Making A List I’m Checkin’It- Once

Artist Unknown

WP Prompters have asked us to list 30 things that make (us) you happy.

My first thought was I was going to have to sit down and make a boring old grocery list of things that make me happy- which isn’t  exactly easy because what makes me happy can change from day to day or year to year. So was I going to make a ‘greatest hits’ list or  a list that reflects how I feel at this exact ( still as dry as toast ) and then KABOOM- it hit me like a that creepy cold fog that crawls around graveyards in old black and white horror films.

I realized that the 30 things that fill my heart with joy and wonder and all of that touchy feeling good stuff are

THE 30 DAYS BEFORE HALLOWEEN:

Artist Unknown

Each day before Halloween has it’s own Spirit, it’s own flavor, and on top of that spooky stuff happens- and if it doesn’t spontaneously happen you can make it happen.

So there you have it- the 30 Things that make me happy. That bring me joy, that make me glad I’m alive.

I Am Curious

Abandoned Dust Bowl Home, about 1935–1940, Dorothea Lange

I am curious about

what happens to abandoned houses and all of their ghosts

when they are forgotten by the living.

 

Does the house listen for footsteps to make their way to their front door, does it wait for

someone to peer through their windows and desperately flip light switches to chase away not just the dark but the feeling

that something is watching them and they hope against hope that little bit of light will chase it back into the closets and up the attic stairs?

Do the ghosts

wait in the hopes  of hearing  someone ask, ” is anybody there? ”

Does

the house wonder where everyone has gone?

and if those ghosts and that abandoned house can’t haunt you or me

that must mean

it has to haunt itself

and that is enough to drive anybody

Insane.

I am curious about wandering around abandoned houses that the world has forgotten-

is it a good idea?

Is it really?

Dust Bowl farm in the Coldwater District, north of Dalhart, Texas, June 1938.
Dorothea Lange/Farm Security Administration via Library of Congress

#100DAYSOFHALLOWEENHAPPY #7

By This Candle

A hand of glory holding a candle, from the 18th century grimoire Petit Albert

Deadmen tell no tales, but a hanged  man’s left hand could be turned into a candle and used to break into people’s houses ( Vampires take note).

The hand of glory has the power to freeze people in their tracks- so I’m guessing you would be conscious (  it doesn’t say the victims are rendered unconscious) and that the victims would be fully aware of what was going on around them.

Those things being robbery, murder, mayhem and the victims can’t make a sound, or move.

That’s truly devilish.

A rider and his horse recoil at the sight of a gibbeted man- Artist Unknown

To create this grisly source of light and you were to come across a dead man in this particular condition, you could craft this candle and raise all sorts of mischief:

Take the right or left hand of a felon who is hanging from a gibbet beside a highway; wrap it in part of a funeral pall and so wrapped squeeze it well. Then put it into an earthenware vessel with zimat, nitre, salt and long peppers, the whole well powdered. Leave it in this vessel for a fortnight, then take it out and expose it to full sunlight during the dog-days until it becomes quite dry. If the sun is not strong enough put it in an oven with fern and vervain. Next make a kind of candle from the fat of a gibbeted felon, virgin wax, sesame, and ponie, and use the Hand of Glory as a candlestick to hold this candle when lighted, and then those in every place into which you go with this baneful instrument shall remain motionless

A hand of glory on display at Whitby Museum North Yorkshire, England

On this #100DAYSOFHALLOWEENHAPPY where we are asked to consider #24 “Candle” I am thinking about the Hand of Glory and the macabre tree they fell from.