protean depravity

Editor Ellen Datlow's new collection of short stories inspired by the infamous Shirley Jackson is simply SUBLIME. Believe me, I'm saying this as someone who isn't even an overly great fan of Jackson: each story in this book is magic! In her introduction, Datlow explains the essence of a Shirley Jackson story as "filled with hauntings, dysfunctional families, and domestic pain; simmering rage, loneliness, suspicion of outsiders; sibling rivalry and women trapped psychologically and/or by the supernatural", adding that Jackson embodies the "dark undercurrent of suburban life". And indeed, in each and every one of the 18 stories in this collection there is a piece of good old Shirley - haunted houses bring about madness, poisoning women in abundance, evil mothers, collective guilt, small-town horror... As I already mentioned above, I am not the biggest Jackson-fan but it was a great pleasure to recognize traces of say, "The Lottery" or Haunting o

The weekend before last was a horror fan's "that time of the year" again and I hope you had the opportunity to read lots of spooky ghost stories, watch tons of gory films, decorate your house in various shades of orange and eat lots of candy on Halloween. But autumn in Berlin is all the more special because each year the lovely team of Final Girls Berlin does a Halloween special to fuel up your horror tanks before the dark season really starts and it ends in a crazy masquerade where you can go wild, dress up in mad costumes and/or just be and enjoy yourself. If you have good dress-up and make-up skills, you might even win one of the super original prizes FGB has in store for you. As for me, I don't need a prize as long as I can watch the short films. As is the case each year, there were some absolute gems in the selection this time too and here are my favorites amongst this year's Halloween shorts:

October is gone and so is the intense race to read as many horrific stories as possible until the scariest night of the year... Here I am emptying my bag of horror goodies I collected during this dark time of the year, and hope you enjoy!

I have never been the one to wish to be able to fly in the skies, but Nupur Chowdhury’s A Flight of Broken Wings sure made me think about how cool it would be to have a pair of huge, beautiful wings with which I can float around and which look like those on the awesome cover, my god, look at the beauty of that!