The art-horror; horror writing Horror stories The nature of Horror, by Noel Carroll

Abraham "Bram" Stoker (November 8, 1847 – April 20, 1912) was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned.

SOULIDIUM: Sacrificing You


SOULIDIUM: Sacrificing You

The Night Flier (Director: Mark Pavia)

The Night Flier, Mark Pavia, Vampire films, Stephen King, Horror films, Vampire movies, Horror movies, blood movies, Dark movies, Scary movies, Ghost movies

Starring:
Miguel Ferrer
Julie Entwisle
Dan Monahan
Michael H. Moss




A reporter is on the trail of a vampiric murderer who flies by night, lands at secluded airports and attacks local residents.

Molly McArdle: Blood Soup: The End of "True Blood"


Molly McArdle is working on a novel at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.


 
http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/blood-soup  June 30th, 2014 
 
 

I’M STILL NOT sure how I was convinced to start watching True Blood. I hate blood. As I type this — at this very mention of the liquid that I am admittedly full of — my hands have shrunk back into the cuffs of my sweater and I’ve scrunched my shoulders up around my neck. Few things make me feel as vulnerable as this life stuff, for which there are few available metaphors because it is itself so potently symbolic. Blood is the blood of blood. There, I have disappeared into my sweater again.
True Blood is full of blood. Vampires sucking human blood. Humans sucking vampire blood. Vampires crying blood instead of tears. Bottled blood. Microwaved blood. Walls covered in blood. Fabrics soaked in blood. Hair made sticky with blood. Characters in rubber gloves scooping up, mopping up, scrubbing out blood. (True Blood’s commitment to showing how a mess is cleaned up, not just made, is one I appreciate.) Often, when it is explosive or particularly bizarre (Seasons 5 and 6 had a fair amount of naked people caked in blood), I don’t really mind it. It’s too unfamiliar to be true. But other times, when a wound is mundane enough, I cannot help but sink into myself, to guard the places where my blood beats loudest.

True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries series, first premiered in 2008. I got on board the summer of 2011, precipitating a desperate marathon of the first three seasons in my un-air conditioned apartment, and have followed it faithfully since then. Until Game of Thrones came along, it was the most popular HBO show after The Sopranos. True Blood, all sex and gore and weird silly magic, is a consummate summer show, something to watch with a sweaty drink in hand and a fan blowing in your face. Its seventh and last season premiered this June 22nd (even they cannot resist making death jokes), and soon the bloodiest TV show I have ever watched will be over.

The vampire we know today comes from southeastern Europe in the early 1700s, when its folklore was first recorded in print (and so publicized), pushing local communities’ preexisting belief into frenzy and introducing the stories to an international audience. Vampires terrify for obvious reasons: they are animated, bloodthirsty corpses. (Several bodies in what is now Serbia were exhumed and then mutilated during this time; and over one hundred graves in Bulgaria have since been found impaled with metal.) Just as real as the fear it inspired, this body of folklore also offered a potent (if grotesque) relief to mourners. In those early stories, vampires always sought out their spouses first. So much of vampirism is about the horror of getting what you want.
True Blood begins when Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress in the northern Louisiana town of Bon Temps, meets and dates the ex-Confederate vampire-next-door Bill Compton (“Bill? I thought it might be Antoine or Basil or like Langford maybe, but Bill? Vampire Bill?”). Bill was born in a house across a field from Sookie’s own, though he’s moved back to Bon Temps for the first time since he left it, alive, to fight in the Civil War. Creator Alan Ball — whose Six Feet Under shared True Blood’s predilection for death and the surreal humor that accompanies it — has described the show as being about “the horrors of intimacy,” and it’s true the series charts how desire by itself can be complicated, and ultimately unsatisfying. But True Blood is also about the enormity and complexity of the world, though much of it is hidden in plain sight. In Season 3, Sookie’s charming, dense brother Jason balks at the existence of supernatural beings in addition to vampires:
“There’s werewolves?”
“Yes.”
“Shit. Bigfoot, is he real too?”
“I don’t know, I guess it’s possible.”
“…Santa?”

Gheorghe Coşbuc: Strigoii (Vampires)

Gheorghe Coşbuc, Strigoii, Vampire poetry, Vampire poems, Dark Poems, Dark Poetry, Gothic poetry, Goth poetry, Horror poetry, Horror poems


The Christians that are awake, with fear they call
The Mother of Christ and-light rushed
Incense and garlic on a bronze vessel
She's single in the lodge, poor mother
image sits stunned...