Month: August 2019

How I Spent August 2019

DorisAug19Another month bites the dust.

After a bit of radio silence, I’m happy to give an update on the publication of my book about Universal’s The Mummy. Its release date has slipped a little, but it’s still coming along well — I’ve recently looked over the proofs — and if all goes to schedule it should be published in time for Halloween.

Another project that’s coming along well is my horror vlog. I’ve already chosen the first three titles I’ll review for Paperback Pit — my video series on vintage horror paperbacks — and the technical side of the set-up has been progressing to satisfaction. It’s looking likely that I’ll be launching the vlog by the end of the year.

Also: this was the final month before the release of Big Finish’s New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield Volume 5, featuring my story Clear History! Perhaps give it a pre-order, if you so desire…

Articles published elsewhere this month:

Articles topics for September and beyond:

Sept19articles

Vampire Literature in the Age of Hollywood

Ithevampire

Over at WWAC my decade-by-decade overview of vampire fiction has reached the 1930s and 40s, and I’ve been looking at how vampire literature reacted to the rise of vampire film. I’ve dug up a couple of fairly obscure but quite interesting stories from the period: Henry Kuttner’s story “I, the Vampire” and Irina Karlova’s Dreadful Hollow.

Also, I’m now two thirds of the way through the series, which has notched up a cumulative wordcount of 24,000. That’s rather a lot of vampires, and if you’d like to catch up, here are the previous entries:

Part 1: Two Centuries of Blood — John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (1818); Cyprien Bérard’s Lord Ruthwen ou les Vampires (1820)

Part 2: The Feminine Touch — Théophile Gautier’s “La morte amoureuse” (1836); Elizabeth F. Ellet’s “The Vampyre” (1849)

Part 3: Deconstructing the Vampire — Charles Wilkins Webber’s Spiritual Vampirism (1853);  Paul Féval’s Le Chevalier Ténèbre (1860)

Part 4: Carmilla and Company — J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1871-2); Anne Crawford’s “A Mystery of the Campagna” (1886)

Part 5: Enter Count Dracula — Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897)

Part 6: An Occult Dawn — M. R. James’ “Count Magnus” (1904); Sax Rohmer’s Brood of the Witch-Queen (1918)

Part 7: Dion Fortune’s Demon Lover — Dion Fortune’s The Demon Lover (1927)

 

The House of Eddas: Thor vs. Thor in Journey Into Mystery #94-5

journeymyst9495

One enemy that every superhero worth their salt must someday confront is… themself. No, I’m not talking psychology here (although you can interpret things along those lines if you like), I’m talking about one of the oldest and most resilient concepts in the superhero genre: that of the hero’s evil counterpart. Sometimes the evil version of the hero is a separate entity, like a doppelganger; other times they are a different personality within the same body, like Mr. Hyde. Either way, they’re an idea that you can expect to turn up in any given superhero comic — and Marvel’s Thor series managed to cover both varieties across two consecutive issues roughly a year into its run.

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How Chad Ripperger Showed Me the Potential Benefits of Demonic Possession

Chad Ripperger

Lately I’ve been listening to YouTube sermons by Father Chad Ripperger about his experiences as an exorcist. They’re quite remarkable. Here’s a typical excerpt where he discusses video games, Harry Potter, and people being prevented from entering the priesthood by Loki:

This witchcraft is finding itself not just among girls in Catholic high schools, it’s finding itself in video games. If you pay close attention to it, the guys making the video games today are doing their research. They are digging up these ancient gods, which are just another name for demons as we can read in the Old Testament and New Testament and from my personal experience too, all the gods of gentiles are demons, and I can testify that. I’ve seen Baal, which is mentioned in scripture, Asmodeus, Isis, Osiris, the guy named Loki who’s out there today, by the way, who interestingly, Loki – if this gives you any indication of the stronghold he gets – he’s the demon who goes around seeking people who have religious and priestly vocations to neglect entering those.

It’s even in the video games, and even in some of the other games, they’re actually happening where you have to actually cast real spells, these guys are digging up real spells and casting them in the process of this, this even goes – and I’ll just answer now, because someone’s going to ask the question ‘what about Harry Potter?’ Okay, It was expunged from the Internet, as soon as I saw  it I ran to the Internet and grabbed it, and I made a copy of it somewhere in my files. Basically J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter, she did the entire Harry Potter series by auto-writing, and auto-writing is a form of diabolic channeling.  I’m not accusing her of thinking this is done, that she’s using diabolic channeling. She went to witch school. Real witches will testify that the actual spells in Harry Potter are real spells, unlike Tolkien, who uses it as a literary device.

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