Saturday Mix – Bastet – March 11, 2017

Hello Folks and I’m terribly sorry for the lateness of this post – I had some connection problems.

I thought we’d look into the classic Gothic horror genre today.

I can’t imagine that people would sit around campfires in the stone age trying to scare their fellow listeners with vampire and ghost tales nor with the real horrors of the plague would people want to imagine some other horrifying sort of death stalking the corridors.  Horror as entertainment probably could not rival real life which held true horrors just outside ones front door, not to say people didn’t tell tales about demons and the horrors of hell and such like, but their usage was for far different reasons – like for religious edification.

I believe we had to wait until the late 18th and early 19th century for Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Shelly and Bram Stoker to come along for us to discover the pleasure of that tickle down our spine procured by horror tales. They weren’t the first writers of the Gothic horror period though – that honour would go to Horace Walpole  (an art historian) with the first Gothic novel entitled “The Castle of Otranto” (1764) .

It would take a sociological study to understand why we became interested in horror and fear as a means to entertain ourselves and it would probably have to do with exorcising the fear of death or something … but we’re not here to analyze horror but to write a bit of it.

Here’s an example of the beginning of a bit of classic Gothic horror:

Strange that this should happen to me, I never believed in the supernatural, but then perhaps not so strange.  Here as the last particles of oxygen become corrupted I reflect upon the tricks of a fickle fate and how I meet mine chained  in this old mausoleum near to gasping my last breath.  If you read this note, be warned, my life is forfeit not through an accident but through the will of my nemesis, the Countess Varonsky whom we all thought dead these past twenty years. …

We all know the genre – the problem will be to tell the tale in 100 words!  Now to inspire us:

 

 You may wish to write a poem instead of a flash fiction story – remember Poe’s effective “The Raven” which has un many a chill down his reader’s spine.  Or perhaps you’d like to try your hand with a Shadorma …

Whichever you choose, once you’ve written your piece, please link up with us either  in the comments or the Mr.s Linky App  or ping your work but do tag Saturday Mix as well as Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie.

Have fun and ‘ll be along during the week to read you work! Ciao,  Bastet.