Poe Sundays – Extraordinary Tales

Every Sunday in October is Poe Sunday, the day we celebrate the Master of Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. This year, I’ll suggest the best movie adaptations of Poe’s work.

Images from

Raul Garcia writes and directs this dark animated anthology of Edgar Allan Poe’s most beloved gothic tales, featuring both new voiceover and original pre-recorded narration from horror’s most legendary actors and directors. It’s colorful surrealist animation and perfectly ghastly for Poe lovers to watch on Halloween night.

Haiku of the Week

Monday Macabre is all about the scares during October, but this year, we’re tapping into the psychological fear of dystopian Halloween horror.

Imagine living in a dark world where you absolutely cannot go out on Halloween night. A world filled with violence, run by evil dictators and religious autocrats who shut down society and ban Halloween traditions because they’re trying stamp out all pagan beliefs. This new frightening world is a lot closer than you think.

neon pumpkins
devils night curfew in effect
Halloween lockdown

Tuesday Terror – Stakeland

Every Tuesday in October 2022, we celebrate scary movies!

“Cults spread like wildfire across the southern states. Waitin’ for the messiah, but… he never came. Death came in its stead. And it came with teeth.”

2010’s Stakeland, directed by Jim Mickle is one of the best post-apocalyptic horror movies I’ve ever seen. Set in the near future, society collapses into religious zealotry and militia-run feudal terroritories when monsterous vampires take over the world.

Gossip Girl star Connor Paolo stars as a young man who finds a mentor in writer-producer Nick Damici’s mysterious drifter and expert vampire hunter, simply named Mister. Mister isn’t exactly a charming anti-hero, but he is totally badass and we’ll be so lucky if we find a teacher like him during our own dystopian journeys.

Haiku of the Week

It’s been 90 years since the fall. Food is scarce and crops are bad. A short life is still life. How long does it take for the soil to return fruitful harvest after a nuclear holocaust? What lengths should a farm go to to protect what’s theirs?

poisoned stalks of corn
90 years after the fall
the scarecrow

Monday Macabre is all about the scares during October, but this year, we’re tapping into the psychological fear of dystopian Halloween horror. My haiku is inspired by this ghoulish robot scarecrow.

Jenkins the Scarecrow by Oleksandra Shchaslyva

Artist: Oleksandra Shchaslyva

To view more of her stunning art, please go here: https://www.artstation.com/schastlivaya

Poe Sundays – The Tell-Tale Heart, 1953

In 1953, United Production Artists produced an 8-minute animation based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. This surreal psychological horror short film, narrated by James Mason and distributed by Columbia Pictures, became the first animated film to earn an X rating in the UK. The reason? Well, that’s just what old stuffy white dudes do when someone makes a film about killing old stuffy white dudes for no reason.

Click here for more information on The Tell-Tale Heart from 1953.

Haiku of the Week

Our theme this month is legendary creatures and I saved my fave for last.

moldy rotten cheese
dullahan’s midnight ride
a headless horseman

Poe Sundays

On Sundays, we celebrate the Master of Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe

Fun Fact: Readers of the day were so horrified by the story’s violence, they complained to the editor of the Messenger, the first magazine to publish Berenice. Poe himself later removed 4 paragraphs of text, thus, many early publishings are missing the detailed heinous act of Poe’s story.

Poe was angry at being forced to self-censor his own work, believing a story should be judged solely by how many copies it sold.


You can read Berenice in its entirety here:
https://poestories.com/read/berenice

Poe Sundays

On Sundays, we celebrate the Master of Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe

Fun Facts: Poe himself had an obsessive fear of being buried alive do to catslepsy, a state where someone occasionally falls completely still and is unable to move or speak. There were a few cases of it happening during Poe’s lifetime that made the papers. No doubt those stories left a huge impression on the author.

Happy Caturday – July

This month’s theme is campfire creatures.

How much do you really know about the creatures lurking from deep in the forests?

Remember to always practice good camp and fire safety and the ghosts of careless campers won’t lead the monsters straight to you.

Campfire Cats by B.Kliban