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Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky
Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Growing up I didn't have an older brother, so all my music was formed by my mother and father. The latter would play old Irish folk songs and outlaw music by Johnny Cash and the only thing my mother would play was heavy melancholy orchestral movements like Night On Bald Mountain. What my mother would make me do is sit on the floor and tell my father to tell a story while putting on this record. This was big for me. I was probably four years old at the time. It sounded eerie, spooky and epic. My dad would make up these ghost stories but what he was really doing was recreating these children's story soundtracks that I'd listened to! I was too young to understand what he was doing at the time, but he was just making his personalised version of The Little Prince or Tales of Witches, Ghosts And Goblins. So he'd be like [eerie voice]: ""The ghosts would move up the Catskill Mountains..."" and I'd just sit there freezing in fear of these ghost stories! It was like having a musical campfire in your living room. Also, this song featured on the film Fantasia, which was my whole life up until the age of ten. It stuck with me and it was embedded in there now you're mixing visuals. I wasn't into the Mickey Mouse aspect of it, but when you watch the eerie castle and spooky ghosts, this is just feeding a young boy's imagination and this is the world he's going to confront when he grows up. These were all the ingredients going into my soup."

Source
  
BH
Better Homes and Hauntings
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
This was a quick, fun read. Deacon Whitney, heir to what remains of the Whitney fortune, assembles a group of people to help him revamp his family's ancestral home, located on its own island off the New England coast. His family has been plagued by bad luck and financial misfortune through the years, but Deacon is a successful software engineer and has the funds available to redo the old family home. Joined by a cousin who wants to find out who really killed their great-great grandmother years ago and hopes to break the family curse, an old friend, a landscaper, and an organizational expert, Deacon and his new found friends encounter ghostly presences and jealous ex-business partners. There are some spooky moments, some humor, and plenty of romance along the way.
  
The Addams Family (2019)
The Addams Family (2019)
2019 | Animation, Comedy, Family
Altogether now:

"They're creepy and they're kooky
Mysterious and spooky
They're all together ooky
The Addams family …"

It's now over 20 years since the Addams Family last big-screen outing (in 1993), itself only 2 years after their previous outing in '91.

That means that there is an entrie generation that hasn't seen the Addams Family on the big screen: something that this (animated) film attempts to put right.

And, to damn somewhat with faint praise: this is OK, but doesn't do enough (in my opinion) to really stand out from the crowd, to really be all that memorable: there's no equivalent, say of Wednesday Addams creepy smile ("Stop it! She's scaring me!") in The Addams Family Values, say, or even of the amnesiac Lloyd Fester in the original.
  
The Sun Down Motel
The Sun Down Motel
Simone St. James | 2020 | Horror, Paranormal
9
9.0 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
I actually read Simone St. James’ incredibly spooky ghost story—set in a creepy motel—in a rather drab hotel room and boy did it scare me! The tag line: The secrets lurking in a rundown motel ensnare a young woman, just as they did her aunt thirty-five years before...

This was such a great book. It features a hard to put down mystery with excellent characters and some downright terrifying scenes! The book is packed with twists and turns, and it's absolutely captivating.

The parallelism between Viv’s story—set in the 1980s—and her niece, Carly’s, in present-day, is excellent. I was so attached to these tough women and their stories. The 1980s piece really grabbed me; St. James really captures the era so well.
  
Black Love by The Afghan Whigs
Black Love by The Afghan Whigs
1996 | Alternative, Indie, Rock
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I heard The Afghan Whigs real early on and I was like, ‘Alright, this is like soul music but it’s played by white guys from Cincinnati, and I don’t even know if they can play that well.’ They eventually could play really well, and they turned me on to this whole other way of thinking that showed me you could mix all these things together without ever crossing over into pop music, which I felt when I was younger was just not something that I related to. Crime Scene Part One was a huge song for me because it was like a movie. It was brooding and there was something spooky about it, and then when you find out what it’s about it’s really scary. From there I went straight into Tom Waits.”"

Source
  
Girls of Brackenhill
Girls of Brackenhill
Kate Moretti | 2020 | Philosophy, Psychology & Social Sciences, Thriller
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
As a kid, Hannah spent several summers at Brackenhill, her aunt and uncle's beautiful mansion in the Catskills. Joined by her older sister, Julia, they enjoyed a peaceful time away from their troubled mother and her boyfriend. But that final summer, Hannah made the journey home alone after Julia disappeared. Now, seventeen years later, Hannah is back at Brackenhill, accompanied by her calm and steady fiance Huck, to deal with the aftermath of her Aunt Fae's death. Her uncle Stuart is quite ill and Hannah must handle the necessary affairs. But once at Brackenhill, long buried memories flood to the surface, along with some undiscovered family secrets.

"She'd escaped Brackenhill once. She could do it again."

I read this completely captivating thriller in one breathless day. It's such a wonderfully eerie and ghostly mystery that excellently captures the spooky atmosphere of Brackenhill. I'm all for a read with a creepy castle, ghostly happenings, and a history of missing girls. Told in a then (Hannah and Julia's summers at Brackenhill) and now format, Moretti sucks you in from the beginning, making the reader feel as if they are a part of the haunted happenings at Brackenhill.

"The Ghost Girls of Brackenhill are an urban legend."

The result is a twisted and dark story--a true Gothic ghost tale. I figured out a few pieces, but still found this impossible to put down. Moretti excels at weaving in the devastation of family secrets and small town mystery. As Hannah unravels the mystery of her family history and her sister's disappearance, we do as well, and you'll share her sense of dread and the overall foreboding that sweeps across the pages.

I wished the ending offered a bit more resolution, but this is an excellent, haunting, and spooky supernatural read. You'll be madly flipping the pages (with the lights on)! 4+ stars.
  
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Matthew Krueger (10051 KP) rated the Xbox One version of Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs in Video Games

Nov 14, 2020  
Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs
Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs
2013 | Horror
Scary and Spooky
Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs- is a terrorfying, horrorfying, spooky, scary, creepy game.

The game features several interlocking storylines. Some take place in the past, some in the present, and some are overtly real while some may be imagined. Set in London on New Year's Eve, 1899, the game's protagonist is Oswald Mandus, a wealthy industrialist and butcher who is implied to be the great grand-nephew of Daniel, the protagonist of Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

The game is a survival horror game played from a first-person perspective.

Players explore the environments using a lantern, with diary entries and notes providing information on the lost memory of the title character. While the core of the game remains the same between the two, some elements of The Dark Descent have been removed for A Machine for Pigs, while new elements have been added, one reason being to provide a fresh gameplay experience to players of The Dark Descent.

Most of the puzzles are based on physically interacting with the environment because of this change. The sanity mechanic of the first game has been removed, meaning that the darkness and looking at the creatures no longer cause any drawbacks. Health lost when Mandus is injured, will regenerate after a certain period of time; thereby eliminating the need to find vials of laudanum to restore health as in The Dark Descent.

The game's level design has been touted as "significantly different" from that of The Dark Descent, with larger areas and outdoor environments included. AI was also adjusted to ensure players are unable to predict enemy behavior based on their experiences with the original game.

Its a excellent survival game.
  
The Whisper Man
The Whisper Man
Alex North | 2019 | Crime, Thriller
7
7.6 (8 Ratings)
Book Rating
Spine chilling atmosphere set up (1 more)
Jake the cool if spooky kid
Not much mystery in the crime (1 more)
Poor police characters
If you leave a door half open, soon you'll hear the whispers spoken.......
This book got off to a great start with a really creepy feeling to it. A spooky kids rhyme will always get the chills going.

Jake and his father Tom are struggling with life after the death of Jake’s mum and a fresh start in a new house doesn't lead to the new start Tom hopes for when Jake continues to keep saying freaky stuff and knowing things he couldn’t possibly know. There is a very supernatural feel to the beginning of this book that is well done, and how that is wrapped up is also well dealt with.

However I felt the crime plot let this book down, the killer was obvious to me as soon as they were vaguely mentioned but the police detective Amanda Beck just seemed flat out incompetent. I nearly screamed out loud at her when she gave herself the proverbial pat on the back for a job well done. Staying up all night because a kid has gone missing does not in itself make you a good cop - doing some good old style investigating that actually gets results does.

I liked the complex relationship between Jake and Tom but a lot of the other characters left much to be desired for me. Reformed alcoholic cop Pete Willis; haunted by his past felt like a character I have read/ seen a hundred times before. And the reporter with morals seemed a stretch.

All in all I’d recommend coming to this book for the chills but don’t expect the crime mystery to knock your socks off.
  
Five Nights at Freddy's
Five Nights at Freddy's
Games
7
7.0 (1 Ratings)
App Rating
Deep story and lore (0 more)
Jumpscares become too predictable (0 more)
This game has a surprisingly good story, which isnt told to you straight forward, you have to search for clues within the game to find answers. The animatronics are well designed and can be fairly terrifying. The game itself is pretty scary and mildly stressful, between managing the batteries for the camera and doors, and still keeping an eye on the animatronics to ensure they dont come into your office and get you. You cannot move or leave your office, which creates a feeling of being trapped. You cannot fight the animatronics and your only means of defence is a pair of doors that you close to keep them out, which creates a feeling of helplessness. All in all a very spooky game. If you like horror games with micromanaging, this may be for you.
  
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Matthew Krueger (10051 KP) rated The Ring (2002) in Movies

Aug 9, 2019 (Updated Oct 18, 2019)  
The Ring (2002)
The Ring (2002)
2002 | Drama, Horror, Mystery
Seven Days
The Ring- is one of those horror remakes that is actually really good and underrated.

The plot: Description It sounds like just another urban legend -- a videotape filled with nightmarish images leads to a phone call foretelling the viewer's death in exactly seven days. Newspaper reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) is skeptical of the story until four teenagers all die mysteriously exactly one week after watching just such a tape. Allowing her investigative curiosity to get the better of her, Rachel tracks down the video and watches it. Now she has just seven days to unravel the mystery.

VHS were popular back in 2002, but when rings: the third movie came out in 2016 their still thought VHS were popular but nope.

Anyways this movie is scary, terrorfying, horrorfying, spooky, suspeseful, thrilling and more.

A highly reccordmend movie.