Unquiet
Things

Stora Skuggan Silphium A little burlap sack of herbs, a little spell-bag, green, dry, peppery, sharp, that you tucked in the back of your freezer for safe-keeping. You forgot it entirely and found it freeze-dried and iced over hidden by a bag of peas years later and just in the corner beyond it, you see something strange. A shimmering-glimmering fissure, a glowing rift. What appears to be a portal in the very back of your frigidaire. Sea salt air wafts cleanly from it, cerulean waves dazzling in the far distance (is it ocean or alien horizon? unclear) and most peculiar, sandy pathy lined densely with something very much the shape of pine trees, fragrant boughs heavy with gleaming drifts of snow.

Aysha Hansen Golden Thread is freaking magic. On paper, I should not have cared for it at all. I hate the scent of bananas. I find ylang-ylang’s deeply earthy, floral/weird, rubbery musk to be wildly obnoxious. AND YET! This opens with the floral musk of that ylang-ylang to be sure, but from there it becomes this deep, rich warmth, the warmth of not say, mahogany or wood or amber or those kinds of things, but rather of sweet, sun-warmed skin. My nose has been constantly pressed to my pulse while wearing this, I may have actually rubbed a little dent in my wrist! A honeyed creaminess, an impossibly soft radiance, like the subtle glow radiating from someone sleeping in late summer sun, drowsy salt-kissed and vanilla dream-touched.

Imaginary Authors The Abandoned Mansion Haunted tiki bar, spectral mai tai floating in the periphery while some scratchy exotica album plays from a speaker you can’t locate, Martin Denny maybe, or Les Baxter’s jungle fantasies, that whole mid-century escapist thing that was already nostalgic for something that never existed, already haunted by its own appropriations, its own colonial fantasies dressed up as lounge entertainment, which is absolutely not what this fragrance is about but it’s where my nose took me, this tiki bar detour having nothing to do with the brand’s actual abandoned mansion concept. The fruit here does exactly what I want fruit to do in fragrance, ashen and dusty and somber, bruised and semi-preserved like fruit that’s been drinking alongside the patrons, drifting in its own languid dissolution, melting into the upholstery, losing definition under hazy torch light. Beach cottages abandoned after hurricane season, with everything softly deteriorating in the damp air, fruit bowls forgotten on kitchen counters, paperbacks yellowing and swelling and smelling like vanilla and wood pulp slowly decomposing, all of it fading together. This is October in places where October doesn’t mean sweaters, where fall is more conceptual than meteorological, where the season changes because the calendar says so, but the air is still thick and warm. Something resinous and golden underneath, woody-amber earthiness, tropical-earth, the smell of wood that’s never known frost, rooms that stay humid year-round. The smokiness like the ghost of a bar where fruits lounged and got tipsy, daddy-o, got a little loose. The kind of abandoned specific to semi-tropical places, where things don’t freeze and die back cleanly but just slowly molder and transform, go spectral in the heat.

Heretic Parfume Häxan is, rather than the poison gardens and shadow work that many reviewers experience, is, for me, pure romantasy magic. Not exactly “Häxan”, but rather “en rosglitterkonfekthäxa” (a rosy-glitter-confection-witch). Read my full review over on Patreon.

Slut For October, a candle collaboration between Bill Crisafi and Heretic Parfum Certified autumn freak. Unabashedly obsessed with October. Perpetually chasing autumns that can never be recaptured, eternally planning how to make the fall feeling last forever, wrapping myself in the lingering shroud of the season that never ends. Six years old dressed as Stevie Nicks, shawl shivering in the deep beech shadows and maple chill of an Ohio evening, me at twelve for the first time watching Laurie Strode in her cozy turtleneck and cardigan stroll down the Haddonfield streets with her girlfriends after school as Michael Myers stalks invisible behind the picket fences, me at twenty one deep in the Florida woods in a bitter autumn drizzle while my boyfriend and his shady brother/business partner burn files, ash in the air and on my tongue, the syrupy warmth of apple cider filling the thermos, giving my hands something to hold as everything slips further and further away from me. This candle burns with all of that. Earthy smoke and leathery ash of burning leaves, the sun low on the horizon and amber light slanting through bare branches, a crisp crunch of phantom apple that also tastes a bit like tears that you didn’t even realize you were crying. All the autumns littering your path, all the Octobers still unfolding ahead, each future fall already tinged with nostalgia before it arrives.

Poesie Perfume Cryptid scents  

Nessie: Tea steeped with blossoms and honey, a thick floral sweetness of highland flowers’ pollen suspended in viscous light. A kind of gold that pools slow, catches afternoon sun slanting through old glass, turns a chipped ceramic mug into a chalice. Wool blankets hung near yesterday’s fires, smoke absorbed into the weave, the ghost of peat clinging to fabric. Rain-grey mornings of soft, tannic ritual matters, steam as prayer, rising toward low clouds.

Mothman: Spiced warmth with its aggressive, bitter edges sanded down, autumn’s recognizable onslaught muzzled by dried leaves’ somber poetry, and tobacco’s civilizing influence. Red musk behaving itself for once, button-popped bodice replaced by a cashmere turtleneck, nutmeg simmering quietly, minding its own business instead of all up in yours. Unruly spices acting right, like their Gran is watching from heaven, turning potential chaos into orderly aromatic gorgeousness. Tea brewed strong enough to stain porcelain, threading through like the dirty bass line in a song you can’t stop humming, even though maybe it’s quite naughty, and who knows, maybe Gran IS listening.

Jersey Devil: Pine resin, cool and sharp, needles sun-baked but chilly, their green gone eerily concentrated and alien. Coastal salt drifts through forest density, ocean air wandering inland, turning shadows crystalline, evergreen ghosting translucent at the edges. Arboreal incense, blood-dark and frost-blessed, threading through branches that claw and clutch. Tea as shadow, as sanctuary, as a centering, grounding the strange marriage of forest meeting shoreline, land suspended between what roots deep and what erodes away, between darkness that grows and salt that preserves.

BPAL X Haute Macabre Bats & Bonfires The sweetness of apples gone toasty-tender, pastry-wrapped and sugar-sprinkled, a pale citrine glow of a ghostly fire, smoke that’s more shape than scent, minimalist and whimsical. This makes me think of Charley Harper’s “Bat, Bullfrog, and Bonfire” – that 1968 lithograph I wrote about in my book, The Art of Darkness: A Treasury of the Morbid, Melancholic and Macabre, where nocturnal creatures loiter in midnight glooms rendered in vivid, playful geometry. Harper had this way of distilling nature down to its essential forms, large expanses of color and jaunty shapes that somehow captured the spirit of a thing without getting bogged down in realistic detail. Bats & Bonfires does something similar – it’s not trying to recreate the acrid reality of woodsmoke or the sticky mess of actual toffee, but rather the impression of autumn nights, the gentle wit of bonfire gatherings where bats swoop overhead and apples roast on sticks. Sweet without being cloying, warm without being heavy, the kind of scent that makes eerie nocturnal scenes feel like frolicsome meditation. Harper believed humor made environmental awareness easier to swallow, and maybe this fragrance believes the same about autumn – making the season’s darker edge playful, giddy, a party for the eerie hours and midnight glooms, a celebration in flickering flames and swooping shadows rather than a dirge for dying light.

Pierre Guillaume Volupté Noire Dates soaking in over-brewed black tea, astringent and mouth-coating, that dry tannic bite married to sticky, crystallized sweetness. Dark musky honey, earthy and animalic, refined in the way something becomes after a thousand years of being wild – it evolved, got that shit out of its system. Heavy like a weighted blanket, enveloping, calming rather than crushing or claustrophobic. This is the witch in the woods who turned out to be just a person whose heart was too good, whose reputation for darkness came from living apart, looking strange, choosing solitude. You went seeking magic or answers or maybe just got lost, and she poured you tea in a chipped Limoges cup, offered a shoulder to cry on, pulled out the good French biscuits kept for guests who never come. She wrapped you in a cashmere throw gone soft from years of use, pressed soft woolen slippers into your hands, gestured to the chair by the fire that’s clearly the most cushy, cozy comfortable one. Abundance in unexpected places, richness where you thought there’d only be shadows. It makes you feel powerful and protected simultaneously, wrapped in care that looks forbidding from the outside, but inside is all velvet cushions and warm stones and things worn soft by love. The sweetness and bitterness work together, sticky dates and bitter tea conspiring toward comfort, quiet luxury in weathered textiles and secret stores of good honey, the kind you’d want to find if the world got too sharp, too bright, too much. A dark, warm space that welcomes without questions, that knows what you need before you ask, will hide the bodies in the best places.

..and finally see this separate post for seventeen fragrance reviews from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s 2025 Weenie collection!