Window Dressing – It Can Go Horribly Wrong.

I walk into work most mornings.  It wakes me up.  Instead of rolling off the train and stumbling into work hoping that enough caffeine will prise my eyelids fully open, a three-mile wander through London does an immeasurably better job.  The pretty parks, the unusual people you see going by, the shop front murder scene.

Wait.  What?

London’s going to be awash with people doing their LGBT thing this weekend, and there are rainbows on everything that isn’t tied down.  And some things that are.  Oxford Street and Regent Street are so heavily steeped in all things rainbow coloured, it’s like a trip to fairyland. Ha.  Fairyland.  Get it?

Nevermind.

But one shop.  Oh, one shop has made the most horrible design error of creating some kind of spray spatter effect window sticker to go in each window across their shop front, one colour of the rainbow in each window.  Should be nice, yes?  Well, it is.  Until you get to…

THE RED WINDOW OF DEATH.

The spatter effect of red up the sides and middle of the last pane of glass looks like someone has been fed through an industrial meat grinder on full throttle.

I want to take a photo (so want to take a photo…) but I’m worried I won’t be able to outrun the furious shop keeper.

TASTE THE RAINBOW!

But it’s the thought that counts.  If you’re doing the Gay Pride march this weekend in town, may your sequins and glitter sparkle all day long.

Nicola

weirdworld@hotmail.co.uk

©Nicola Kirk and http://www.nicolakirk.wordpress.com 2019

Two For The Price Of One!

So you’re not my husband… or the kids… or the cat… um… can I phone a friend?

When I wake up in the night, I don’t expect to find anyone else in my room. Other than my husband. And perhaps the kids if they come up for something. Or perhaps the cat, if the kids have let her escape from downstairs. But other than that…

Just by way of background information, in our room, we have a large skylight just over the foot of the bed. I did wonder if it was going to let too much light in when we first had it installed, and whilst we could have got a blind for it (at a massively unreasonable and inflated cost) we eventually decided it was fine without, and to be honest if I get up for any reason in the night, I appreciate the ambient light so I don’t go clumping straight into the bedpost. So when I turned over the other night, surfacing from sleep as I did so, it was a bit of a shock to find my husband half sitting up in bed next to me and what looked like another figure of my husband standing next to the bed looking down at himself. I had a moment where I struggled to make sense of it all and then woke up completely with a jolt. I half sat up and found that what I thought had been my husband sitting up in bed was actually just his elbow sticking up from under the duvet at a strange angle instead. Ah… thank goodness that’s all it was, I thought to myself. But… who had been standing next to the bed? What had I seen there?

Amusing Pareidolia At Its Finest.

There are various reasons why I think I actually saw something that night and that it wasn’t just a case of pareidolia. The first reason is that it stays quite light in our room because of the big skylight, even with the blinds drawn in the rest of the room. You can see quite well, even in the middle of the night. Also, there is nothing on my husband’s side of the room other than a pair of blank wardrobe doors. There’s nothing hanging from those doors, certainly nothing that could be mistaken for a person. All the crap in our bedroom is mine and is, uh, artfully arranged on my side of the room… I laid there for a few minutes wondering what I’d actually seen before finally settling enough to drift off again.

I’ll teach you to wake me up with your phantom bubble blowing antics…

And then there are the odd noises… oh, we LOVE odd noises in my house! Some nights, at about three or thereabouts, I’ve woken up to the sound of something going ‘POP!’ Not the kind of popping or clicking I expect to hear in my house as things contract and expand, but the sound you get when someone’s blown a nice big bubble with gum. Two or three times I’ve woken up to that noise. I suppose it could just be a noise my ears make as I start to wake up, however, about a week ago I awoke to hear a door open in our room followed by the sound of something skittering across the wood floor. But our door hadn’t opened. It didn’t even sound like our door opening (which makes a very distinctive scuffing noise as it opens because it’s dropped a bit and needs adjusting). As for the skittering sound… nope, I got nuthin’.

Nicola

Weirdworld@hotmail.co.uk

© http://www.nicolakirk.wordpress.com 2018

Dreams… They’d Better Not Come True.

The above image will lull you into a false sense of security over what is yet to come…

I’ve written before about some of the weird dreams I have. My Dearly Bemused tells me he very rarely remembers dreams and, based on the dream I had the other night, sometimes I envy him. The one I had… well, it left me shuddering with revulsion and rather pleased that my daughter came in to see me at 3am because she’d managed, somehow, to smack her head on the wall in her sleep. An impressive feat and one that I didn’t mind getting out of a nice warm bed to deal with because… the dream was about spiders. Not your common or garden diddly little guy that you can turn a blind eye to when you spot it hiding in the corner of your sitting room, but mind-blowing huge ones that appear to be more intelligent than the average person. The kind of spider that you suspect has been observing you for quite some time, and now knows your daily schedule, what your middle name is and where you hide your chocolate stash.

If I dream of a house, it’s generally always my parent’s house. I haven’t lived in that house for about twenty years. That’s quite some time but I retain a very close tie to that house. It’s the only house I remember growing up in because we moved into it when I was three and I stayed there until I met my Other Half. It’s the house my grandmother also lived and died in, so I suppose it’s no surprise that it’s the house my brain likes to visit when it sleeps. But for some reason, when I dream of that house, it’s never quite as I know it. There’s always something a bit different about it. In this particular dream, I was looking for a way in because at my parents’ house you never go in the front door. No, no, we use the tradesman entrance. I know not why, it’s just something we’ve always done. In my dream, when I realised the front door was not going to be opening anytime soon, I made my way back down the front steps and went past the garage, which was open for some reason. That garage hasn’t been open for many a year, although I know it does open because I remember seeing it when I was a kid and thinking it looked as if B&Q had just exploded in there. Now the garage was open slightly and the light was on. It was getting dark outside so I thought I’d nip in and turn the light off, shut the garage door and then… Oh, hold on a minute, there appeared to be some kind of mini office in there now off to one side that I had never seen before and… well, I can’t leave that light on either because dad will go loopy over the wasted electricity.

So I went in.

Fine, it wasn’t quite this big but… it was close!

And found out very quickly why I never go in there because the place was festooned with horrible cobwebs filled with bits of dead or discarded spider parts. You know the way their bodies disintegrate and fall apart and (shudder) …well, there are no words to describe it really and that’s quite some confession coming from a writer. But I’m not a total wuss, I told myself, and even though my skin was crawling fit to leave my body, I bravely made my way over to that odd little office bit which I know doesn’t actually exist, and reached out for the light switch. And then stopped. Because sitting just above the light switch in a cloud of webs was one of the biggest spiders I’ve ever seen. I paused, quite literally shivering with horror in my sleep. I started to surface out of sleep at this point because Disgust Mode was desperately shaking Sleep Mode by the throat screaming ‘What the hell is going on here?!’ But the horror wasn’t quite over yet. Because above that spider was something quite magnificent, in a deranged, make your skin freeze in a way you wouldn’t believe possible kind of way. Very rarely do I get that feeling but heaven knows I got it then, because through the layers of web I could make out legs as thick as my fingers, attached to a body as big as the palm of my hand. And it didn’t even have the grace to be one of those fuzzy looking spiders either. Nooo, this bastard was shiny, black and I remember thinking that if one of those legs were to break, it would make a sound like a snapping twig.

“Mummy, I hit my head on the wall!”

Daughter dearest, you will never know how happy I was to hear about your plight at 3am that chilly morning so I could nurse the non-existent bump on your little head back to sleep.

Spiders…

Nothing requires that many legs.

Nicola

Weirdworld@hotmail.co.uk

© http://www.nicolakirk.wordpress.com 2018

COMING SOON – SLIVER

Well, It’s Almost Done!

I’m pleased to say that after numerous re-writes, arguments with characters and the odd gender reassignment, my latest novel, Sliver, is finally out of my head and onto paper!  There’s still some editing, correcting and general faffing to do, but here’s a taste of what it’s all about:

I’ll let you know when the Beast is Unleashed.

Nicola

weirdworld@hotmail.co.uk

©Nicola Kirk and http://www.nicolakirk.wordpress.com 2017

Ghosting Toby Meakins

I’m a book kind of girl rather than film, it’s true, but I do like a good rummage on the darker side of the internet and YouTube for spooky bits and bobs (which I then go on to inflict on you in turn).  Well, the other day, while I was mid-rummage, I came across the trailer for ‘Ghoster’ and I really enjoyed watching it.  It’s by Toby Meakins (who has a channel on YouTube) and Thom Burgess.   I’m not well versed when it comes to film shorts but I’ve watched the one below a few times now and I’m looking forward to finding out more about Ghoster – see what you think:

I then wondered if Toby Meakins had done anything else, so I had a proper up-to-the-elbows kind of delve into the internet and after a little poking about I found another film short by Toby called ‘Breathe’, which is about a ghost girl that can only be seen if you hold your breath…  Alas, holding my breath has done nothing for me other than make my eyes go fuzzy but watching the film short below was much more entertaining:

And finally, there’s this one, LOT254 about a man who buys an old cinecamera at auction and gets a whole lot more than he bargained for:

Personally, I think film shorts like these are due a lot more recognition than they seem to get.  You can find Toby’s channel on YouTube and if you have a look on Vimeo you can watch his other film shorts such as ‘Condition’, which I found very uplifting, and the thought provoking ‘Secrets of Angels’.

I look forward to seeing more film shorts by Mr Meakins.

Nicola

©Nicola Kirk 2016 and www.nicolakirk.wordpress.com

 

A Shadow Of Their Former Selves

Even Shadow People Have A Sense Of Humour

Shadow people.  Have you seen such a thing before?  Have you woken up in bed thinking you can see the outline of someone standing in the corner of your room, silently watching you sleep?  Or have you been sitting there minding your own business, only to have your attention dragged to look at … what was it that you saw move in the corner of your eye, but doesn’t seem to be there any longer?  Was it the shadowy outline of a human figure?  And now you’re starting to feel just a little bit nervous and that maybe you are not as alone as you thought you were.  Is there someone else in your house?

It’s amazing how many people have reported having a run in with a shadow person.  Or shadow people, because they sometimes seem to travel en masse.  But who are they?  What do they want?  And why do they have a very annoying habit of playing ‘now you see me, now you don’t?  Or did you even see me in the first place…?”

Shadow Person or Shadow of the Backlit Photographer?

Wikipedia describes a ‘shadow person’ as being ‘the perception of a patch of shadow as a living, humanoid figure’.  Some people catch fleeting glimpses of something in the room with them but when they look there is nothing there.  I have also experienced this sort of thing before on occasion, but can’t decide whether I’ve actually seen something or if it was just a bit of my hair moving in the corner of my vision.  But many people are convinced that these shadow people are more than black figures teasing them and some people allege that they are physically attacked by them, as in the case of Anne Williams from Australia.

Occasionally, shadow people make quite a name for themselves, if that’s possible when you’re nothing but a shadow.  For example, the ‘Hat Man’has apparently been around for centuries and although he has a pretty limited wardrobe of a long black trench coat and some kind of flat brimmed hat, it doesn’t seem to stop him from visiting many an unwary soul in the dead of night.  The video link in red below byParahauntpost discusses this one in more detail:

Click here to experience: The Horror Of The Hat Man

Shadow people appear all over the world – this one turned up in Malaysia at a school although many were keen to put the sightings down to mass hysteria and the ‘high stress school environment’.  It’s one way to get out of sitting an end of year exam, I suppose.

Nicola

©Nicola Kirk 2016 and www.nicolakirk.wordpress.com

Creatures Of Much Weirdness…

There’s Some Seriously Weird Stuff Out There…

It’s so hard to tell these days what is real and what is not, especially when it comes to things you find on the internet.  Being a writer of fiction, most of the time I’m not too fussed about what the internet throws at me, real or fake, it all feeds the imagination and gets me writing.  But I still like the little thrill of ‘now, imagine if that was real…’ .  I enjoy watching these little You Tube compilations about ‘Top Five Things That Will Make You Hide Under Your Bed’ and ‘Top Ten Things That Will Make You Rush Out To Purchase Pepper Spray’ and, seeing as you’re reading this, I suspect you do too.  So, let’s crack open today’s little bit of weirdness and see what people have been creating with their latest hightech graphic programmes or have even, dare I say it, filmed for real.  Here we have one of today’s favourite YouTubey things: 5 Mysterious Creatures Caught On Camera And Spotted… In Real Life:

I particularly liked the Wessex Way Monster and the Sewer Monster.  I’m not saying I believe they’re real but… aren’t they great to watch?  The last clip is oddly chilling.  Yes, it’s easy to get your mate to dress up in a strange outfit and a wig and to shuffle about (or perhaps it’s just my friends who are that way inclined – you guys know who you are…) but there’s something decidedly freaky about the way the ‘person’ moves that gives me chills.  However, I can only assume the person filming it either has terrible toothache or he has a crash helmet on.  I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments section at the bottom of this post.

And so, moving on to the next video:

15 Paranormal Beasts That May Be Out There

I like the way the narrator talks on this video, it’s very engaging.  Anyway, here we have a selection of bizarre paranormal creatures and beings ranging from the mythical chupacabras to screaming banshees and horned demon cats (however, based on the description of the demon cat I suspect it was probably just an enraged feline with big ears and even bigger psychological issues).  I’m very interested in the concept of shadow people though.  There do seem to be an awful lot of people out there who have had strange encounters with these seemingly intelligent shades.  Sometimes they are benevolent, sometimes malevolent but they always seem to leave people feeling creeped out and very unsettled.  A bit like this guy:

Nicola

©Nicola Kirk 2016 and www.nicolakirk.wordpress.com

 

Freaked Out By Myself

Also Known As ‘I’ve Run Out Of Chocolate.’

I like spooky stuff. You may have realised that by now. It’s something I love to death, as it were.  I’m usually quite proud of the fact that the stuff I watch and write about doesn’t usually have an effect on me.  I think the last time I did something that ‘haunted’ me, was about eight years ago when I went to an old bunker in search of strange happenings.  I did find some strange happenings, as it goes, as while I was tramping about in the dark tunnels I recorded the sound of what appeared to be footsteps approaching me and then going away.  I didn’t hear anything at the time but later when I listened to the recording the hairs on the back of my neck did do a little Highland Fling.  That night, all I could think of was that old bunker and what it would be like in the middle of the night with the wind howling through the vacant tunnels, one of which had, incredibly, an old burnt out car languishing at the end of it.  Considering the bunker was sunken and surrounded by steep banks, getting a car down there must have been quite some feat.  For some reason, the thought of all those old dark disused doorways disappearing back into the hillside got to me and even after all this time, thinking about the place still makes me shiver.  Why?  I don’t really know.  I’m sure I’ve been to other places that were just as creepy but they haven’t affected me in the same way.  I even used the bunker setting in one of my books (Skaran).

I Suspect This Is What Really Happens.

The other night, I was watching one of those ‘ghost hunter’ type programmes.  Not mentioning any particular names, but it was… horrendous.  The assumptions the investigators leapt to were nothing short of spectacular.  The inventions they created to ‘capture ghosts’ with were, I’m sure, based on nothing more than ‘well, this would look funky, and we could set some explosives off at the same time!’  It was okay for some background noise while I did some sewing (I’m creating an absolute sewing masterpiece at the moment for my daughter.  Should be finished for her 21st birthday.  She’s going to be 3 next month).  Once the paranormal debacle was done and I wondered why on earth I’d recorded the entire series, I found another one to watch for a bit.

I love Ghost Adventures with Zak Bagans and his crew.  I’ve never heard the word ‘Dude’ used with such carefree abandon and passion.  Just that one word can cover a multitude of occasions:

• Zak becomes possessed by a demonic entity: “Dude!!!”
• Zak pokes Nick in the eye while trying to find out if his colleague is wearing a respirator in the dark: “DUDE!? WTF?!”
• Aaron hears a strange noise coming from somewhere in the building: “Duuuuude, did you hear that?”

So, I watched a bit of that too, before heading off up to bed, just to round my evening off.

As I said, programmes like that do not usually affect me in the slightest.  I watch it, turn off and go do something else without giving it a second thought.  Last night, I watched it, turned off the television but then… my mind kept wondering off to think about the abandoned asylums and penitentiaries that Zak and his friends had be creeping around.  I had a curious moment whilst washing my face where I suddenly had to frantically scrape the soap out of my eyes so I could check that a creepy old woman wasn’t sneaking into my bathroom while I wasn’t looking to… um… do, I don’t know what to me… possibly something involving custard, but I can’t be sure.  But I was able to conquer my fears and get into bed without further ado.  Until I saw this:

And now I will never sleep again.

Nicola

©Nicola Kirk 2016 and www.nicolakirk.wordpress.com

While I’m lurking on line…

Being a parent myself, I often find myself laughing at the things my kids say to me.  Fortunatley they don’t often creep me out but I wanted to share this blog post with you that I came across today because it appears there are some kiddies out there who are determined to well and truly freak their parents out:

 

via Flickr – Boris Thaser1. The Man With The Snake Neck While changing my daughter in front of the open closet door. She kept looking around me and laughing. I asked her what was so funny. She said, “the man.” To which I replied, “what man?” She then pointed at the closet and said, “the man…

via 42 Creepy AF Things Kids Said To Their Parents That Absolutely Chilled Them To The Bone — Thought Catalog

BRING A ZOMBIE NIGHT AT MOUNT FITCHET

Aside

Unless They’re From Mount Fitchet, In Which Case They’ll Just Shuffle After You A Bit.

Ah, I love Hallowe’en – it’s my favourite time of year.  When a friend of mine mentioned there was a Hallowe’en event at Mount Fitchet Castle near Stansted, Essex, well, how could I refuse? On Friday 1st November (not quite Hallowe’en night, but it was still the Dia De Los Muertos or Day of the Dead… if you’re from Mexico…) my friend and I took a drive to Mount Fitchet and braced ourselves accordingly.

In Mulled Wine There Is… Uh, I Think I’m Happier Not Knowing.

The evening started with an offer of hot mulled wine, which I unfortunately couldn’t partake in because I was driving but perhaps that wasn’t such a terrible thing because my friend advised me that it tasted like nothing she’d never tasted before.  And not in a good way.   Okay, I had a tiny sip just out of sheer curiosity and once I’d managed to uncross my eyeballs, I came to the decision that mulled wine could be used as a method of corporal punishment.

Common sense dictated it would be wise to hunt out the ladies toilets before the tour started and I was advised it was ‘outside… see that light over there in the distance?’  I had a squint through the pitch black night and saw what might have been the dim light of a bulb burning in the distance.  I was glad the designers of iPhone had seen fit to give my phone ‘torch’ mode.  Because of this minor detour, I missed the first couple of minutes of the warm up act, a woman dressed up in old rags who was busy instilling fear into the masses with tales of ‘the Master’ who was on his way to take us on the tour.    It was when ‘the Master’ bowled in that I realised the evening was definitely going to be a good giggle.  Sitting at the back of the room did not offer an ounce of protection from the Master’s beady eye and I was quizzed about why I’d brought my cat with me (I was wearing an enormous fluffy scarf) and was labelled ‘cat woman’ for the rest of the evening, but I got off lightly as the guy opposite me was nicknamed ‘Product Man’ seeing as he’d cleared his bathroom cabinet of hair gel that evening.

And Not In A Good Way

We were led out of the main reception area and out to the main encampment. Halfway up the hill a young man, who appeared to be part of our group, approached the Master.  I overheard the Master saying, ‘Oh, okay, well stay here with me and I’ll get someone to come and get you to take you back again…” but before the Master could finish the young lad keeled over onto the grass and the rest of us were left standing there thinking ‘is this part of the evening or should we also be down in the mud trying to help…?”  I don’t think any of us had quite gathered our wits before the lad started to growl in a most unseemly manner and claw his way towards the rest of us.  Ahh… I see – Zombie Night was under way!   Once we’d dodged around the groaning, and now slightly muddy individual on the floor (apparently he had another six performances of that to get through before he was done for the night) the Master regaled us with tales of how witches of old were dealt with by the fiendish self-proclaimed Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins.  There was an accompanying slide show which sent shivers up my spine – they really used to go all out when it came to dispatching suspected witches.  I think the woodcut of one individual being hung up by the legs and cut in half had us all crossing our legs with sympathy.

I Believe This Covers It…

It was at this point that the Master then passed us over into the care of the ‘military’ where I was asked for my name and age in a dark tent and then was squirted directly in the face with ‘decontamination’ spray.  Wasn’t expecting that.  I think I may have referred to the person that did it as a ‘total bugger’… or words to that effect.

There was no artificial lighting up on the Mount other than little bonfires lit here and there which were both welcome and eerie at the same time.  There was also a low-lying mist that added to the atmosphere.  Somehow my friend and I started off right at the front of our group and then after a few zombie attacks ended up right at the back, so wherever we went we seemed to be prime zombie fodder.  The actors were great fun, dressed up in their zombie outfits with hideous make-up and well-practised zombie shuffles.  My friend attached herself to the back of my coat as we ventured through pitch black ‘morgue tent’ where we were liberally accosted by flailing zombie hands and shut in unlit cabins with sinister hooded figures.  It was great fun.  It reminded me of a sanitised version of the film “28 Days Later”.

Would I go again?  Oh, most definitely!  Put a note in your diary to go next year if you can.

But if you’re not quite feeling brave enough to venture out at Hallowe’en to fend off the zombies, you can still go during the day when they are in hiding and enjoy a  family-friendly day out.  Click here to see when the castle is open (but bear in mind that it is seasonal and shuts for the winter).

Nicola

weirdworld@hotmail.co.uk

©Nicola Kirk and www.nicolakirk.wordpress.com 2013

Follow Me On Twitter: @Weirdworld2013