by Annie Riordan
[Mike notices a sign that says "Gifts From Germany."]
Mike: Gifts From Germany? What’s that? Braunschweiger, cars with heaters that don’t work, and identification papers?
~ Mystery Science Theater 3000 – Episode 906
“Leave it to the Krauts.” was all my mom had to say when I told her what the subject of my December Cinematic Haunts was to be. And mom should know: she IS a Kraut, raised in a Pennsylvania Deutsch farmhouse that reeked of sauerkraut, was covered in dog hair and contained a Black Forest cuckoo clock …

Bangungot
~The Facts Behind A Nightmare On Elm Street~
~Article by Annie Riordan~

“Wes Craven had come across a few articles about some teenagers who were absolutely terrified – terrified! – to go to sleep.”
~Adam Rockoff
“In the middle of the night they heard these horrendous screams and crashings and they ran in and he’s thrashing on the bed. They ran to him and by the time they got to him he was dead. They did an autopsy on him and there was nothing physically wrong with him. And I just thought: “My God.”
~Wes …

Hitchhiking Ghosts of the U.S.
Being a military brat, I had a somewhat transient childhood, constantly being uprooted and transplanted whenever my father was reassigned. As a result, I grew up in the Southwest, New England, and Washington DC. By the time I was seven, my family had more or less made the Northern California Bay Area our permanent home, jumping around from Pleasanton to Fremont before finally settling in Hayward, the “Heart of the Bay.” It was here that I finished up my grammar school education starting in the autumn …

 
John Keel recently died.
 
I can hear the vast majority of you right now, asking “Who?” Okay, fair enough. Unless you spend an inordinate amount of time hanging out in the Speculation section of your nearest bookstore (the section I personally like to refer to as “The End Is Extremely Fucking Nigh” section) and/or live in West Virginia, you really aren’t required to know who John Keel was. But any horror/sci-fi fan worth their salt should bloody well know of the Mothman, that winged harbinger of doom allegedly spotted before and …

Article By: Annie Riordan
 
Unless you’re currently taking the prescription drug Humira to treat your moderate to severe rheumatoid, psoriatic arthritis and/or Crohn’s disease, you really don’t have to worry about contracting tuberculosis these days. Tubercle bacillus is no longer the death sentence it once was a mere two hundred years ago, when one in four deaths in England were attributed to the disease, and one in six deaths in France as recently as 1918. The wasting illness – also known as The White Plague, Consumption and Koch’s Disease – was …

 
 
The residents of 208 Meriden Avenue in Southington, Connecticut are pissed, and I can’t say I blame them. Recently, the two story, five bedroom white wood-frame house has become a rubbernecker magnet, drawing curious looky-loos and paranormal nerds from miles around. The driveway and avenue beyond have become clogged with cars slowing down for a look at the house that the current owners purchased ten years earlier. What had once been a quiet suburban neighborhood is now a circus of ghost story enthusiasts. Why? Because 208 Meriden Avenue is the …

Cinematic Haunts #5: Summerwind Mansion, West Bay Lake WI

Article By: Annie Riordan

“It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.”

Shirley Jackson ~ The Haunting of Hill House

I don’t know about you guys, but the state of Wisconsin has never conjured images of ghosts and haunted houses for me. When I think …

Cinematic Haunts #4: Stanley Hotel, Estes Park CO
Article By: Annie Riordan
 
 
“Some places are like people: some shine and some don’t.”
~The Shining – 1980
 

 
It’s January, which means that I – being a California native – am dealing with sunny skies and temps in the low to mid 60s. Winter is a joke on the West Coast: there’s no snow, little rain and very few nights when the mercury falls below the freezing mark. And yet, I still have flannel sheets on my bed and Duraflame logs stacked up beside my working …

Cinematic Haunts #3: The Bell Witch, Adams TN
Article By: Annie Riordan
 
“I am a Spirit from everywhere, Heaven, Hell, the Earth; am in the air, in houses, any place at any time, have been created millions of years; that is all I will tell you.”
~The Bell Witch, 1817
 

 
Okay, this is driving me absolutely batshit…as in Kate Batts shit. When I was a wee lass back in the 1970s, I saw a TV show that absolutely scared the hell out of me. It was one of those overdramatized, sensationalistic documentaries in which …

Cinematic Haunts #2: Centralia PA
Article By: Annie Riordan
 
“Fire doesn’t cleanse. It blackens.”
~Silent Hill
 

 
“It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash, and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume.” When actor Sean Bean spoke those lines in the 2001 film The Fellowship Of The Ring, he was referring to the dread land of Mordor, where the Dark Lord Sauron held sway. But he may as well have been referring to his upcoming role in the 2006 horror blockbuster Silent Hill, based on the video game series of …