Happy Halloween, Day 1

Welcome to October! This month I will be making a daily "spooky post," which will include my picks for link of the day, literature of the day, and other assorted goodies. I hope you will join me for my month-long celebration of all things Halloween.


First, a few related announcements and recommendations:

* To celebrate the month of October, Sword of Gryffindor (on LJ as sword_gryff) will be taking a month-long break from Harry Potter analysis and focusing on one short story by H.P. Lovecraft per week. Everyone is invited to read the stories online and join the conversation. Learn more here.

* If you're longing for some chilling Halloween listening, I recommend Mercury Theatre on the Air. This website has free downloads of haunting radio plays by Orson Welles and his company, including dramatic adaptations of Dracula and Rebecca, as well as the infamous 1938 version of War of the Worlds.

* Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has Limited Edition Halloween scents available here, while Black Phoenix Trading Post has Limited Edition Halloween items, including soaps (I highly recommend the pumpkin), available here.

* All Lacquered Up is holding an October Contest and Giveaway for the best Halloween manicure. Read more here.


And now, on with the show:

Link of the Day: Gothic Cemetery Art (Here you will find several different albums of cemetery art, including black and white photographs of unusual cemetery decorations and mausoleums.)


Literature of the Day: One of the many reasons I love Halloween is the sense of awe and wonder it produces, if we allow ourselves to be receptive to it. Neil Gaiman's poem captures this very well.

"The Day The Saucers Came"
by Neil Gaiman (1960-present)

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed to find what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-man's nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold, and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because

( On the saucer-zombie-battling gods day the floodgates broke )