Calling all Banshees!

Banshees are among the most feared creatures of the fairy and supernatural realm,  and this may be in part to the sympathies they invoke when you hear their wailing. You could easily be lured into the dark of night, hoping to help the pathetic creature who sounds as if she is in mourning. Some tales recount that banshees are the ghosts of women who have died in childbirth; others say they are the restless sprits of unrequited lovers.

It is common for families to inherit the banshee, who arrives time and time again to warn of an impending death.

To quote Raymond Buckland from his book The Weiser Field Guide to Ghosts:

“It has been said that a banshee is really the disembodied soul of someone who once lived and was attached to the family in some way.  It depends upon the relationship that the banshee had with the dying family member as to how the banshee announces his or her coming death.  If the person about to die was of a gentle, kind disposition, then the banshee will appear and sing soft songs of warning, summoning the person to death.  But if the person destined to die was of a hateful disposition, then the banshee will make her announcement with horrible cries and screams.”

Have you ever seen or heard a banshee? I want your first-hand accounts for my upcoming book, Banshees, Werewovles, Vampires, and Other Creatures of the Night (Weiser Books, October 2013).

Contact me at varlaventura AT gmail.com (you know how to actually type that, right?) and let me know what creepy creatures you’ve encountered.

Houses of Horror on Huffington Post

 

All you fans of American Horror Story, haunted houses, and weird news should enjoy my latest article on Huffington Post.

Click HERE to read it.

Hearses from Hell

Residents of Hell, Michigan will proudly host Hellfest 2012, which includes the Nightmare Cruise: an “all hearse car show and parade” that takes place every year.

Hell, which as it turns out is just 45 miles west of Detroit, hopes this year they will take back the world record for number of hearses gathered at once . They set the record in 2011 but earlier in August of 2012 a group of funeral directors in the Netherlands set the new world record.

The parade will take place Saturday (tomorrow) September 15th. The hearse show begins at 10am and the parade at 4:30. It is always held the third Saturday of September.

Just Hearse N’Around,a Hell-based car club that boasts the motto “out to put the others to rest” has hosted this parade for 11 years. If you are thinking about going, they will have the Casket Grill fired up but recommend you bring a cooler of your favorite drinks (it can get hot in Hell!) And if you are thinking about participating, the rules request that:  ”the vehicle was purposely built and in service at one time (or currently) as an actual hearse, combo, or flower car. (Pickup trucks with coffins in the back are really cool, but they aren’t hearses.)”

Trophies for various categories will be given, including “Scariest Hearse” and the ever popular “How the Hell did it make it here?” award! You are encouraged to dress in costume. Lots of Goth, steampunk, and horror fare for sale!

Last year, the parade was filmed and several members interviewed for the forthcoming movie (October 2012) Hellbound.  For more information, go to www.hellboundthemovie.com

Did you ever think?

 

 

Who’s That Knocking on my Coffin Lid? Vampires, Magical Creatures Part Three

Lovers of True Blood, Dracula devotees, and Twilight tweens: I offer you the ancient vamps of my Magical Creatures series!

These are the stories that Stephenie Meyer and Anne Rice read when they were but wee babes, suckling on their mothers (or the  neck of their mother). These are the groundwork stories about vampirism, both horrific, romantic, and psychic.

Currently available exclusively as e-books, these are found volumes of forgotten lore (many a quaint and curious tale!) and cover the realm of such creepy and cool beings as goblins, werewolves, vampires, banshees, mermaids, and phookas, to name but a few.

(If the response is positive on these little e-beasts, I’ll be expanding them into book form!!)

Horror devotees will recall the story of the infamous gathering at a lake house outside of Geneva, Switzerland in the summer of 1816 where a small party celebrated the settling darkness by reading ghost stories aloud to one another. Present were the host, Lord Byron, and his guests: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (Shelley) and her sister, and Lord Byron’s physician—John William Polidori. At the prompting of Byron, pens were set to paper to write ghost stories of their own. Here the groundwork was laid for what would become Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a Modern Prometheus. Shelley himself wrote Fragments of a Ghost Story, and Byron wrote something called Fragment of a Novel. This “fragment” became the basis for Polidori’s The Vampyre, A Tale—the first vampire novel published in English, some seventy years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Also in the vampire collection, are two lesser known tales by Bram Stoker: Burial of the Rats and Dracula’s Guest. Both were part of a collection of stories that Stoker had been working on but never published. After his death, his widow decided they were fit for print and submitted them to his publisher in 1914. And Théophile Gautier’s Clarimonde is by far one of the most controversial vampire stories from the early 19th Century. A would-be priest begins to doubt his path and his God when he meets (by chance?) fair Clarimonde. I won’t give it all away but this is some necromantic romance at its best! And finally, George Sylvester Viereck’s 1907 short story The House of the Vampire was the first novel to introduce psychic vampires.

You can purchase these little digital gems following the links below:

The Vampyre: A Tale by Varla Ventura and John William Polidori (Amazon) (B&N)

The Burial of the Rats by Varla Ventura and Bram Stoker (Amazon) (B&N)

Dracula’s Guest by Varla Ventura and Bram Stoker (Amazon) (B&N)

Clarimonde by Varla Ventura and Théophile Gautier (Amazon)

The House of the Vampire by Varla Ventura and George Sylvester Viereck (Amazon) (B&N)

Funeral Parlor Antics on Huffington Post

My latest article on Huffington Post all about the amazing things funereal homes are doing to say alive! Like adding a Starbucks, hosting a chili cook off, and more. Plus the origin of the word hearse!

Click below to read more:

Huffington Post Article on Funeral Homes

Who Do Voodoo? You Do! Or at least, Lee does.

Do you watch Secret Circle? I came to it a bit late to the game, but I am officially addicted (again!). Yes, I’m a teenager deep down inside.

As you may have seen in one of the most recent episodes,  the always-mischievous Faye and the always-trailing-behind Melissa have started spending more and more time in Faye’s new love interest, Lee’s, voodoo shop. While Faye insists that Lee is a fake, that none of his “voodoo” powers are actually real, she’s started realizing that there might actually be something to Lee’s odd voodoo spells and totems when he effectively cast a spell to draw out Cassie’s dark magic a few episodes ago.

I was struck by a warning Lee gave about Voodoo practitioners, about his Devil’s Spirit drug dealing friend, Callum, and about the nature of voodoo and the dangers of dabbling in something you don’t understand. Because lord knows Varla loves to dig into things she doesn’t understand! If it is freaky and sneaky or ghoulish and foolish, I can’t seem to help myself. And not to totally freak you out but my editor at Weiser Books found out about my Secret Circle fetish (and blossoming interest in Voodoo) and sent me this super cool book by Denise Alvarado. The truth is much of the history and practice of Voodoo is shrouded in superstition and false truths, and Alvarado’s The Voodoo Hoodoo Spellbookis an excellent resource for anyone looking for authentic Voodoo and Hoodoo root0work and magic.

Not for the faint of heart, this book is the real deal. It has money spells and love spells, and quite a few curses and hexes for good measure. This is not white magic! But it is full of amazing ideas and incantations. I love the author’s website and her crafts.

Check it out!

Afterdeath Communication on Huffington Post

Recent news had got me thinking about what kind of letters I’d leave behind if I were hit by a bus today, etc.

My mother and I have made arrangements for some post-death messages. What would you do? Read my latest post on The Huffington Post Weird News.

Click below:

Varla’s Huff Po Blog

Banshee Banter

A Kiss in the Dreamhouse

One of my favorite bands as a young, surly teen was Siouxsie and the Banshees, whose front-woman Siouxsie Sioux was a gothic chantress who howled like a mythological siren—luring you with her tales of travel and woe. So when I came upon Elliot O’Donnell’s book about banshees I simply had to dust off the old vinyl (for you youngins’ whose main experience with vinyl is the sheath you keep your iPod touch in, I am referring to a vinyl record) and paint on some heavy eyeliner so I could have a good ol’ fashion Banshee Bash.

Banshees are among the most feared creatures of the fairy kingdom, and this may be in part to the sympathies they invoke when you hear their wailing. You could easily be lured into the dark of night, hoping to help the pathetic creature who sounds as if she is in mourning. Some tales recount that banshees are the ghosts of women who have died in childbirth; others say they are the restless sprits of unrequited lovers.

Check out the story of The Malevolent Banshee available now as an e-book.

The link:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Malevolent-Banshee-Collection-ebook/dp/B0077D8KH8/ref=sr_1_38?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1331326303&sr=1-38

or on the nook:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/malevolent-banshe-elliott-odonnell/1108862203

Another Feast for the Freaks

As we all roll out of bed on this post-Thanksgiving Monday morning, possibly still clutching our guts in regret of the pie-we-ate-that-lasted-too-long, we can have a nice snack from an entirely different table. Dive into the juicy tidbits on this wonderful site The Magical Buffet. Lots of fun things, but of course you know I am shamelessly linking directly to my interview with the founder Rebecca Elson.

http://themagicalbuffet.com/blog1/2011/11/27/10-questions-with-varla-ventura/

Varla

Ray Bradbury Is So Cool

I was settling into my annual reading of The Halloween Tree, which is a ritual I have invoked and maintained for the last few post-Halloweens–a great way to come down from the witches’ high of the Big Night and prepare for Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead.  I was savoring my copy of the book–pilfered from my Grandma’s basement when I was but a teen–and I noticed something for the first time in several years. The words on the dedication page read thus:

With love for

MADAM MAN’HA GAREEAU-DOMBASLE

met twenty-seven years ago in the graveyard at midnight on the Island of Janitzio at Lake Patzcuaro, Mexico, and rememebered on each anniversary of The Day of the Dead

Oh now, I have read these words before. But I hadn’t noticed them of late and this is significant because I actually visited that island! I guess Ray Bradbury was in my subconcious because two years ago on The Day of the Dead I was crouching behind mourners and candlelight vigils, taking orb-ladened photos and sips from a flask as the icy chill of midnight and the mountain lake’s waters settled all around us.  I was in the same cemetery as Bradbury, doing the same thing. Only he is way cooler because he did it back before it was really something tourist did. The influence of the Mexican culture, specifically their Day of the Dead tratiitons are all over Bradbury’s books.

In honor of his friend, and in honor of a few of mine who have gone to the great beyond, tonight I burn the candle I bought on Isla Janitzio those moons ago. And I think of those who have passed, the loved ones, the family and friends, and even the forgotten souls who wander. Tonight is the celebration of life in honor of the dead. And if you are lucky enough to live somewhere with a celebration, its time to paint your face like a skeleton and join the parade!!