WICKERPEDIA, ed. Kristin Garth & Nick Morrissey

Mixing perspectives on the power of belief, both good and bad, to shape lives with attempts to capture the experience of believing, the Garth and Morrissey create an experience as filled with poetry, awe, and horror as the films that inspired it. This anthology features twenty poems, five flash fictions, three articles, and two pieces …

Modem Prometheus: #HuntingParty

My friend Neil Murton—who it has never been confirmed is a hat possessed by a magpie steering a stolen body—wrote the script for the inaugural episode of the Modem Prometheus podcast. Twenty-one minutes of urban folk horror, ancient British legend painted on a canvas of Sinclair's city-as-ritual. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-oV7Zq1D7k

Rocks in My Head

Sometimes to relax, I look at photographs of karesansui (‘Zen’ gardens) or watch videos of them being maintained. A few days ago I recalled that, when younger, I found them quite boring and started to ponder whether I have actively learnt to like them or would always have developed into it. As frequent readers will …

A Strange Grasping

Social media is an aching void, filled with uncaring horrors. But it is a void that can be shaped by abstruse incantations and strong will. As I have shaped it. The arcane sigil I wrought last week summoned forth a shambling servitor* bearing visions of exquisite Otherness, visions I have chosen to share with the …

Deep Green

The Green Party are joint largest party in Bristol City Council. Sandy Hore-Ruthven, the Green Party candidate, was in clear second place for Mayor. Joy? Deep Joy! Hearing the Greens had more seats was good, but seeing it on the map really drove it home: I'm a firm believer that politics works better when people …

The Path Less Followable

As long-term followers will know, I deliver letters for the Green Party. Moving house has not changed this volunteering but has changed some of the anomalies I encounter. With local elections coming up at the start of next month, I have undertaken a delivery most weeks this month so have become quite familiar with parts …

Giant Ball of Fun?

Could one keep a shoggoth as a pet? The authorities in their blindness make no reference even to their existence, so there is certainly no legal barrier. But is there a practical one? The answer depends on which sort of shoggoth one speaks of. Whilst the most well-known shoggoths are those described in Lovecraft’s At …

No Masks Here

Yesterday I came across an untitled poem by Upashna that refused to quite let go. Dusk pours her dregs of light on the weary bones draped in a corrugated yellow skin threading the silk suture A melange of reverberations in the air- a distinct chirp of hatchlings calling it’s dame at prey, the yellow tailed …

A Box Without a Label

The National Trust is potentially facing a formal probe over its investigation into links between its properties and slavery. Do I think this is warranted? Seventeen. Earlier this year the National Trust released a interim review with the catchy title Connections between colonialism and Properties now in the care of the National Trust, including links …

Not Stomping Ants

One of the criticisms levelled at "The Call of Cthulhu" is that Cthulhu isn't the immense threat that fans claim: after all, he was defeated in 1925 by someone driving a boat into his head so would be no match for modern weapons. However, while it is certainly true The Alert ended his pursuit by …