Tag Archives: gothic

July 24, 2026 · 1:04 pm

Conjuring Gothic Horrors

Why I Conjure Gothic Horrors

Greetings, Darklings:

Today’s post will focus on why I write, or conjure, gothic horrors. I have always loved the shadows, the dark places that maybe others want to overlook or pretend aren’t there. I call those shadows home.

I have always felt like I never fit in. I have always been treated like an outsider. It used to bug me, but I guess I was never meant to fit in. Now I embrace my weirdness. I am glad I didn’t fit in. What does that mean, anyway? In today’s chaotic world, we need more nonconformity than ever. I love horror and the macabre, the dark, shadowy places few would dare to tread.

Being a Witch was a big part of me embracing my weirdness. That may not work for other Witches, but it does for me. It is personal to me. I’ve taken that outsider feeling and created characters in my stories that are outsiders, too, in their own way. Normal is relative, anyway. It is also boring.

Monsters can be, well, monstrous. I created vicious and deadly spider people in my published novella, The Cult of the Spider People. They are terrifying because they act like spiders even though they appear part human. They never think like humans. They crave blood, they are a monstrous size, far more powerful, and it is impossible to reason with them. They exist in darkness, hunt in darkness, and rip you from the light into their darkness, into smelly, moldy cocoons.

Their cave has a massive web where people are trapped in cocoons, praying to be saved, trapped in a world that does not care. That is so Lovecraftian. They speak a different language, they never consider the consequences of their ungodly actions, and they follow the Spider King. They live for the blood. Bones and skulls litter the ground. Sticky spiderwebs snare an unwary human. There is no hope of escape.

Monsters can embody our darkest fears. They can reflect fears back to a person. A monster can be anything, from the tiniest, most harmless spider to a giant squid crushing a submarine in the deep, dark ocean depths. Okay, for me, being trapped in a submarine at the mercy of a giant squid would give me nightmares. How the hell do you escape? How do you escape Arachnall?

By contrast, I wrote a novel that has a monster with a very different story, The Mourning Tide. The novel features a monstrous ghost. The townspeople shun him and act like he doesn’t exist. He is forced to exist with an unbearable loneliness until Rosemary arrives in the town.

She moves into his house. She is grieving the loss of her husband, Henry. She is heartbroken and yearns to be alone to dwell in her own grief. The neighbors are not helpful at all when she asks questions about the ghost Jonathan. Jonathan knows the truth: he was murdered. Rosemary is put to the task of finding the murderer, bringing him to justice, and setting Jonathan free into the light.

He is very human under all that seaweed he bears. He is cursed to carry his grief with him.

So what truly makes a monster? It could depend on what you perceive a monster to be. That can be a strange alien with tentacles or King Kong. If you had never seen a whale before, would you consider it to be a monster? Is an alien like the Greys a monster? Is a monster an embodiment of your fears, like in The Babadook? The Thing? A rattlesnake?

It could be anything that is alien or unfamiliar to you, something so odd and strange you do not know what to think of it. But is there sometimes something more to them, something tragic and human under all those scales or tentacles? Maybe the best monsters are the most sympathetic, such as Frankenstein’s creature. I like to think so.

A monster in your stories should not be just a monster. It can represent something, be symbolic. Show us our deepest, darkest fears when we most want to look away. Some monsters embody a sinister darkness, terrifying and omnipotent, and some are monstrous and yet there is something intrinsically human about them.

Piper is human in the novella The Cult of the Spider People, but at the end of the book, she is a monster—and yet a sympathetic monster.

A thread of hope runs throughout the whole novella, even when Piper is transformed. She is a sympathetic monster because she yearns to be human again, but that is now impossible. She made a huge sacrifice.

To find out more, you can buy the book on Amazon when it is released again in October, at the beginning of the month. I also have signed copies available. I can help pay for shipping if anyone wants a signed copy! The new edition will be released in October. That’s only a few months away!

A thread of hope runs through The Mourning Tide, my other horror story that will be released on October 5, 2026. Yes, I have the wonderful fortune of having two of my horror novels released in October. One more reason to love Samhain!

The publisher is home from the hospital, but she has to rest. The publishing schedules were shifted. Nothing could happen until the publisher was home from the hospital. She has to rest. I wish her the best, and I hope you can all wish her the very best, too!

The thread of hope in The Mourning Tide is that we root for Rosemary and hope she succeeds in her quest to help Jonathan cross over into the light, finally finding peace.

Here we have two stories, with hope and monsters and heart.

I am now working on a new horror novel. I will enjoy discovering the voices of the characters, the theme, the plot, the setting, and, of course, the monsters, be they human or horned!

Blessed Be, Spiderwitch

#monsters #humanity #ghosts #gothic #horror #hope #shadows #fear #light #darkness

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Paranormal and Witchy Fiction

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

October 25, 2023 · 11:53 am

A Dark Inspiration

Merry meet all,

This post will focus on Samhain and my dyeing fabric project using acorns. Are you all excited? I am.

I foraged for a very big mullein stalk yesterday morning. The stalk was about six feet in length. I plan to use the mullein stalk to make hag tapers or torches with. I hope and hope the weather on October 31st will cooperate. I want to have the traditional bonfire. I always have my traditional bonfire. I will  prepare the mullein pieces, cut to size in a double boiler pot with melted beeswax. I will add herbs and oils. I want the beeswax to look black so I will add charcoal. An additive to make beeswax black can affect the way it burns. The charcoal is purely for aesthetic purposes. The popular herbs for Samhain can be used to enhance the beeswax and hag tapers. I would use aromatic herbs like sage, rosemary, wormwood, mugwort and rose. I can’t wait to make the hag tapers.

I’m making the dye bath with the acorns I foraged for earlier. I have treated the muslin cloth in a pot of water with the powdered album. I use the album to make the fabric take to the dye. I used a very large stainless steel pot and added the acorns. I have to ensure the water covers the acorns. I will continue to simmer the acorns for till late tonight and let the acorns soak in the water all night until about midday tomorrow. The longer that the acorns steep, hopefully the darker the color will be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I will strain the acorns and pour the dye bath back into the pot. The acorn dye bath has steeped overnight and I’m boiling it on the stove again. The dye has become a lovely dark brown colour. I know the dye will be three times lighter when rinsed and dried. That’s why I am steeping the acorns for so long, to achieve the darkest color possible. I will attempt to dye the fabric tonight and I may do a test patch too. I am excited to see how this turns out. The tannins in the acorns are what make the dye possible. Acorns are rich in tannins. It makes me feel so witchy, stirring a pot of acorns! The scent from the acorns is musky and earthy. 

Now I have to prepare for Samhain! I am sure I am not the only one. I pureed the pumpkin to brew pumpkin bread, perhaps some barmbrack bread and pumpkin soup. I may even try making powdered pumpkin and use my dehydrator. I want to harvest dandelion roots and dry them in my dehydrator. 

Fall is the season of abundance! I am sure the book I am binding will be beautiful. Last night, I worked on it some more. I watched a few videos about people who know how to bind books professionally. They sure knew their stuff. Some of it was a little over the top. I am binding the book to create a book for my horror poetry. I want to write another poetry book. I have a pdf of the Writing in the dark poetry workbook. I am not writing my rough drafts of the poems in that book. Of course the first poem I will put in the book will be the one I wrote and had published, about the cemetery, Encounter with Death. I want to stain the pages with coffee or tea and maybe other herbal infusions. Or dilute essential oils and add that to the pages. I want herbs to have a big role in the creation of this book. The acorns are already adding that energy. I did make three pages of paper. I added a few herbs to the pages too. I will tea stain those pages and add them to the front and back of the book. The covers and spine are cut to size. I cut a small rectangle on the back book cover so I can emboss that section. 

I also plan to include a photo of the headstone where I gathered the acorns by accident. I want to include a small note that I appreciate and respect the spirit for letting me gather the acorns. I’m putting the note in an envelope and storing at the front of the book. I thought of buying a taper logy set ( the decorative paper for making a junk journal) and dyeing the paper and adding it to the book. 

The fabric I’m binding the book with is muslin. I hope the colour will be a deep enough colour of brown for this to work. I want to attach a black velveteen strip to go over the front edges of the book. I also want to add 4 corner protectors. Most of the supplies are available at Michaels. I love that store. I want to also add an adhesive to the muslin once dyed to make the fabric stiffer and more durable. 

I considered making the paper for the book by hand. But I don’t have the fine art of making paper with a mold and deckle down enough. I plan to buy a pack of coloured paper at Staples and then tea staining it and trimming the outer front edges of the paper to add texture. I have a lot of plans with this project. Maybe this will finally make me write that book already! 

Golds, brown and black tones and shades will obviously work here. I originally wanted to use the davy board up. I had some remaining from my other project. I want to decorate the pages with crows, spiders and bats. This is supposed to be about horror after all. I will post more when the book is complete. I can’t wait and I can’t wait for Samhain. 

Blessed be, Spiderwitch

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Paranormal and Witchy Fiction

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 26, 2020 · 5:50 pm

Cosplay Nightfell Herbalist

Merry meet all,

I’ve been busy sewing myself a beautiful cosplay costume, Nightfell Herbalist. Here is the photo of the costume: 

It has been so much work. I’ve returned to the project for two reasons. I want to finish it before October 31st. I also want to wear it this fall. The pattern consists of a long knee-length coat and a mock corset with a very gathered skirt that has a gathered ruffle. I have the veil, choker, and black lace gloves. My kick ass black lace up boots will look great with the outfit. 

I have a large beautiful blue button to sew onto the bodice. I can’t wait to add the trim. Here are a few tips to make a cosplay costume of your own- in time for Samhain! Do own a measuring tape and seam ripper. Remember: the seam work goes on the inside so the polished seams show outside. Measure twice cut once! That can save you lots of heartache. It’s better to have too much fabric than too little. 

I made the skirt for the costume. After three tries to gather the threads, I ended up sewing in an elastic waistband. The skirt is a deep blue color to complement the beautiful mock blue corset. I’ve included a photo of the costume so far:

The skirt was hard. It is a good idea to measure EVERYTHING! Measure the skirt before you gather the material to know how much you have. Measure how small or ‘gathered’ the skirt will be when you are all done and see if it matches your original estimation of fabric. You will then know if you are on the right track. I did it that way and my guess for how much fabric I had after it was gathered was the same as before. I ended up making an elastic waistband instead of a zipper. It was too hard to do the gathers by pulling the threads. But when I sew the ruffle ( which looks ten feet long), I have to gather. I gather it in sections, then match the ruffle to the center, side and back sections then pull the threads. I had to hem the skirt ruffles and that was a lot of effort. I didn’t do a narrow hem because it would hardly be noticed and it was serious effort. Then I sew on the waistband. 

The ruffle was a little nightmare. I had to make sure the wrong side was facing up on all the five sections-which is now 4 sections. They were all stitched together. One side was right side up so I corrected that with my seam ripper. They are so handy. Then I hemmed it section by section. I set the extra fabric over my ironing board or over a chair to hem it. My ironing board is my work space. Since all the sections were stitched together, it was trying. But slow and steady wins the race.

The ruffle sections were hard. One side of the five ruffle sections were notched. I knew then how to sew each section together. I cut tiny triangles in the seam allowance to know which side was which- and matched the edges together that way. I had to sew 5 sections together so the tiny notches were a great guide. 

I have sewn the gathers into the ruffle. The ruffle is so long. I can’t quite yet grasp how so much fabric is pinned and eased into the skirt hem. The skirt and ruffle are both dark blue. I stitched the gathers in, using 2 different lighter colors of thread. The stitches were a wide length and I left long thread tails for each section. See the photo below:

Gathers2

Here is a closeup of the gathers on the ruffle:

gathers1

Today I shall adjust the gathered fabric into the smaller skirt hem. After that, when I am satisfied with how it fits and the gathers are evenly spaced, I will sew on the dark blue wide scalloped lace over the seamline. 

The costume is supposed to have a petticoat. However, I am ever resourceful and thrifty. I have a knee-length black tulle skirt already. I cut it from a Baroness costume I wore once ( but paid $60 for). Sheesh. I donated the costume but kept the tulle skirt. I will stitch it in when I have to add the waistband. It will work just as well. See how I saved money and time- and tears that way? Yups. 

I have to finish the sleeves. The sleeves are in 2 sections. One is the sleeve with the armhole. It joins to a lacy ruffled section. I plan to finish that this weekend. The back of the jacket is a problem. I plan to stitch on a section of black fabric to the back and finish the raw edges. A zipper would normally be added but that is physically impossible for me to zip up. My arms don’t work that way. I will add a snap to the back and with the extra fabric concealing raw edges, it should look nice. When the fabric edges join where I would add the zipper, it seriously pulls on me and feels tight. I like to believe there is always another way to finish something. 

Sewing is tedious and repetitive. It does demand a certain level of dedication but I believe the results are worth it!

I have completely redone the sleeves from scratch. This time, they are sewn properly. I sewed the beautiful sleeves with black cotton and lining. The ruffle was the hard part. The ruffle has four layers to it. The ruffle is dark blue on the wrong side and black on the right side. The ruffle is very gathered. The four layers are edged with ribbon trim on all layers. But the bigger ribbon trim really does the ruffle justice. Here it is in the photo:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can tell that the ruffle is very gathered. The original size of the ruffle is about twenty-three inches in total to gather into fourteen inches. That is a lot of gathering. After I adjusted the gathers and was sure, and that my arms fit comfortably in the sleeves when I fitted it, I stitched on the bow and the small black button to the center of the bow. It looks so beautiful and feminine. 

I basted the back of the jacket and am now ready for the zipper. Once that is done, I shall sew on the sleeves. I have one or two spots to touch up then voila! Done!

Once that is all done, I can finally sew the button on the bodice. I shall add the veil, my lace gloves and witchy boots. I can’t wait to be done and wearing it in time for Samhain!

Update:

Well it turns out the cosplay costume is not ready in time for October 31st. I have sewn the sleeves onto the dress jacket. I also sewed lacy ribbon trim to the entire dress jacket opening edges. I shall sew a nice wide ribbon to the center back seam and stitch the zipper onto the ribbon. That will give me more room to fit in the dress jacket. I also need to adjust the mock corset to the rest of the jacket. I shall top stitch it to the dress jacket black fabric. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What they don’t tell you about sewing this costume!

The skirt has five sections but you can only match four sections of the ruffle to the four sections of the skirt. You can sew in the five sections of the ruffle. That gives you way more gathers. I went with four sections and it still looks great. The sewing quality has to be amazing. No room for error here. The stitches show whether they are perfect or not. It all counts! I had to redo the entire sleeves and ruffles because I realized early on the initial fabric was too heavy to take to being gathered. Oh- and do try multiple fittings as you work on this project t make sure it fits you perfectly.

The fabric didn’t want to gather as much as I would have preferred. The fabric on the back of the jacket near waistline. I still made every effort to gather the fabric and stitch it into the back waistline. 

The sleeve ruffle is very gathered but again, no room for error. Sewing the sleeves into the dress jacket took an entire afternoon. I basted and eased the sleeve into the armhole, I pinned LOTS, and I stitched the sleeves in twice into the armhole. The gathers show and whatever you do, take your time with this. It will turn out much better. Match up the ‘points’, for example, make sure that the top of the sleeve matches the top of the armhole point where it should meet. The same goes for the bottom armhole point then pin- a lot! Be sure before you begin sewing the right sides of the fabric are together. If you can turn your sleeve out and it is correct, then you sew. Then press/ iron it and try to tease out the fullness of the sleeve cap. Also, make sure that there are no holes or obvious puckers. 

Stay tuned for the next update!!

Blessings, Spiderwitch

3 Comments

Filed under Paranormal and Witchy Fiction

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,