Night Terror in a Bleak Autumn

The Dream-Woman by Wilkie Collins (From Queen of Hearts) (1855)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror    April 29, 2014

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A bleak autumn arrives.

Isaac Scatchard, a man of thirty-eight years, has been walking all day through the countryside and comes upon a small inn. He takes a room. The landlord happily closes and fastens the windows and doors, bids him a good night’s sleep. The unsnuffed candle burns down to issue a dull light as Isaac drifts off.

A strange shivering comes upon him.

 

“Between the foot of his bed and the closed door there stood a woman with a knife in her hand, looking at him.

He was stricken speechless with terror …”

We have three narrators who tell this story of Isaac Scatchard in The Dream-Woman. We begin with a physician who is traveling with a lame horse and in need of a hostler, so he stops at an inn. We meet the landlord of the inn who tells us about poor old Isaac Scatchard, a hollowed, wrinkled man with grizzled hair—a man who sleeps only by the light of day. The physician wonders if there is  something wrong with Isaac’s brain that prevents the man from normal night sleeping.  He decides he must investigate. But investigate Isaac or the power of dreams?

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The full story is told by Isaac’s mother, Mrs. Scatchard, in Chapter Three. She tells us that Isaac’s apparent nightmare of this dream-woman occurred at the precise time and date of Isaac’s birthday at 2 a.m. Superstitious dread or warning? What happens to Isaac? Does he dream of this woman again who tries to stab him?

Like Isaac, you might believe that dreams have power. And you might believe that the elements of dreams are not so frothy as to disappear upon waking. Is there a reality in dreams? Maybe  of prophecy? Or maybe the dream reality is more like destiny?

 

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I adore dream elements in fiction and Wilkie Collins’ The Dream-Woman is a haunting story. You know this author from The Woman in White, The Moonstone; Frozen Deep is his most famous play that he co-wrote with Charles Dickens in 1857.  Collins was known for creating female characters that often showed a masculine side. He is certainly revered for his narrative power in this story. If you’ve ever heard the literary term “sensation genre,” this is the man who started it all.

Collins is one of many writers who uses dreams in stories. There is some speculation that Collins may have had such a dream as Isaac had. Robert Louis Stevenson was said to have based Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on a dream; Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto came from a dream;  Stephen King found the story of Salem’s Lot in a dream. Everyone knows that Mary Shelley claimed the idea for Frankenstein happened during a dream. I did the same with my novel Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural: I dreamed of a woman alone by the sea and ruled by her nightmares of persistent demon. Was I haunted by a winged creature in my own bedroom? Many nights!

I do believe that dreams contain eerie presences and that they have the power to perform a function in our lives. For Isaac Scatchard, the dream operates on both sides of the shadow.

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There are several versions of The Dream-Woman by Wilkie Collins. This version here is  Brother Morgan’s Story of the Dream-Woman  from Queen of Hearts by Wilkie Collins:  Read the text at Ebooks.Adelaide.edu

 

Another version is subtitled A Mystery in Four Narratives and begins with the narrative (a longer version) told by the character Percy Fairbanks at ReadBooksOnline.net 

 

Or, you can listen to this version in audio, which has four parts on YouTube

 

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Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Bibliophilica.com

Horror Novel Reviews   Hell Horror    HorrorPalace

HorrorSociety.com

 Monster Librarian  Tales to Terrify       Spooky Reads

 Lovecraft Ezine      Rob Around Books    The Story Reading Ape Blog

     The Gothic Wanderer   Sirens Call Publications  The Fussy Librarian

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

 

 

 

H.P. Lovecraft: Dreams of an Accidental Shaman

If you are fascinated by Lovecraft’s fiction, this is a fascinating and informative article.  From Lovecraft Ezine, one of my favorite sites.

 

H.P. Lovecraft: Dreams of an Accidental Shaman.

 

Horror In Abasteron House

Abasteron House  (author to be revealed)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror   March 26, 2013

Abasteron House is a dark tale. We begin with the shy light of a girl under a beachy summer sun. We end in the purple of the bedchamber, a women in her dream, darkness filled and winged.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. Most recognize this line from Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “A Dream Within a Dream.” Literary experts debate the poem’s full intent, but many can agree Poe is saying all is an illusion—all we see here and all we seem to be. Really?

Illusion versus reality. What a haunting dilemma.

Imagine you are Davida Kip Livingston, a young artist, just an ordinary girl, living with your grandfather in Abasteron House by the sea. Grandfather is a dear sweet man who loves poetry and mythology and prefers to sit for long hours locked inside his attic study. But what he sees versus what he seems to be is no dream within a dream.

Listen outside Grandfather’s attic door and hear the maniacal scratching; imagine a bitter claw ripping into your flesh. Is there a growling now? Is that the flap of a winged beast? Davida wants to know what’s living inside Grandfather’s attic. Do you?

Abasteron House is published at Every Day Fiction in the March issue. The story is flash fiction (1000 words). The author is not a dead author like the other 19th- and 20th-century horror writers featured on this blog site. The author is me, Paula Cappa, and Abasteron House is the prequel to my novel Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural, where Davida Kip Livingston lives through the horror in Abasteron House.

Read the short story here:  http://www.everydayfiction.com/abasteron-house-by-paula-cappa/

Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural on Amazon.com

I love to hear comments from my readers, so please dash off a word or two if you enjoyed Abasteron House.

Stop back next Tuesday for another Tale of Terror. Follow me here, on Twitter or Facebook.

HellHorror.com 

Dreams in the Witch House … Lovecraft

Dreams in the Witch House by H.P. Lovecraft (1933)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror,   November 30, 2012

PICTURE THIS:  A bleak winter’s night. One candle light flickers. You are in the gabled attic bedroom of a 235-year-old house in Arkham, Massachusetts, not far from Salem.  The sinister scratching of scurrying rats from the wormy walls keeps you awake. Above is a cobwebbed sealed loft. A triangular gulf of darkness hangs to your left from the odd angles of the garret roof: slanted walls, peaked ceiling like a witch’s hat,  red, sticky fluid is smeared on a wall above a chewed out rat hole.

Now really, could you fall asleep? Don’t we love to be afraid like this? Well, at least in the safe confines of fiction, we do.

Walter Gilman, the main character in  Dreams in the Witch House  by H.P. Lovecraft, knows his garret bedroom in the old Witch House is likely haunted. That’s why he moved there. Mathematics and quantum physics are his studies; magic, legend, and three-dimensional space much occupy his mind. But more than that is his attraction to the story of old Keziah Mason’s witch trial back in the 1600s and how she vanished from that very attic room by casting her spells on the walls’ lines and curves  into points that created a dark spinning passage into the beyond.  Poof!

A dark passage into a fourth- or even a multi-dimensional reality, you ask? Walter believes this is possible, and he wants to find it. What he doesn’t count on is old Keziah and her darting sharp-tooth furry rodent with a bearded face, and tiny sets of human hands, who sucks the witch’s blood and relays messages between Keziah and the devil.

I ask again, why do we like this grisly stuff? Aren’t you dying to know what happens to our poor Walter?

When the nightmares begin, Walter is certain it is due to his brain-fever. Well, of course! But soon these dreams go far beyond ordinary nightmares:  Walter dreams of unspeakably menacing darkness with wild shrieking and roaring confusion, a labyrinth of hideous bubbling and choking, which plunge him into muddy abysses.  Oddly enough, when he wakes he finds this disgusting mud inside his bed. The dream becomes reality?

In another dream he actually meets Kaziah. The old crone is bent back, her face long-nosed with a shriveled chin. She drags him away by his pajama sleeve into a “violent-litten” peaked space.

Does Walter succeed in his exploration of space and dimensions? What sphere of points does he enter? Does the old witch and her fanged furry horror win? There’s no spoiler going to happen here. You’ll have to read The Dream in the Witch House yourself.

Dreams and nightmares will continue to puzzle and haunt us.  But fiction about nightmares can create deliciously scary tales that we really can’t resist. For another classic short about the supernatural power of nightmares, try The Leather Funnel by Arthur Conan Doyle. You won’t be disappointed in this chilling adventure.

Below is a link to The Dream in the Witch House.  And please take a look at my page of published short story links on another blog page; none are about nightmares. But my novel, Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural, certainly is.

The Dreams in the Witch House by Lovecraft: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dwh.asp

The Leather Funnel by A.C. Doyle: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700561h.html#s2

Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural by Paula Cappa

http://www.amazon.com/Night-Journey-Tale-Supernatural-ebook/dp/B009ONWSC2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350058974&sr=1-1&keywords=Night+Sea+Journey+paula+cappa

The Supernatural Powers in Dreams: Psychic Reality

Greetings:

Have you ever had a ghostly cold dream? A nightmare with the chill of death in it? Carl Jung (20th century Swiss psychiatrist) says a dream speaks for itself.  Are nightmares telling us something important? Jung believed there is a psychic reality to dreams. He even went so far as to say they carry a supra-luminous level of frequency that exceeds the speed of light. That in itself is frightening.

As dreamers pass into this passage of sleep, they might feel like a heavy dark spot spreading out. This is akin to the fear of losing consciousness. And this fear is so great that—rather than become unconscious—we dream.  We create images and action, stories, to maintain our identity. These are the thoughts of Dr. Laz Merlyn, psychiatrist, in Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural. A novel about nightmares, dreaming, and a supra-luminous frequency.

Laz Merlyn is a Jungian therapist. He sees a dream as a dance of alternate energy, an event that is actually a psychic reality taking action in our lives.

Let’s say you dream of a bird. A phoenix, lush with grand feathers and with wings pushing out. Merlyn will tell you that a phoenix, in Jungian theories, symbolizes the human spleen that protects against infection and cleanses the blood. Maybe in normal life, some bacteria or person or event is poised to attack you in some way. Merlyn will tell you that when you wake up, this phoenix will linger over your life. The psychic energy of the phoenix is present, day upon day, redirecting you, watching over. Are you becoming more guarded as the days pass? Suspicious? Cautious? For some people, this frequency goes unnoticed. For others who are alert to it, they are deeply affected.

But, what if you dream of a raging firehawk? A shadowy winged creature with a flaming chest, shedding ash, who captures you in your sleep and drags you into the bottom of an icy sea. This nightmare comes again and again and each night, you go deeper beneath the choking waves as the firehawk grows more fierce. What would Dr. Laz Merlyn say about that?

Merlyn isn’t the cliché handsome type. He has a rather hard face but with kind eyes. His patients find his voice to be tender, like a stream of blue smoke streaming through the air. He might tell you “The flow of psychic dream energy has the power to move inward and outward. In this dream of the firehawk, there is a negative psychic frequency. Likely caused by intense night terrors. What are you afraid of?”

Kip Livingston, an artist who lives alone on Horn Island in a house named Abasteron, dreams of this firehawk. She paints her dreams, bringing them into the physical world for all to see. With Merlyn, Kip explores her fears and the raging firehawk in the opening chapters of Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural.

But the exploration takes a turn, as the firehawk reveals it doesn’t just live in Kip’s dreams.

On Amazon.com,  LOOK INSIDE to read the opening of Night Sea Journey.  Meet Kip Livingston and experience her dreaming firehawk inside Abasteron House on Horn Island.  Price: $2.99. Ebook.

http://www.amazon.com/Night-Journey-Tale-Supernatural-ebook/dp/B009ONWSC2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350058974&sr=1-1&keywords=Night+Sea+Journey+paula+cappa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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