I didn’t really want to get into sharing all over my social media accounts, because I wasn’t trying to be dramatic about it, but I think a little less screen time would be immensely helpful for me. I had posted this to my Patreon, but it occurred to me that friends might worry if they don’t see me online for a while, so I might want to make an update on my blog here as well. It may look like I’m disappearing for some amount of time, so before I let too much time go by I thought it might be wise to check in with you all and share where my head and heart is at right now.
We’re living in weird, sad, awful times on a global scale. Personally, we’re all going through our own shit. It’s a lot. But it’s not even that.
I’m burnt out, I’m experiencing some health-related strangeness, all of this is true. But it’s not that, either. There is the internet. Telling me I’m not productive enough, pretty enough, popular enough, that I don’t care enough, that I don’t want to save the world enough. It’s too much for any person. It’s too much for me.
Back in 1999, a friend helped me set up an AOL account. He jokingly said, “Are you ready to be queen of the internet?” I didn’t know what that could possibly mean or what that might look like. Not soon thereafter I signed up for my Live Journal account, where I realized that I could write my thoughts online and that anyone in the world might read them. I started an eBay account where i sold my sister’s old collectible Barbies (we made a killing) and then moved to sourcing and curating a little vintage clothing shop. I worked for my stepfather’s mail-order occult book business at the time, and with the HTML I had taught myself from tarting up my LJ profile page, I built us a website and moved the business to the internet. I had my own little website on Geocities and once I had a pirated copy of Dreamweaver in my mitts, I built my own little web-log. Web-blog! We used to call them that!
I have been very online from the moment that I realized it was a place to play and connect…two things I am terrible at in real life. I realized that on the internet, I could be the version of me that I always wanted to be, smarter, funnier, more eloquent, and articulate. With the buffer of cyberspace between me and another human being–I was all of those things.
The years went on, and with the exception of a period of time during the MySpace era when I was in a shitty relationship where my internet usage and every keystroke was monitored, I continued to live a very online life. With every new social media account, I found a new place to try and be my “best me.” I’ve never stopped. I’m still trying, in my stunted, weird little introverted way, to somehow become queen of the internet.
The problem with nebulous goals is that you have no parameters or criteria, you don’t even know what the endgame is. And whatever you do, no matter how much you’ve done or how far you’ve gotten, it’s never, ever enough.
I can’t satisfy that void within me that answered the internet’s call so many years ago. It’s a hole that will never be filled. Though I’ve not become a flashy influencer, I’ve been consistent and dependable. And over the years I think that’s built me a reputation and a small following–which has led to some really cool opportunities. I’ve written three books. I was on NPR. I was featured in my favorite magazine in the world! And some of my favorite podcasts! My favorite perfume company collaborated with me to create a series of perfumes! What more do I want?
It’s everything. I want everything. And it’s exhausting to want so much and know that no matter how hard I work, create, or produce, at the end of the day, I’m still the person behind the screen who in reality is fairly unremarkable.
What does that unremarkable person do when no one is watching? When she’s not writing up a moment in her head even as it is still happening so that she can share it on Instagram with a heavily filtered photo later? What is she writing, smelling, reading, or cooking, when she’s the only one who will ever know about it?
This is all very-in-my-head, navel-gazey stuff. It’s embarrassing. I feel like at my age I should have better stuff to worry about, and don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of worries and anxieties. But this one. It’s a constant. A sort of “who are you and why should anyone care?” demon on my shoulder for as long as I have had a sense of self.
So! –I say as I pick up my phone and go to check TikTok for the tenth time this morning even though I have temporarily deleted all of those apps from my devices– So! Here’s where I am. For the next two weeks, I’m deleting social media apps from my phone and logging out from all of that junk on my other devices. The stretch goal is a month, but I’m officially telling myself “two weeks.” If you need to get ahold of me for any reason, feel free to email me at mlleghoul AT gmail dot com, and of course if you’ve got my number, feel free to text. But don’t call me, for god’s sake!
As I write this here I am already one day in, and guess what–it didn’t kill me. There may be hope for me yet.
You guys. I have been waiting on this Tomie-inspired fragrance ever since Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab teased its creation way back sometime last year. And much like the feelings provoked by the malevolent, regenerative entity herself, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since that time.
I’ve mentioned my great love for horror manga artist Junji Ito’s creations many times on this blog; just the other day I included one of the Tomie movies (there are like nine of them at this point) in my 31 Days of Horror blogs. But if you’re unfamiliar, how to describe Tomie? I feel like a monster myself (and a horrible feminist) when I try to talk about her. Tomie is an enthralling young woman whose beauty drives people mad in different ways–women want to either be her or, or are insanely jealous of her, and men become obsessed with her to the extent that they end up chopping her up and killing her–and she returns eternally to torment all of them.
What is Tomie? A succubus? A mutation? To me, at least, it’s never really clear. She’s an irredeemable anti-hero who’s an absolute guilty pleasure girl-power fantasy and she brings to mind the Margaret Atwood quote, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
..and all this misogynistic violence and exploitative gendered body horror and self-flagellation on my part for even reading it at all stems from the artist’s boyhood memory of a classmate dying. In an interview, Juni Ito shared that a boy in his junior high died in a traffic accident.
He observed, “It just felt so odd to me that a classmate who was so full of life should suddenly disappear from the world, and I had a strange feeling that he would show up again innocently.” He goes on to reveal that’s how he came up with the idea of a girl who is supposed to have died but then just shows up as if nothing had happened.
In Wikipedia, it says that he was inspired by the phenomenon of lizard tail regeneration. I suppose it could be both, why not!
Anyway! Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has taken all of our Tomie angst and terror and created a “seductive and deceptively delicate blend of rose-tinted white sandalwood, ethereal white amber, voluptuous almond blossom, coeur de jasmin, and a gasp of bourbon vanilla.”
When I first wore it, it seemed a simple confectionary musk. I became unnerved and overwhelmed when I thought for a second there that it was beginning to remind me of something, a sort of candied heliotrope feather boa of a perfume that when I first smelled it in 2020 I became convinced that it was a monstrously annoying YouTube celebrity’s signature scent. (She was revoltingly pink and OKAY YES I was obsessively watching her even though I hated her and found her vile and this all makes sense to me even if I can’t explain it.) I don’t want to say who because I don’t want to be a mean girl, and I also hate comparing one perfume to another when I am reviewing things, but my only point here is, that I thought I smelled this perfume for a brief second* but when I obsessively began sniffing my wrist trying to pinpoint it, the momentary phantom was already gone. There is actually no comparing these two scents at all, but the thing is, from then on, I never stopped obsessively sniffing.
*my point, which I am having the devil of a time trying to articulate is that BPAL, in those opening notes, nailed that sort of attractive/repellent quality that this specific perfume requires; a flash of something revolting just to remind you who you’re dealing with, but then you’re immediately and utterly subsumed by how beautiful it is and you’ve forgotten that you were briefly but thoroughly appalled. It’s hard to write a sentence with the words “revolting” or appalling” when it comes to your favorite perfumer, but it feels so marvelously intentional and incredibly executed here, I can’t not talk about it!
Tomie crawls beneath your skin, a slithery jasmine-amber-flecked marzipan cotton candy ghost musk of a scent, but not a fresh, hot carnival cone of the stuff–rather, the soft, sticky filaments of floss caught in your uniquely self-scented hair at the end of the night. And maybe a bewitched and bothered someone is bizarrely compelled to snip a few of those sweet, tangled tendrils while you’re sleeping because they’re an absolute psychopath, and maybe when you wake up in the morning the scissors are gripped in your own hands, the sultry tresses are tucked into your own little etched sandalwood box, and maybe, perhaps, the psychopath is you. Utterly obsessed with yourself.
BPAL’s Tomie is both quietly haunting and all-consuming, the ghost of something you’re desperate to possess, but which is fully possessing you even as it slips through your fingers and disappears.
This is exactly it. This is Tomie. They got her perfectly right.
Tonight on this 31 Days of Horror edition of Midnight Stinks is Only A Witch Cat, Pearfat Parfums ode to cult classic Japanese horror film Hausu, a kitschy, kaleidoscopic, gloriously demented, dizzying psychedelic fever dream which I chose for a first date with my now husband I am pretty sure he is still reeling from it 12 years later.
If I recall correctly this was a film wherein Toho, attempting to replicate the commercial success of American movies like Jaws, hired a renowned ad-man known for his creativity and aesthetics to make a blockbuster movie…and then this man enlisted his 12 year old daughter to help. I love that story, and it made for one of my all-time favorite films.
With notes of shiso leaf and climbing vines, melon and coriander, and powdered compact, this is a fragrance of melancholic breezes tangling gorgeous powdery citrus shampoo-perfumed hair, fraught with a crisp, crushed oppressive green tension. It’s a scent of loss, lost love, lost youth, and ghosts and spectres shadowed by generations of loss. For all that, it’s not a dense or heavy scent, it’s light and flimmering, but you can feel its presence–like the gaze on the back of your neck, like movement from the corner of your eye, like a past that you can’t escape.
This review was originally posted to my Midnight Stinks TikTok on October 12, 2023.
@midnightstinks Midnight Stinks, episode 407: Only a Witch Cat from Pearfat Parfum.
Like many folks with a lifelong fondness for horror, Shirley Jackson’s elegant, unnerving The Haunting of Hill House holds an extra-special place in my heart. Not just scary for the unknowable motivations of the notorious house and the intense atmosphere of personal terrors it conjures for each of its inhabitants, but there’s also the soul-crushing psychic soup of mental disintegration that it encourages as the house takes further hold. It’s heady, intense stuff, and one of my favorite haunted house stories.
I never necessarily thought that we needed a return to Hill House but when I learned that Elizabeth Hand was authorized by Shirley Jackson’s estate to write such a story, I’ll admit, I was pretty excited. Her short stories are incredible–“Near Zennor” (found here) being a particular favorite of mine. A weird, supernatural mystery wherein a grieving widow is driven to learn more about a secret part of his wife’s past, it affected me to such a degree that I made a creepy little playlist for it. Wyldling Hall, a book about a folk band recording in a strange, remote house and the tragedies that happened there, is another favorite of mine from this author. If anyone is to be working with Hill House material, I would trust Elizabeth Hand implicitly–she knows a thing or two about creating immersive, eerie atmospheres and disturbingly uncanny happenings.
In A Haunting On The Hill, Holly is a struggling playwright who has been awarded a grant, and, being in the area and happening upon the expansive opulence of Hill House, she immediately falls under its spell. She becomes convinced that it would be a grand idea to rent it out for a few weeks and invite a group of her actors and collaborators to work on her current project together. The intimate gathering, sequestered away from the bothers of the world for a time, would afford everyone the opportunity to appreciate the material and put their own spin on it and sink into their roles, etc. Along for the ride is Nisa, Holly’s girlfriend, a singer with a beautiful voice that Holly doesn’t want to give too much of the limelight to; Amanda, a prickly older actress with a bit of a cult following and a reputation because of an on-stage tragedy she is linked to; and Stevie, Holly’s best friend, a sensitive and vulnerable individual who is going to do sound design and play the part of a demon-dog. A demon-dog! Yes, this is a play about witchcraft!
Once ensconced in its oppressive walls, the group begins to realize that the space is not as luxurious as it might have initially appeared. Rooms are dimly lit, dusty, and damp. There are more rooms and twisting hallways than would seem possible, and it is easly to become lost, alone, and open to the awful energies of the place. All of the members of the troupe begin to encounter varying degrees of strange and terrifying weirdness inside Hill House but because of their various agendas and commitments, they each have their own reasons for looking the other way (or in some cases, leaning into it) and seeing it through.
They are warned repeatedly to leave the house by people who live locally and who know its history and what always happens there. The realtor who owns the house, the woman who occasionally cleans the house and who drops off meals for Holly and her guests, as well as the eccentric individual who lives in a trailer down the road and who initially chased Holly with an axe on the first day she saw the house. As it happens, this trio all knows each other, and they may be witches, too! Although I am not sure how much that actually figures into the story.
Did Elizabeth Hand do the Hill House material justice? I didn’t go into this book with this question in mind because I wanted an Elizabeth Hand story, not another story by Shirley Jackson. But I’m sure that will be on the minds of a lot of people who are interested in reading the book. She did an outstanding job of evoking the house’s sickening nature, and how it affects/infects each individual so differently depending on the neuroses and trauma that they bring with them into the house. I thrilled to the way that we got to experience Hill House’s terrible corridors again through contemporary eyes and modern sensibilities. And while I did find some of the characters absolutely insufferable, I think all of the personalities worked within the context of the story, and also, that’s just people, right? There’s one or two in every friend group that are annoying and unbearable. And if you care about such things, the whole story is absolutely bewitched with gorgeously golden autumnal vibes and haunting harvest-filtered imagery–which makes it an incredibly perfect October afternoon read.
Livide is a quiet, creeping shadowy fairytale of a French vampire film that I have been meaning to watch since 2011. It took me a long time to get around to it.
At the start of the story, Lucie is a young woman who is accompanying a home health aide making the rounds amongst the geriatric folks around town who require medical care. Their final stop is a remote estate where legendary former ballerina Mrs. Jessel lies decrepit and fading in her dark ancestral home, and also apparently needing mysterious blood transfusions. Lucie’s mentor is a chatty, though vaguely unpleasant woman, who slips into the conversation that there is said to be treasure hidden somewhere inside the creepy mansion. Of course, Lucie innocently later shares this intel with her boyfriend, and along with his brother, the two siblings hatch a plan to sneak into the house and rob the old woman of her riches. Lucie reluctantly tags along. Naturally, what they find instead is more sinister and horrifying than they could imagine.
I finally watched this beautiful, bizarre nightmare of a film, and I am indeed satisfied. Here are a few eerie screencaps because the imagery was just too gorgeous to resist.
Peche Obscene from Lvnea, in collaboration with musician Chelsea Wolfe is glorious– but what I mean is glorious in the way that something monstrous and magnificent stalks the dead zone of night, by stealth and in the dark. This is peach, irradiated and ashen and grown over with moss and broken bird’s nests and salted against curses, curls of ferric iron to both ward away and contain within. A peach more lore and legend than it ever had life, a peach whose shadow looms uneasily far beyond its ruined flesh. Juices corrupt with the grave dirt of vetiver and patchouli and oozing with osmanthus’ strange leathery/jammy incense, Peche Obscene is an undead lich of a peach, and it is absolutely, terrifyingly bewitching in the way that all delicious forbidden things are.
With notes of “gasoline, dirt, rocks, leather, and funeral flowers” you’d probably expect Procession from Seance Perfumesto be a somewhat challenging scent, or a fragrance that some people might describe as “an acquired taste.” But that’s not the case at all. From the very first sniff, this gentle floral is all about softness and solace. Not the heavy, sinking desolation of sorrow, but rather the easement of having your grief and suffering witnessed by someone who is not trying to fix it, or make you feel better, just to quietly sit with you in sadness. All sorts of blooms, lilies and orchids, hydrangeas and lacy sweet alyssum, powdery, creamy, honeyed blossoms gently perfuming the darkness so that it’s not so lonely there.
Fiery Pink Pepper from Molton Brown opens with so much promise, a zesty dust storm of dry citrus peel and pith, ginger’s tangy effervescent spice, and some underlying rosy-peppery woody notes. It rapidly becomes a somewhat predictable smelling woody cologne that is somehow also aquatic, but both aspects are equally lackluster. It’s that bubbly, vivacious new acquaintance that when you get to know them, you realize that they don’t actually have any interests or passions and they don’t have much of an internal life. Fun for a very short time, but it’s no one you are ever going to have a deep or lasting connection with. This fragrance is the essence of that person–what little essence they might have, anyway– distilled and bottled.
In this review for Ethereal Wave from Liis there are a few thoughts on music, and I just want to put it out there that I am an enthusiast, not an expert. Take my opinions with a grain of salt and also probably not very seriously. So Ethereal Wave is a fragrance that I am given to understand, is inspired by the gauzy, gossamer otherworldly sounds of the genre of music pioneered by musicians of the ineffable, the Cocteau Twins. And while there are just no words to convey how very into this concept I am, I am not sure that’s exactly what the fragrance gives me. I get a bright, lush, honeyed apricot (which I don’t think is a note even in this perfume), haloed by a white tea’s crisp, clean, grassy elegance. I don’t get a sense of the cardamom listed in the notes at all, but together the apricot-esque-ness and the white tea aspect meld to create something shimmering and luminous with an almost fluorescent neon radiance. Let’s say Cocteau Twins are at the more dreamy, delicate atmospheric end of the spectrum, and then all the way on the other end is the bold and strange (but also strangely catchy) sci-fi, avant-garde dream pop of Grimes, who is basically an anime character of a musician. So that’s the sort of stream-of-consciousness thinking that got me to the place where when I’m wearing this sample, I feel like a member of a colorful kawaii magical girl gang fighting space aliens when they’re not being school girls and pop idols, and i don’t know if any of you have seen or remember Tokyo Mew Mew but that’s where Ethereal Wave has taken me.
Himitsu from Regime des Fleurs is a scent that I immediately loved and felt like it understood me, but it oddly and immediately called to mind a scent I don’t care for and which I can’t relate to…and yet on some level, they smell strangely similar. That scent I’m thinking of is Daim Blond from Serge Lutens, and its cool floral iris, expensive suede handbag, and apricot sunbeam vibes are the embodiment of someone who has it super together, they’re on a career track and probably going to make partner, they do yoga and host book clubs. I imagine they probably live in the city and they thrive in that energy and the atmosphere. I feel like Himitsu is the country mouse version of that person and they grew up with the exact opposite temperment. They live in a secluded little cottage at the edge of some remote hamlet, and their only friends are like 25 varieties of wildflower and maybe one bluebird and they wear an actual, honest-to-patchwork, ruffled Holly Hobby bonnet which they wear unironically. They probably own a grainy recording of the Royal Ballet’s Tales of Beatrix Potter. They smell of dew-dappled violets at dawn, lacy cotton curtains drying in a chilly October breeze, and soft leather boots that have never clicked or clacked on concrete; they only know the quiet creeping moss and curling fern of woodland paths.
I purchased Shay & Blue Cotton Flower because I thought it might be similar to a scent I am very fond of: Bath and Body Works Clean Cotton Blossom which then became Sea Island Cotton and which is now Fresh Cotton, but is perhaps not even available anymore? I loved the idea of that scent because it always conjured a sort of Anne of Green Gables Gunne Sax feeling for me, like cottagecore pre-whenever people started referring to it as cottagecore. Cotton Flower is less bleachy and screechy than any of the B&BW iterations; it doesn’t have that harsh lemony lily of the valley cleaning product aspect. It’s a bit woodier and muskier and warmer, with a golden nectarine glow, which is not to say it’s fruity, but it’s got a rather peachy-coral-vermillion-emberglow YouTube vaporwave neon sunset version of the scent of something like a nectarine. Shay & Blue Tonka Angelica is a resinous vanilla incense almond blossom pudding, with an underlying plastic milkiness reminiscent of Japanese milk candy.
There’s something about Craft from Andrea Maackthat feels sleek and reflective, like the soaring chrome spires of a retrofuturistic sci-fi megastructure and its mechanized cybernetic inhabitants. It’s a cool, bloodless scent, like frost flowers on glass, and wintry chilled metal. I hadn’t read the description prior to writing down these thoughts and now I’m simultaneously pleased and peeved because I picked up on this perfume’s vibe to such an extent I’ve almost quoted the website’s copy about jet packs and robots right back at you. This is one of those instances when it seems the concept and the execution align in an almost preternaturally perfect way… like the android overlords have implanted these ideas directly into my brain!
cover art by George Ziel for Shorecliff by Marilyn Ross
A full moon hangs low in the sky, its eerie glow casting flickering shadows in the tangled, overgrown gardens. Ancient trees loom like spectral sentinels, their gnarled branches tangling the curls of an anguished heroine, her hair whipping in the wind as she flees an unseen menace. Hark, a lone candle beckons from a distant window–but is it in welcome, or in warning?
In the shadowy realm where danger and desire entwine, George Ziel’s (1914–1982) haunting brushstrokes captured the essence of the genre, bringing to life its dark and captivating world. Ablaze with passion and peril and replete with the gothic imagery of crumbling castles, abandoned ruins, and overgrown cemeteries, these works were mesmerizing bewitchments, both beautiful and terrifying, invitations into a world of mystery and suspense.
cover art by George Ziel for The Haunting of Elizabeth Calder
An artist in his very soul regardless of circumstance, Ziel (born Jerzy Zielensky) survived the atrocities of WWII and the Warsaw Ghettos with his powerful need to create art intact; after his liberation and during hospital convalescence, he turned the desperate scrap paper and charcoal sketches of his fellow prisoners in the notorious camp into new drawings which were then collected into stark, unforgettable books and published in 1946.
After the war, Ziel moved to New York City and embarked upon his incredibly prolific career as a commercial artist, creating countless pulp paperback novel covers. He left behind a legacy of many hundreds of lurid book covers– brooding gothics, macabre horror, even lush romances– a lifetime of painterly visions and shivery wonderments to capture the imagination and transport readers to mysterious realms of secrets and darkness.
Read more of George Ziel’s biography and career over at Lynn Munroe books, and see below for a small gallery of my favorites from among his beautiful nightmares.
cover art by George Ziel for Inherit the Mirage by Julia Thatcher
cover art by George Ziel for Twilight Return by Jean Kimbro
cover art by George Ziel for The Storm Witch by Elisabeth Barr
cover art by George Ziel for The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart
cover art by George Ziel for Nightgleams by Julia Thatcher
cover art by George Ziel for Black Candle by Christine Randell
covert art by George Ziel for Appleshaw by Christine Damien
cover art by George Ziel for House of the Darkest Death by Alicia Grace
cover art by George Ziel for Dark Waters of Death by Sharon Wagner
cover art by George Ziel for Whispering Gables by Sandra Abbott
I’ve been curating little capsule collections of fragrances for myself each month— a “marinade,” if you will — and I have particularly been looking forward to revisiting these autumnal selections for spooky season. If you’re interested in hearing more about these perfumes, head on over to my TikTok account!
I am a bit overwhelmed, and I don’t know what more there is to say about it anymore, but the case is cracked, and the mystery is solved! You can read all about it and listen to the story over at The Endless Thread Podcast today.
And also, because I do not want to possibly contribute to confusion for future people seeking this answer, I’m going to include it plain as day right here: it’s Richard Bober! But you should listen to the podcast anyway because it was lots of fun hearing about the twists and turns that eventually led to the answer. You need to experience the whole wild ride! Many, many thanks to all of the people who left comments on this blog post, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and on all of the various subreddits. And a huge thanks to John Coulthart for A LOT of suggestions and ideas and, of course, Adam Rowe and Michael Whelan, who shared their expertise and connections and got so many eyeballs and brain noodles involved!
AND ALSO, I never would have made the connections and guessed it was this particular artist; however, he was not entirely new to me. Do you recall me sharing this image all over social media a few years back? Well…it’s the same artist!!
Hello friends. Where did the spring (and summer!?) go? Well, here I am again, and thanks for paying me a visit. In this video,I’ll catch you up on what’s been going on with me, and, as usual, I’ll share a few favorites. And guess what else? My new book, The Art of Fantasy, is here! But don’t worry; I promise this is not an 18-minute video about my book.
Below is a listing of the items and various things and people mentioned found in this video, more or less in the order they were mentioned…
