our minds.  

 

8. Finally, is there one myth you're sick of hearing perpetuated about DC? one ghost story you're sick of hearing?

The Demon Cat. It reportedly haunts the Capitol, and some of the early stories are great, but he's too damn unreliable. Lot's of great stuff around the Civil War, and supposedly he's seen just before every great national tragedy, in particular the 1929 stock market crash and Kennedy's assassination but interestingly enough neither Pearl Harbor or 9/11. I'm dubious about the time with Kennedy. I think it's someone taking a pretty good ghost story and adding more recent sitings. I'm keeping my eye open for the Cat appearing before 9/11 so I can call shenanigans.

 

Tim Krepp is a tour guide and author in Washington, DC. His new book, Capitol Hill Haunts explores the ghostly history of one of DC's oldest neighborhoods. To his knowledge, no ghosts live with him, his daughters, or his wife in the Capitol Hill row house.

Ghost Tours for October

As I'm sure many of my readers know, I conduct ghost tours of haunted locations in New York City. If you live in the city and would like to take one of my tours this Halloween season, please visit Ghosts of New York to register.

Ghosts of New York has a variety of tours with various guides. Here are the tours I will be leading:

Saturday October 13, Friday October 19, Saturday October 20, Friday October 26, Saturday October 27

Edgar Allan Poe and His Ghostly Neighbors of Greenwich Village

Start Time 9:00pm

Go in search of the spirits of Eleanor Roosevelt and her pet dog Fala, Aaron Burr, the ghosts of the New York University Library and of Washington Square Arch, Washington Square Park — ghost central, the most haunted area in America — and, of course, several Edgar Allan Poe sites.
Tours are 90 minutes in duration and less than a mile in length.
Everything is handicap accessible.
Meeting Point: This tour departs across the street from Fire Patrol Station No. 2, 85 West Third Street, one block south of Washington Square Park between Thompson and Sullivan Streets, in Manhattan.
Subway trains A B C D E F M stop at the West 4th Street Station. Exit from Third Street exit and go eastward on Third Street.
Fee: $20 by credit card on line; $25 in person.
If you plan to pay cash, please call (718) 591-4741 to reserve your place.

Meeting Place:
85 West Third Street
New York, NY

Map and Directions

Register

 

 Sunday October 21, Sunday October 28

Edgar Allan Poe’s Gaslight Greenwich Village

Start Time 2:00pm
“Poe belongs to New York. His connections to the city span the length of his writing career. He was a literatus, not a loner, and New York has long been the home of the literati. Poe belonged in the publishing capital of America.”
- Susan Amper, Poe, Toast of Gotham
This 90-minute literary and historical walking tour steps into the life of Edgar Allan Poe’s Greenwich Village of the 1840s. Visit the site of three of his former homes, trace a path into the past to gaslight-era Washington Square Park, learn of his contemporary rivals and admirers, and see where he wrote some of his most famous works. You will discover the places that inspired Poe, find out where he read “The Raven” for the first time in public, and even see where he was once treated for a head cold! Interweaving some of his most famous tales with Greenwich Village’s macabre secret histories, this tour is guaranteed to delight fans of Poe’s literary grotesques.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a literary/historical tour, not a ghost tour.

Meeting Point: This tour departs across the street from Fire Patrol Station No. 2, 85 West Third Street, one block south of Washington Square Park between Thompson and Sullivan Streets, in Manhattan.
Subway trains A B C D E F M stop at the West 4th Street Station. Exit from Third Street exit and go eastward on Third Street.
Fee: $20 by credit card on line; $25 in person.

Meeting Place:

Opposite Fire Patrol Station No. 2
85 West Third Street
New York, NY

Map and Directions
Register

Hope to see you all this Halloween!

SPECTER SPECTACULAR: 13 GHOSTLY TALES Now Available!

Specter Spectacular: 13 GhostlyTales, an anthology of new twists on the classic ghost story, is now available in trade paperback and ebook via Amazon.com, Kobo.com, and other online retailers. You can also find Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales on Goodreads.

My story,"A Fitting Tribute" is included among the other awesome ghostly tales therein. 

Other stories feature the literary talents of Amanda C. Davis (“My Rest A Stone”), A. E. Decker (“Death and Taxes”), Larry Hodges (“The Haunts of Albert Einstein”), Sue Houghton (“The Secret of Echo Cottage”), Terence Kuch (“What If It Could Speak!”), Robbie MacNiven (“The Little House at Bull Run Creek”), Kou K. Nelson (“Safe Upon the Shore”), Jamie Rand (“Alabaster”), Shannon Robinson (“Wendigo”), Calie Voorhis (“Cooter, Ass-munch, and Me”), Jay Wilburn (“Pushed Out”), and Kristina Wojtaszek (“Cinder”).

Spirits, poltergeists, hauntings, creatures of the dark—Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales delivers all these and more in thirteen spooky twists on the classic ghost story.  From the heartwarming and humorous to the eerie and chilling, this anthology holds a story for everyone who has ever been thrilled by the unknown or wondered what might lie beyond the grave. Step inside and witness ghosts of the past, tales of revenge, the inhuman, the innocent, the damned, and more. But be warned—once you cross the grave into this world of fantasy and fright, you may find there's no way back out.

The book was published by World Weaver Press, a publisher of fantasy, science fiction, and nonfiction, dedicated to producing quality novels, novellas, collections, and anthologies. As a small press, World Weaver seeks to produce books that engage the mind and ensnare the story-loving soul.

Happy Halloween reading!

XO, 

SA

The Expendable Man

Dorothy B. Hughes' 1963 suspense novel is one of the best books I've read this year.

I recently re-read In A Lonely Place, which contains one of noir's all-time unreliable narrators. The narrator in The Expendable Man is supremely reliable: it's the world around him that shifts and changes and spirals out of control.

I wasn't familiar with the plot reveal, and if you aren't either, do yourself a favor and ignore everything written about the book until after you've read it. Otherwise you'll rob yourself of a nice gasp at about page 60. (All you need to know is that the plot concerns a doctor, Hugh Densmore, who picks up a hitchiker and is later suspected of her murder when her corpse floats up in a canal a few days later.) But it wasn't just the reveal that got me, it was the incredible tenseness and tautness that Hughes sustains throughout the whole book. After I read In A Lonely Place, I liked Hughes. After Expendable Man, I love her. In this novel, Hughes creates a multi-layered narrative where the unsaid hovers over every scene. Take for instance the book's opening sentence: "Across the tracks, there was a different world." A simple sentence, on the surface.

But there's so much going on below the surface. 

I was so impressed with this book that I actually sat down and parsed the entire thing, creating a beat sheet for every chapter (yes, I have a life, don't worry; this is just something writers do). And what I found was an incredibly structurally sound procedural. All detective or suspense novels must of course have something to move the plot forward in every beat (with occasional rests) and Hughes does this masterfully. Where she surpasses the average novel is in having an added dose of tension in every beat: when Hugh and Ellen, his potential love interest, go to speak to Hugh's lawyer, he wonders about the lawyer's motives, and suspects him of flirting with Ellen right under his nose. When Hugh goes to a wedding, he sits there wondering if the police will burst in at any moment. It's classic Hitchcockian suspense -- we see the gun under the table and we're squirming right along with Hugh Densmore.

There's also an admirable structural unity to the novel, with Hugh's worst problems arising out of the very things that makes him who is he is. This keeps the novel looping in on itself, and repeatedly puts Hugh in more and more danger. His kindness gets him into trouble, his reticence puts him in even deeper. Early on in the story Hugh makes a series of tactical blunders that just made me want to scream at him but alas, Hugh is Hugh. And all you can do is sit there and watch while he makes everything worse until he finally digs himself out.

That's another part of the book's beauty: the one thing that got Hugh into so much trouble in the first place was an act that anybody is capable of. Anyone could pick up a hitchhiker, and that quotidian quality, that incredibly tiny moment of questionable judgment, makes it easy to identify with Hugh. I love a story where ordinary people paint themselves into corners and no good deed goes unpunished. And to pull it off the way Dorothy Hughes did, well... I stand in awe.

The End of the Party: Tapping the Source

I have to admit I read the last two books in our series out of order. The New York Public Library was on top of their game and got me The Dawn Patrol fairly soon after I placed a hold on it, but the post office let me down in the media mail department and Tapping the Source took nearly a week to reach me. Based on what I've read and how I feel generally (more on that later), I've decided to make an executive decision: this will be the last post I'll write in the Beach Noir Book Club.

The Dawn Patrol just isn't up to our high standards. It's not a bad book, and I whipped through it fairly quickly. I found myself enjoying some of its digressions on local history (I learned a lot about San Diego and Pacific Beach) and it was admittedly suspenseful in parts but ultimately a let down, with a cliched scenario and some fairly poorly drawn characters. It was -- and I realize it's slightly ironic for me to use this term here -- a beach read. In the traditional sense of the word.

If you've already bought the book, by all means read it (and feel free to offer to guest post) . You won't want to throw it against the wall or anything. But it won't stay with you.

Tapping the Source, however, will fucking stay with you. Right? If you've read it you know what I mean. Outlandish as certain elements are (e.g. the climactic party scene) their very insanity will make a deep, lasting, impression. If you haven't read it and just know it vaguely as "the book that inspired Point Break," please know the novel is a totally different animal. It's basically as different as In A Lonely Place is from its film adaptation. Except times a million.

I haven't actually seen Point Break, but based on the fact that it didn't receive an NC-17 rating, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there were probably many key differences between these two artifacts. Here are some elements from the novel that I imagine are missing from the movie: incest, mutilation, severed limbs, teenage runaways getting gang banged, murder, maiming, and extreme despair.

Ike Tucker, the book's protagonist and source of this despair, reminds me a bit of some of S.E. Hinton's outsiders; Nunn's writing also has a similarly rough hewed quality. Apparently author Kem Nunn didn't go to college until he turned thirty, and his gritty life experience (surfing, working on boats) breaks through in his prose: repetitions betray a limited vocabulary, descriptions are workmanlike and somewhat coarse, but the dialogue feels realer than real, with surfing lingo so seamlessly interwoven you know Nunn's no poser. It feels like the gut-effort of a prodigy less concerned with style than telling a story, one borne of a desperate emotional urge. Yet the book is no fluke, it can't be -- the mystery is too good. It simply reads like the work of a natural.

The L.A. Times pull-quote in the edition I read compares Nunn to Hammett, Chandler, Raoul Whitfelm, Paul and James M. Cain, Horace McCoy and "yes, Ross Macdonald." I wouldn't go that far, but there are definite similarities to McCoy's They Shoot Horses... in its overall effect of total bleakness, as well as echoes of Macdonald's soul-searching. Every once in a while Tapping the Source goes over the top, but Nunn's spare prose pulls it off.

Mostly I was haunted by the emotionally wraith-like Ike Tucker and his heartbreaking quest for his lost, wild sister. How this character ever got translated into "Johnny Utah" I'll never know.

Perhaps the melancholy that pervaded Tapping the Source got into my head somehow, because when it was done I closed the book and thought, "This is it. Summer is over." In all honesty, I've been leading up to that point for a little while now. Maybe it has something to do with it getting hot so early this year, but I feel like it's been summer for a long time. Certain trees I've seen seem to feel the same way; I've recently spotted both yellow and red leaves fluttering down from their tops these past few weeks. Also the weather feels cooler. And my big beach trip of the summer ended yesterday with a series of signs telegraphing the end of a season. I think it's time to close the book on the summer of 2012. At least on the Beach Noir part of it.... It's been amazing. I've been re-inspired by some of my old favorites by Macdonald and Dorothy B. Hughes, and truly shattered by Horace McCoy. I read a novel I never would've encountered otherwise. And I've learned that I mostly pair hardboiled/noir books with beer, and occasionally gin and tonics.

It's been real. And it's time to let it fade. I'll do so with Nunn's own words:

"He thought of what it must have been like then, beaches like this one scattered up and down the coast like jewels at the edge of the sea. It must have seemed too good to be true, and it must have seemed that it would be that way forever, and yet now it was the wreckage of that dream that lay between them. And he saw too that it was not just Preston and Hound who had lost. He thought of the pier, the crowds fighting for waves, the entire zoo of a town crouched on the sand and what had once passed for hunger and vitality had only a certain desperateness about it now, coked-out fatigue, because they had all lost..."

Now that's beach reading. 

Helen Gurley Brown: A Broad We Liked

Re-posted from the original, February 2009

I recently finished reading Sex & the Single Girl as research for a mid-twentieth century period piece I'm writing. I always dismissed Cosmopolitan magazine and anything to do with it as fluff, but found myself strangely and surprisingly charmed by its wacky, long-reigning Editor-in-chief, Helen Gurley Brown. It's hard to forgive her for presiding over the masthead of such a cringe-worthy and horrendous "lifestyle" publication, but from time to time she'll do something endearing, like titling her editorial column "Step into my Parlor" and other humorous -- intentional or otherwise -- flourishes.

When reading the book I realized that inside the Cosmo-girl morass, there was a woman I actually didn't hate. She's kind of an old-fashioned broad: tough, sassy, solo, offering up a great big "I don't give a damn what you think" to everyone. This woman was a single career gal for seventeen years in the late '40s and early '50s before she married a film producer, so she knows whereof she speaks. It must have been a tough climate for her. I also wonder if she was the inspiration for Peggy on Mad Men, because she started as a secretary and moved up into writing ad copy after being mentored by a boss-man who noticed her talent. Here's another endearing quality she has: she grew up desperately poor and gives some amazing advice about living on a budget, including a section on how to save, buy stocks ("Choose a company that has an asset to liability ratio of at least four to one"), and negotiate a lower rent with your landlord. Her warning never to buy anything on layaway seems like the lone rational voice in the wilderness in these days of post-credit card remorse.

HGB advises living life to the fullest while living solo, whether it means working your way up the ladder at your office, taking violin lessons or traveling to Australia for a year: "Paradoxically, living dangerously lengthens and strengthens your life." She does not advise waiting for a man to call, predating "He's Just Not That Into You" by several decades. She's all about getting out there, having fun, working hard and really relishing this world, an ethos that isn't so easy for any woman who's ever spent weekends and holidays alone with the "lonely fidgets." ("But how much easier it is to bear if you have a really intriguing job to return to next morning and enough money to buy yourself a Ferrari to race around in and forget.") Her hardworking no-nonsense advice and bloody-minded dedication to "routing out the trembles" and eschewing self-pity is quite astonishing when you consider the how-to-land-a-man sensibility she and her magazine would later become associated with.

For instance, Cosmo readers appear to have little do other than sleep their way to the top, right? Not such a great idea, advises Mother Brown: "You would ... do yourself more good by staying right where you are and learning to read a statistical report. After all, girls to go to bed with he can always find. No real training required, but where is a boss going to get a girl who can read statistical reports?"

I don't know, maybe the last 2.5 decades of backlash and post-feminism have lowered the bar, but I found HGB's "make yourself useful" philosophy kind of refreshing, and despite whatever she did later in life, despite all the unforgivable dating/dieting advice she doled out to women, I think this still stands:

"Those who glom onto men so that they can collapse with relief, spend the rest of their days shining up their status symbol and figure they never have to reach, stretch grow, learn, face dragons or make a living again are the ones to be be pitied. They, in my opinion, are the unfulfilled ones."

Or, put another way, "There's such a long time to settle down by the hearthside."

Specter Spectacular: Thirteen Ghostly Tales

 My story "A Fitting Tribute" has been published in what sounds like a sure-to-be-awesome anthology of ghost stories! You can find the full press release below, but the important facts are that it comes out on September 25th, I'm in it, and you should buy it.

WORLD WEAVER PRESS

ANNOUNCES RELEASE OF

“SPECTER SPECTACULAR: 13 GHOSTLY TALES”

NEW ANTHOLOGY AVAILABLE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

New York, NY (August 9, 2012) – World Weaver Press (Eileen Wiedbrauk, Editor-in-Chief) has announced Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales, an anthology of new twists on the classic ghost story, will be available on Tuesday, September 25, 2012.

"That which is unknown, uncertain, and impossible to prove is a ripe ground for fantasy and horror writers, and the thirteen authors in Specter Spectacular have taken fullest advantage of it," commented Wiedbrauk.  "These stories have given me chills, made me tear up, and laugh by turns—most of all, they’ve kept me glued to my seat.  I’m thrilled that World Weaver Press has taken a walk in the shadows for our first anthology, and I’m pleased to release it this fall to add some chill to your Halloween or any dark night."

Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales features the literary talents of Amanda C. Davis (“My Rest A Stone”), A. E. Decker (“Death and Taxes”), Larry Hodges (“The Haunts of Albert Einstein”), Sue Houghton (“The Secret of Echo Cottage”), Andrea Janes (“A Fitting Tribute”), Terence Kuch (“What If It Could Speak!”), Robbie MacNiven (“The Little House at Bull Run Creek”), Kou K. Nelson (“Safe Upon the Shore”), Jamie Rand (“Alabaster”), Shannon Robinson (“Wendigo”), Calie Voorhis (“Cooter, Ass-munch, and Me”), Jay Wilburn (“Pushed Out”), and Kristina Wojtaszek (“Cinder”).

Spirits, poltergeists, hauntings, creatures of the dark—Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales delivers all these and more in thirteen spooky twists on the classic ghost story.  From the heartwarming and humorous to the eerie and chilling, this anthology holds a story for everyone who has ever been thrilled by the unknown or wondered what might lie beyond the grave. Step inside and witness ghosts of the past, tales of revenge, the inhuman, the innocent, the damned, and more. But be warned—once you cross the grave into this world of fantasy and fright, you may find there's no way back out.

Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales will be available in print and eBook via amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, diesel.com, kobo.com, and other online retailers. You can also find Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales on Goodreads.

World Weaver Press is a publisher of fantasy, science fiction, and nonfiction, dedicated to producing quality novels, novellas, collections, and anthologies. As a small press, World Weaver seeks to produce books that engage the mind and ensnare the story-loving soul.

worldweaverpress.com

@worldweaver_wwp

In A Lonely Place

This week we continue our Hardboiled Ladies of Noir sub-set of the Beach Noir Book Club. One thing that really stood out for me about this Dorothy B. Hughes novel was its similarity to a little something called The Talented Mr. Ripley.

At the midpoint of In A Lonely Place, I started to wonder if Patricia Highsmith had ever read it, because there were some startling similarities between Dix Steele and Tom Ripley. They were both orphans, raised by relatives (Ripley was raised by an aunt, Steele by an uncle) whom they despised; they were both lower-income types with a yen for the good life but no desire to work; and they both committed murder and stole the identities of men whose lives they would then go on to inhabit.

Looking at the publication date, it's entirely possible there was some influence there. Hughes' book came out in 1947, Highsmith's in 1955. I'm not the only one to wonder this (this blogger also notices some similarities between Dix and the protagonist of Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me) but there's not a lot written about the relationship between these two books, not that I could find online, anyway. Still, I'm fairly convinced of it.

Let's break it down.

First, the class angle. They're both frustrated rich men with chips on their shoulders about their lower-middle-class upbringings. Dix is especially bitter about his, and despises his uncle for working his way through Princeton and then imagining that Dix should do the same: "Dickson could see him, one of those poor boobs, peasants, owning one dark ill-fitting suit and a pair of heavy-soled shoes, clumping to class, study and work, and nobody knew he was at Princeton but the other peasants... Dix hadn't wanted to be a Princeton man. Not that kind." 

Throughout the book, Dix displays some severely classist contempt for "the help." He refers repeatedly to the maid as a "charwoman," "slattern," and a "broom and mop harridan," and the gardener he calls a "yahoo." Dix looks down on these people while living in murdered frenemy Mel Terriss' joint under false pretenses, and the irony is totally lost on him.

I found this angle fascinating, both in itself -- what else is a murderer but someone with the most supreme sense of entitlement possible? -- and for its resemblance to Tom Ripley's character. They both feel they deserve something other than what life has given them and they are well within their rights to take it. Of course, Dix has the added element of raping and killing girls for fun.

It's interesting that Hughes makes no attempt to explain Dix's motivations. I imagine that, by showing us the supremely entitled man, she feels she has made her point. I'm on her side with this one: I always find the explanations for killers' behavior extremely banal and inevitably a letdown, so I didn't mind this lack of explicit exposition. I just enjoyed the cat-and-mouse game Dix played with Brub, and the wonderful contrast between Dix's self-perception and that of everyone else around him. I've always thought the idea that you were mad and everyone could tell it but you was one of the creepiest concepts there is. Imagine, he's going through the motions the whole time thinking he's getting away with it and meanwhile everyone around him is like, "Holy shit, check out the crazy guy!" I don't know, that's just a secret fear of mine -- to go mad and not know it while everyone else is watching and clucking their tongues... it's a classic horror trope and it apparently works in suspense novels, too (and why not? the line between the two genres is fine and dark, sometimes invisible under the cover of night....)

Other things I liked about the book: good menacing sea-metaphors, like "Fear was the fog, creeping about winding its tendrils about you, seeping into your pores and flesh and bones" and "Sand was an evil and penetrating thing... if dust divulged a story, sand screamed its secrets." Points for that, Ms. Hughes. Excellent Beach Noir. And great female characters -- who essentially solved the mystery! -- were another plus.

A few detractors: the 2003 Feminist Press edition I read was riddled with typos ("busses" was used repeatedly when they meant "buses," and the back cover lists Hughes as an Edgar Allen Poe Award winner!). They may have since updated or remedied this, since their new edition seems to have a new cover as well. The afterward by Lisa Marie Hogeland was good though, particularly in its examination of Dix's lack of wanting to work and how that means male hardboiled readers wouldn't have identifed with him, since in their world, masculinity = work and vice versa (Brub is then the hero and Dix the villain). Hogeland, who draws on Draws on Erin A. Smith's Hardboiled: Working Class Readers and Pulp Magazines, points out that his refusal to work is somehow effeminate, as is his errand-boy role in Mel's life. Which brings us all back to Ripley, doesn't it?

Happy Birthday to Melville and M.R. James

Two of my main men, Melville and Jame, were born this day, many, many years ago (150 for James, and 195 for Melville, if you're counting). If you're looking to celebrate this momentous occasion, but are stuck behind a desk today like most working sods, there are plenty of ways to do it online while pretending to, you know, work.

There's this great article by Emily Cleaver, Five Ghost Stories that Scared M.R. James, this birthday tribute by Jo Fletcher, and this fab essay over at Hypnogoria. The absolutely terrific Podcast to the Curious should be your background listening today as you type tiny columns of numbers or do whatever it is you're supposed to be doing. And for those who think, "Hm, I'd really like to craft a Jamesian tale of terror myself!" you can always read my old post on How To Write Ghost Stories, inspired by some advice from the old boy himself.

For the Melville fans, definitely check out the Moby Dick Marathon, which is live-streaming right now and will last until noon today. Or take a virtual walking tour of Melville's New York, courtesy of poets.org. I also recommend listening to Mastodon's Leviathan album, which will make your workday 100% more badass. And, if you've got a particularly lenient or absent-minded boss, you can read Bartelby the Scrivener in its entirety, here. 

Finally, for your lunch hour reading, you can download my book of ghost stories, Boroughs of the Dead, on Kindle. I've lowered the price to only 99 cents (for today only!) in honor of my main men and their birthdays. The book contains ten short ghost stories all set in and around New York City (though stylistically they owe a huge debt to the Cambridge scholar) -- and one of them features the ghost of none other than Herman Melville himself!

If you have any more ideas, or just want to share enthusiasms, find me on Twitter and we can gush. The two things I love most in life are ghost stories and the sea, so this is a pretty big day for me.