Month: June 2023

Ghost Country

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WP Prompters asked a good question today. They want to know: What countries do you want to visit?

Cape Crozier and Mount Terror
Charles Hamilton Smith, 1776–1859, Belgian undated

The Country I want to visit isn’t a Country in itself. Rather it is governed by 30 different Countries and that place is Antarctica.
To explain why I want to visit there- and there alone- you need to be a little familiar with it’s history so briefly ( I promise, briefly ) I’ll run through it.
For a period of time The Antarctic had a  temperate climate and it was covered with forests and plants. It was also connected to Africa and Australia at another point in time and the Seas in that area were tropical.
Then the continents separated and the Antarctic drifted to where it is now.
 Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, and driest of Earth’s continents, it is a polar desert and it is covered by by the continental ice sheet.  But it’s not a dead world, as we know.

        Penguins and Seals live there and so does a micro-animals called Tardigrades. Under the right conditions for a Tardigrade, they can even survive in Space, which goes to  show you how tough they are.

         So why do I want to go there?  Simple.

 I want to go there because of all the secrets that are buried ( or hiding? ) under that ice and guarded by the inhospitable environment  are the remains of an entire world and the people who traveled upon it or to it.

          I want to go to the Antarctic because it is a graveyard and I am positive it’s haunted.

A Country of Ghosts sounds like a heck of a cool place to visit, doesn’t it?

” The Endurance “

132 and Counting

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There are 132 days to Halloween and I am having a 

Devil of time

containing my sense of glee.

https://youtu.be/WyJadfU_0rQ

Jemma

Waste Not Want Not

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WP Prompters ask: What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

GERTRUDE ABERCROMBIE, MYSTERIOUS STRANGER (MAN, HOUSE AND LADY), 1953, 

 

If I had to name the one thing I like about myself, that one thing would be

that no matter how much I dislike someone

I would never, ever pretend

that person has no value, that their life experiences and feelings are to be ignored

and discounted by me at every turn.

I would never, ever do that.

 

 

Without these troublesome, unsavory characters

who parade through my life and occasionally drive me a little mad,

I would not have the inspiration to write about the

monsters, and demons and psychopaths who populate my stories

and make me laugh as I write and dream and create.

 

 

 

 

Let’s Go To Victoria!

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RDP Monday: JAUNT

Back in the 60’s all the way up to the 80’s my family used to take the Ferry up to Victoria BC and while she was still  making the trip, we made the trip on the  Princess Marguerite

Photo A.M. Moscoso

My Grandfather and my Great Aunt were born in Victoria BC and at their heart my family  may have moved away from Victoria, but they never really left it. So we went up at least once a year.

It was a great place to visit- there were fun museums and French Bakeries that made the greatest Petit Fours in the world. There were the Gardens and souvenier shops that even a kid could afford to shop at.

Back when I was little there was a Madame Tussaud’s Wax museum up in Victoria with a spectacular Chamber of Horrors that you would think my family had to drag me out of but  that wasn’t the case.

My entire family slow walked through that part of the exhibit every single time we visited it. I take that back. My Mom never went to the Wax Museum. She didn’t like the figures. Even the historical ones.  She thought that they were creepy.

So the museum had a lot of exhibits to look at, but honestly I never really took any interest in most of  them. I was all about the spooky stuff. I know big surprise, right? You have no idea how sad I was when in the late 90’s  the Royal London Wax Museum in Victoria closed down. The former manager took the wax figures home with him and stored them in his basement- those figures were worth around  $30,000. So there was no way they were going to be tossed out.  Well. Not the heads anyway:

10 years after the Royal Royal London Wax Museum closed in Victoria, more than 200 wax figures moved in with Ken Lane: Feb. 24, 2020 (CTV News)

As I mentioned the Wax Museum was a fantastic place to visit- but all I cared about was one part of it.

In the end though, the entire collection joined the Chamber of Horrors.

“At Halloween, we like to startle people,” said Lane ( the former Manager ). “We say, ‘We have a bunch of bodiless heads in our basement, do you want to see them?“

The museum is no more but my favorite exhibit the one that I would spend my time with on my family’s jaunts to Victoria had a nice send off in the end- and they managed to take the entire museum with them.

Kind of fitting, if you think about it.