unraveling since I found you

I am three days from having this headache for two months solid. It's draining a lot of energy for...everything. But still, I had things to do today, and I did...some of them...and I'm still trying, perhaps in vain, to find one good, solid, scary haunt.

Tonight, before I leave for dinner, I'm taking in a haunt in Sleezywood...which already makes me think it's yet another disappointment. But let's go.

Game rip from go? No, we're moving on. I threw away the picture even.

Dear gods, what's left? What about the Haunt at the Admiral's Arms?



Took me a bit to find out how to get out of the rainy back alley to the haunt, but now we're here, and...wau, it's dark.



Okay, flashlight on, let's go, and...Okay. wait. One door leads to a games room stocked with adult furniture and erotic art. Another leads to a bedroom and a bar. Yet ANOTHER takes me to a shopping area downtown...Clicking on the door in the garage gets me to a Bloodlines storage area....What?

Finally I turned around to the ONLY door unchecked, the one that had the Circle of Avatar Moving off a land spot...save I didn't land there. Right, then, let's try that...and into a circular maze of demi-connected passages, leading finally to stairs down, spiraling towards...



...an occult library? Chest has some freebies. But...this seems to be about it.



Meanwhile, I can't believe I forgot to cover the "Bad Moon Rising" Bannered Horns from /Vae Victis\ when I covered the other ones. Where is my mind...Well. I know exactly where it is, in excruciating detail, and I'd rather I didn't.

But they're one of the hunt gifts at Hallow Manor, which I believe closes on the 31st? So there's a little time left, I hope!



So I went to 1313's redux of their "Curios and Spooky Things" haunt.

And why yes, I did tint the entire horns teal to match my hair. Doesn't really show up on the horns themselves, but look at how neat that shade picked up the runes on the banners!



I will likely drop the tent on these when I wear them again, because they truly are a perfect blood-moon red..but for now it's fun.



Haunting the radio station at the back of 1313's haunt is kind of fun.



Floating in the horns? Also fun. Oh, and just for the sake of mentioning it--for once, I wanted the heaviness. This headache is dire, and now on its 59th consecutive day, so horns that were just a solid, heavy presence actually worked for me.



I won't lie, I own a lot of horns. So many that they've been subdivided in the Fantasy horns folder, between 'antlers', 'demonic', and 'goat/ram' varieties, then further into 'bright', 'goth', 'seasonal', 'aged', 'natural' and 'construct' subsets. Some few also go directly into larger seasonal folders, under 'Autumn/Hallows' or 'Winter' usually. The beauty of doing this is not only that I adore covering really wonderful things, but that I can, without a doubt, say I have at least one set of /Vae Victis\ horns in the larger seasonal folders, and several have made their way into the Fantasy folder subfolder sets as well.

And even having said that, I think the Bannered horns are going to be heavily in rotation. Even when I smallenize them later, they fit my "occasional deer with sheep honns' aesthetic. :D

You can find them, remember, at the Hallows Manor hunt by searching for the hunt prizes in the back woods, orrr...this year I said the hell with it and bought six of the Silver hunt HUDs, and just going directly to the prize room. Several tasty things there, and I see no loss of honor in taking the easy route currently.

I'm unraveled by the truth I finally see

Okay, here we go...



I've visited The Haunted in years prior, but I think this is my first visit this year.



Oh, okay, I don't need to bother with this one. When you start out with four game rips in the opening space? Yeah, zero out of five, moving on.

How about Savira City Halloween?



Ultimate dissonance--finding these two at a side table, saying this:

[21:44] ixxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: oh goodness
[21:44] ixxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: are you feeling okay?
[21:44] kxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx:: im ok just aall the blood here
[21:45] kxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx:: i dont want it to make me sick
[21:45] ixxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: well sis we dont have to stay for long
[21:45] ixxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: we can always go back home and chill in our pjs
[21:45] kxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: hmm yea that sounds good right now lol

All the blood is disturbing her? When her rear is shaking like it's made out of not-entirely-set aspic? Elsewise she has two deeply buried motors just jiggling away...Like, that butt is mechanized, not just relying on physics, is what I'm saying.?

But sure. Whatever. I grabbed an apple cider from the cart next to them, and set off towards a random building.



Which...turned out to have phantom stairs. Why?



The skeletaur was neat. (As an aside, Beefburgers, owner of Aquatica FP Mesh, helped me find the skeletaur, because he made it--if you click this and follow the beacon, it's in the Limited Edition vendor on the upper right side of the back wall for L$99!)

There seemed to be no way to get into the rest of the haunt, so...I hopped over a hedge. And found a b'ar.



Big phantom b'ar, too. Didn't seem inclined to eat me.



And I wound up here. Seemingly no way out, nothing but a huge donation sign...so I just left.

I won't say there's not some decent ideas here, but...my gods, people, you had two whole sims, at least test things out first to make sure one of them doesn't have glitchy weirdness! Two out of five skulls, and that second skull only because I was able to track down the skeletaur. Sheesh.

you smile and laugh at me, but you don't see a thing

One more for the night. The description says:

"Welcome to the Haunted Woods for adults. Midnight and mouse look is advised. Enjoy all we have to offer that includes Zombies, Horror, Haunted House, Haunting, RLV Trap, Forest, Animesh, Clown, Scary, Demon, Gang Bang, Werewolf, Ghosts, and sex."

I am prepared to be thoroughly unimpressed.

And I am:

[22:43] Second Life: Only members of a certain group can visit this area.

I'm not joining your group just to see your haunt, my dude. Moving on.

Wait, there's a notecard. It has a landmark. Okay, let's try there.



Touch for weapons? Nope, I was right the first time. NOW moving on.



You know what? I've covered this before, but I have to go through some half-decent haunt this week, so...here we are again, at the Haunted Catacombs at Universal Temple.



Not much has changed, but I'm amused that the kraken decided to ride for a bit with me.



I have zero idea if Grimworx is even on the grid these days, but this is one of their original haunts. Pretty much just a transparent flat image, with flexi from the bottom up, not top down as most pieces use. They have this amusing little wobble to them, and they're still cool to see.



Arachnophobe alert, for any haunts that feature active spider content. I had a couple shots closer, but I think this is all I need to show. There's not a lot of spider bits, but there's enough.



And then...everything went up in flames.



After that, several haunts, and then a slightly darker patch of tunnel with snakes. The use of full bright on some of the props is starting to slightly jar, I will admit. And the snakes were so dark in the water, with my environment settings, I felt I should bump up the brightness. It's darker in the catacombs.



The only real glitch happened at the very end of the ride--when this chainsaw clown suddenly popped out of the wall and sawed through me. And kept sawing through me. Over and over again while I wondered if this was just a really long end sequence or if something had gone wrong.

Finally, I got out on my own and swam to the stairs, shaking my head, and went up only gouting a slight bit of blood from the chainsaw cuts.

All in all, this is nearly G-rated at this point, and exactly the level of relaxing, comfortable haunt I needed. Tempted to give five out of five skulls for that alone, but--that end sequence does them in. There are people who would hit that and--perhaps even justifably--freak out.

So it's four out of five skulls, but that's still pretty good. If you've never gone, you should go at least once to appreciate what early SL had to do for haunts.

I'm shakeable, unshakeable

Ran into a term I may have to adopt due to random profile reading:

"'Kintsukuroi' describes me. Once broken, yet uniquely perfect to those who matter."

I really like that. The term I'd known before was 'kintsugi', which roughly translates to 'golden seams', but 'kintsukuroi' describes what's been done: 'golden repair'.

Tonight, the head is splitting, all volume levels are low, but--I'm still feeling behind on haunt coverage, so...I went to Pinewinds.

Which is an Adult sim.



And I went looking like this, so...I may be bounced from the sim.



Honestly, I thought at first this was just an artifact of shadowing, from the flames, but--no, those are pumpkins set into black grass, and the effect is really neat.

(You can also get the bonfire from SoulStar Creations for L$219.)



Speaking of pumpkins...

The interior of the actual haunted house isn't bad either, but there's one repeated Tiny voice saying "Trick or treat, my pretty-pretty" that is making me want to stab my ears.



This amused me. If you know, you know.

I finally had to mute sounds to get through the rest of the house, though, because that one repeating phrase lasts four seconds, and repeats every six seconds, CONTINUOUSLY, and...I just couldn't take it. Not tonight.



I fell down.

So, this is pretty average, overall. There are places to enjoy each other, and that's always fun at a haunt. And it brings a good atmosphere of the holiday. It just doesn't do anything...new, and that's always sad.

If I hadn't walked into it sensitive to noise? Might've been a three, so...I'm gonna leave it there. It's okay. Doesn't knock anything out of the park.

close your eyes or just try to look away

I was wandering on the Quest Fur Cover hunt, then I started wandering on the Furry Fashion sim's crystal ball hunt, where little glowing amethyst crystal balls are scattered over the entirety of the sim, and then I found myself at a haunted house. Okay, let's go.



I have no idea how to get to the haunt, mind--I'm including a picture of the exterior and a direct SLUrl, but the region has a default port point, so...do your best?



Am I the only one who finds it a tad ironic that the furry sim's haunted house only seems to have skeletons and pictures of humanoids?



Welp, ya got poltergeists. Gonna haveta bless 'em outta here...

Unfortunately, the poltergeist action apparently grabs you, because after I captured the above vid, I couldn't get away from that corner of the room. I forced myself to leave the room--and then was immediately pulled back into the nearest corner of the hallway TO the kitchen. I ported off the sim--and was pulled to the corner edge of the parcel, flying in midair, pointing towards the sim the house was on.

I finally had to go to a sandbox, clear all three caches--while fighting my way back to the sandbox each time because it kept trying to pull me off the sim--and then log out, and log back in again, and stand there while 280K+ items load in.

Gosh, a more paranoid person would say, this was griefing. Me, I'm going to say, sorry, you had your chance, zero out of five skulls. I'm not going back.



So let's see about another haunt. How about Haunted Acres?

Ah, okay, sign says we're going to need a "vehichle". Got it.

And then...I was teleported home. Huh?



It's not rezzing the ride car. Fine. I can't even rate whether this one was good or not, because it doesn't WORK.

Moving on! Let's try a landmark I got from the Shop n' Hop, for the Spook Ride.



Which I have ridden before, but this year, actually at the designer's parcel. It's a short jaunt, but after the first two, definitely a palate cleanser. And if I ever do set up a full dark ride--this would be the one I'm buying.



Four out of five skulls, one knocked off solely due to the game rips seen inside. Still, pretty good overall. And right now--apparently on this parcel, and at their booth in Shop 'n Hop--they're running discounts on the full ride set. Kind of a steal, frankly.

don't come searching when I go missing

Am I bored tonight? Not really...more seeking distractions from the meatspace world. So, hie me off to Haunted Memories!



We apparently start off in...a...barn?? Maybe this is a dance space, and the haunt is the rest of the sim?



This guy does not look comfortable.



Touching the chest under the "Don't Touch" sign got me bats! Why would I mind that?!

(I did pull this one into edit--it's available on Marketplace for L$125. That's definitely something to acquire for later...)



Sim seems fairly accident-prone.



Wau. You are really tall.



Hello, game rip...



I take it back...you're really tall.

All in all, I'll knock them one skull for the game rips, but that still leaves them four out of five, because they've done a lot to make things generally creepy without being completely overdone. If nothing else, it's a quiet stroll with some haunted sounds, and that's not bad at all.

Even better, it's laid out with enough forest paths that you could easily attach a horse from inventory and ride around the sim. Which sounds like a very good thing to do in a few days, actually.

hush, hush, hush, here comes the boogeyman

Tonight, being unsettled, I went to find a haunt. I found myself at Hushed, picked spur-of-the-moment from the Editors' Picks in Destinations.

Wasn't my best idea.



I'll give them this, the entrance point is atmospheric. A back-country road, autumn leaves falling, and the ghostly letters hanging in the shadows spelling out "HUSHED".



The problem? Most of the rides aren't, most of the things that look like they can be walked through can't...it's a vast collection of set pieces with nothing more than that. There's no 'there', there, is what I'm saying.



This is not to say it's completely unenjoyable. This fellow, for instance, while standing in front of essentially a cardboard cut-out tent, is someone I haven't seen a thousand times before, like many of the other clowns. And there was a fun little haunted balloon piece next to him.



The one ride I found that did work was the Haunted Mine--or, as the lights spell out here, the Nightmare Tunnel.

The less said about that, the better.



And...that was really about it. This hovering skeleton with the halo of leaves was neat, but again--just hovering in a field that was otherwise undisturbed, next to a horse that didn't seem at all affected by the floating apparition of bones beside it.

They...tried? One skull for that, I guess.

lips burrow so deep, give me good sleep (part II)

(Continued from part I.)



(Troll sighting.)



(Moving from swamps to fantastical tropics.)



(Eyeflowers. They blink.)



(Overgrowth and trailing vines.)



(Watching a skeleton dance.)



(Watching a skeleton dance.)

(Continued in part III.)