found a river underneath our feet, dark and silent, deep

Well, this is a little worrisome. In Thermae there's something called "My Own Personal Hell". The bio:

"Welcome to my own little Hell. Enjoy your stay!! Prize at the end of the maze, enjoy!

"Halloween, Hell, Maze, Haunted house, Spooky, Creepy"

I have questions. But let's go.



Everything is very...red.



Roaring of the damned next to tentacle sculpture on fire, check.



To one side there's a very foggy grove of trees.



On the other side, there's a foggy cemetary and a...church? Chapel? It's so dark it's hard to make out.

Also, note, sole media reference, and it works here. IT being somewhat demonic, even if in more the Lovecraftian sense.



There does appear to be a small haunted house attached to the parcel...



And there appears to be a maze. Guess what? This wasn't terrible. It's again on the minimalist side, but it has a theme and it sticks to it, there's no really obvious copyright-infringing game rips I saw, and while the sound loops are a bit repetitive, they're not overlapping to the point of mania. Nice.

and I never had much money, I never been quite satisfied

So, I was going to go to Macando's Haunted Island until I read the description:

"Danger!! Horror Sex Place, Kidnapping, Rape, Forced Sex, Humiliation, Torture, BDSM, RLV, Hidden Dungeon, Asylum, Tavern, Cemetery, Porn Cinema, RP, Rent a Shop or Home.
"Earn Money as Stripper. Sluts, Whores, Slaves
"/*Windlight Sky: "Places-Embryo*/"

....Oh. Never mind, then.

So instead, we're going to Serenity Spring's HAUNTED HOUSE instead. Their bio reads:

"It's our 12th Season!!!! Be ready to be scared and spooked at SERENITY SPRINGS HOUSE OF HORROR. keep an eye out for all the skeletons lurking around as well as the zombies, ghost and the scariest of clowns just waiting for your arrival. Have Fun!"

Jumpscare central, then. Hmm.



Oh, boy, talk about busy. Scream--"Go back!"--scream--crows cawing--scream--"Go back!"--scream--"You're all insane!" Repetitive QUICK sound loops, my favorite.



Their maid's seen better days. Still being inundated by sound effects. Crows cawing--screams--evil laughter--"Don't, please!"--cackling--bubbling cauldrons--"No, stop!"--sobbing--screaming.



Whatever world this house exists in, where people would be bound with rope and masked before being butchered--because that seems to be the implication--doesn't make sense to me.



I'm going to say whoever built this, just threw everything they had out. Twelve years running. So much screaming and moaning and child lullabies and weird laughter, no distinction between rooms. Every room has blood, fog, butchery, kids, ghosts....it's too much.

And the Grimworx Poltergeist TV set piece is really starting to show its age.

"Get out..."--babies crying--hissing--moans--chains clinking--"You're mad!"--cackling laughter--"Stop it!"--bubbling vials--"Welcome..." Over and over and over and OVER again, unending.



Oh, look, two more game rips. They're twins! Plus baby's laughter--screaming--"Is there somebody there?"--howling--dark laughter--"You're all insane!"--rats squeaking--*Christmas* carols played on a music box, of all things--screaming--violin swells--female sobbing--hissing--"Brains..."



And Patient Alice, yet another game rip, in the same damned room. I'm done. It's too much.

tearing through each doubt and sin, the train was an iron wind

Next up, we're traveling to Yalu, and the Spooktacular Haunted House 2018. The bio just seems to be buzzwords:

"Gather your friends and visit our annual haunted house. Complete interactive haunted house free to explore and to put you in the Halloween spirit.
"Haunted House, Haunted Castle, Halloween, Spooky, Scary, Halloween Ball, Dance, Creepy, Monsters, Ghosts"

Okay...



Oh, good, we get to start with media rips, this one being the bat form from Bram Stoker's Dracula. I think they know that, too, because the sound effect--repeated far too often--is "I can't wait to drink your blood".



Okay. That's not terrible. Things may be looking up.



I have no idea. One skeleton on the ground rezzes two others. They dance around each other, then tilt strangely, then line up and lay back down. It's...art?



Yeah, we all get it, we miss P.T., stop ripping off game properties. Also note the trio of Alices from F.E.A.R. circling in the background.

I'm done here.

Rockwell Haunted House and Maze

Everything is sounding familiar this year, but let's go see the Rockwell Haunted House and Maze, shall we? Their bio seems...scattered:

"s,creepy, Halloween,Haunted house, scary,spooky,maze, monsters,view on midnight,graveyard, cemetary,horror,clowns,ghosts,grave,tombstones,hunt,tour,demon.blood,dark.skeleton,murder,death,zombie,greedy"

I have dread. Let's go.



Well, that's interesting. I don't know what the gears relate to, but that's different.



Don't even. From F.E.A.R. again. Boudoir should know better. And Chucky ran past me in the hallway getting here, but at least he's not a direct game rip.



Did I mention I'm really getting tired of seeing game rips? This is going to be an ordeal.



She's from some game, too, an indie horror game. She started out tied up and hanging, and the player needs to wiggle the mouse to 'free' her, then she's able to move around and interact with things in the game. I forget which one, but she's definitely ripped from something.



And this is a low-rez gif from Grave Encounters 2, a found footage film that actually managed to be slightly better than the original. Why it's being used in the maze, I couldn't say, but obviously they don't care about video game rips, so why care about intellectual property in other media?



And we're back to the Boomer game rip from Left 4 Dead. I'm done.

my bad luck boots and my hard luck hand

How about Haunted House Halloween? Their bio is a bit more expansive:

"Awesome Haunted House, Haunted Hospital, Haunted Tour, Haunted Woods, and everything scary. This haunted mainland tour includes, zombies, monsters, ghouls, werewolves, witches, insane doctors, creepy crawlies, and some of your favorite characters from ho"

Though I don't think I have any favorite characters from Ho.



Oh, good. Couple of game rips from F.E.A.R. to start things off. Wonderful.

But there is a ride, so let's go find that, at least.



There's not that much going on in the main house itself, beyond some jumpscare action like this chainsaw clown. Everything else is kind of startlingly minimal.



Cue aggrieved sigh.

I mean, listen, haunts can involve established properties. There's a haunt ride I've covered a couple times now, very old-school, that relies entirely on movie properties--Jason, Freddy, Evil Dead...but it works precisely because that's the point of the house--movie monsters and the fear they can inspire.

This? This is a full-bright tombstone of Jason Voorhees on a bridge. That's pointless in two directions.



Great, and just inside the barn past the bridge, the Boomer from Left 4 Dead. Another game rip. I'm so done here.

Honestly, it may be judgmental, but if you can't pull off a haunt without ripping off intellectual property, why should I bother properly reviewing your work?

sometimes we drift too far

Have I done this one before? Their info's pretty minimal:

"Click around if you dare come and play with us in our haunted castle. Don't forget to grab your free candy and lm to our sponsored store's"

I guess off we go, we'll see what we see.



NEVER MIND BEEN HERE MOVING ON--

How about another haunt called Haunted Castle? Their info is slightly more descriptive:

"What Goes Bump In The Night"
"Haunted House, Clowns, Skeletons, Snakes ,Demons, and so much more. So make sure you click on everything to see what it does."

It's on an Adult sim, so keep that in mind.



Or...don't. They seem not to be there.

Okay, so Caste's Haunted House. Their bio cuts off:

"Sweetwater Estates welcomes you to come join in the Haunt and the hunt in our Haunted house. Follow the story to solve the mystery and win the bounty of the House. Or simply take a walk through the grave yard to see what awaits you. . . . . .Or bring a f"

I don't have an F, so I'll just bring me.



The skeletons are very seasonal, and the cemetery quite overgrown.



A very intense witch with a bicycle.



Wait...darn it, I've been here before, too! Though the last time, admittedly, everything wasn't magenta. It was just dark.



Huh. I guess, go if you want to do the mansion hunt again, or see what's changed, otherwise...well, we'll move on to other haunts.

good lord, it only brings me tears

Well, this was a brief bit of weirdness:

[11:08] Mxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: do not any one im me any more some girl out of your group did im me make sure it dont happen anymore

So this is the second line I see after logging onto the grid in this group. This is a freebie and sales group, btw, just for context.

[11:08] Jxxxxx Dxxxxx: ??
[11:08] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: ?
[11:09] Mxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: wonders if its ok to Im [Mxxxxxxxxxxx]
[11:09] Jxxxxxx Gxxxx: i didi

I think she's joking? But just in case, I pulled his profile:

i am a bdsm master but it will be 3 years before i get any slaves or sub i will let you all know when i feel better i am sick in rl its not something that gose away from me it never stops but we will see then how i am it maybe sooner then you think but time will teil i dont know when but i am not into sex at all not my thing so dont go there asking me for sex it wont happen uk male 38 next year

That's his SL bio. No punctuation. Nearly everything lower-case. I mean, I get he's sick, but...it's just weird, with his name, you know? Which I know you don't see, but trust me, it screams Wannabee Dom.

I'm just confused.

[11:10] sxxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: oooo...in a Masterly tone no less..magic words always work -- even in a D/s world but especially in THIS group
[11:10] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx smiles
[11:10] bxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx giggles
[11:10] txxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: he could have said it a little bit nicer
[11:10] Jxxxxxx Gxxxx: must be a noob if that was his solution..
[11:10] dxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: 2 days old

That's another thing. Supposedly a "BDSM master", but two days old? Really? It's not completely impossible that someone with RL experience in a thing creates a new account on SL, but...the perception in the BDSM community at large is, if someone has "Master" in their username, and then further claims to BE a "BDSM master" somewhere in their profile? They're a fake.

[11:11] sxxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: i can't think of a single time in life when 'please' is NOT appropriate
[11:11] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: lol
[11:11] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: ikr
[11:11] sxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: never IM anybody is a sin

I wouldn't say it's a sin, but it is terribly odd phrasing. And here's the thing--if he really had a problem with being contacted by someone, why not a) tell THEM to stop, or block THEM, or b, talk to the group owners? Either would work better than snapping at the entire group at random.

[11:11] txxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: he's probably an alt, with a name like that

Probably, but...still strange, right?

No picks, no FL bio, no SL or RL picture. Oddity.

Anyway, I went to another haunt today, the Haunted Garden of Whimsy. This is their description:

"It's creepy, it's gorey, there's zombies and dead things in the mist. Halloween comes early to the Garden. Come and explore if you dare. Photos, fishing, tours, residential rentals, carnival"

I hate zombies, mainly because I'm bad with shooting guns and I hate having my face eaten off. But okay.



So, this is the landing point. It's not a bad little space--good view, if dark due to enforced Ghost Windlight settings, a HUD giver for the sim's Skeleton Hunt, a guestbook where folks can leave comments. Sure.



Turned to the left and saw the haunted house, or at least the first one. It's not a bad build, we've seen it a lot, it was made by Death Row Designs and it's a pretty good base haunt style.

Though this fellow didn't seem to want to let me in.



Not even five steps in the door and I'm hit in the face with copyright violation. This one American McGee's "Alice: Madness Returns", in particular the "Patient Alice" rip that hit the grid several years ago.



The decorations seem on the sparse side, I'm not entirely sure why. Not every haunt needs massive clutter, but to go full-on the other way...Minimalism seems an odd choice, is all I'm saying.



And I should mention the lag. There is lag. There are tremendous amounts of syrupy, frozen-molasses lag. I stood here for five minutes trying to get a clear shot of this ghost. This was the very best one I got.



And another rip, really? This one of the child Walter Sullivan from Silent Hill 4: The Room.

I give up. I didn't explore the rest of the sim. You want to, knock yourselves out. But two full-on blatant copyright rips in my face in fifteen minutes? No. Not interested. I won't go back.

there was a place in the pines, a little spot, I called it mine

Welcome to Shadow Woods. It's sitting in a slightly laggy sim, and the parcel was more rectangular for some of the houses I was considering, but...I think it turned out pretty well.



Of course the cottage is haunted, but they're relatively quiet. (I'm still pondering putting sounds out, not sure if I will.)



There is a fire if you get chilled, and places to sit, both in the cottage and outside.



This is the one glitch, and it is kind of glaring. The cottage is no-mod. Which is mostly fine, it's a great little build. But the window seating area with the curtains? Has an invisible, non-phantomed prim across it. Once you sit on the windowseat, you cannot move past it.

Now, it's easy enough to cam out and find another seat, but...it is an annoyance. I apologize for that, there's nothing I can do. (I did try.)



The piano, outside, I discovered has some lovely animations. I'm so glad I found it. It came from Loggia Dei Mastri's Hallows line.



There's a quiet little cemetery on the other side. Nothing that screams in your face, nothing will pop out and terrify you. I guess...I wanted a haunt this year, but I didn't want anything that would fray the nerves.



All in all, I like the way it turned out this year. It's not a huge haunt, it's not intended to be. It's just a quiet place to wander, sit, take pictures. I'm happy with that.

Come visit if you like, it will be open through November 1st, at least.

my coal black thoughts reappear, reprimand

There's an exhibition I must make time for at the Museum of Caledon by Fitch Levkoda, called "Disturbia". It seems to feature dolls...and their deconstruction. Sounds kind of up my alley.

In the meantime, I went to the Secret Affair event mentioned yesterday, and...yep, I was right, parts are extremely cringeworthy.



Don't get me wrong, Gothika is one of my favorite films. Along with Session 9 and Shutter Island. Jacob's Ladder (upon which Team Silent based much of the look of the original Silent Hill games) haunts me to this day. But are these honest, open portrayals of how most mental institutions operate? Not really.

And depictions like this don't help. While there have been some really horrific abuses of the mentally ill--Willowbrook State School immediately comes to mind--by those who should have had their best interests at heart, by and large places that care for the mentally ill are at most, understaffed and run-down. These days, you won't find bloodspattered psychopaths armed with cleavers skulking the halls, eating live rats and screaming about the ticking of burning clocks.



In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in a mental hospital armed with anything more damaging than a taser. Most orderlies rely on communication skills, or just muscle and help to calm someone down, and even a childrens' ward housing only extremely violent patients would never feature one wandering the halls brandishing a knife longer than her forearm.



Sure, in abandoned institutions--some, in which, truly terrifying things took place--you will find signs of decay, broken floors, broken windows, rust and vermin. But while they were operational? No, nothing like that. And even in the abandoned ones, the only rotting corpses you'll find are homeless men who crawled in and died of an overdose, or too much time outside.



And oh, how I loathe game rips. I count three in this room alone: the patient Alice from Alice: Madness Returns (the other big Alice game rip across the grid being the Crying Alice fountain), the floating caged corpses from the first Silent Hill, and the caged, 'Flesh Lip' monsters from Silent Hill II.

So no, I'm not thrilled by something playing to the norm of 'mentally ill people are scary'. It's a trope I think has been more than played out, right up there with 'if it has brown skin it's a terrorist' and 'lesbians will bathe in your blood'. None of these things are true, they're all just lies of convenience.

(If anyone still has doubt about the link between stigma against the mentally ill and horror films, try these articles on for size:

Movies Misrepresent Mental Illness in Every Way;
Horror movies portraying the mentally ill as violent;
Horror Movies and the Exploitation of Mental Illness; and
Why the Depiction of Mental Illness in Horror Films is Damaging.)

That being said, I did track down Adam n' Eve's 'cell' and buy at least one more color to start from their shoe line.



This is the red version, which isn't specifically haunted, but I'm tucking it into the Hallows folder anyway, because they're built to last and will go with a lot of my red Hallows outfits.



And this is a look at the soles and the heels. Near as I can figure, only the white shoes have the bloody variant, which I suppose makes sense--the darker tones, like this red, wouldn't show blood, after all.

(Both of the shoe shots were taken at Carrie's, by the way, where it was much less grim.)

but you can weave the unraveled strings

This listing is none of the things it says it is. It's not Victorian, it's not busty, what on earth, people? I am disappoint.

Anyway, let's talk a new event, this month's iteration of Secret Affair, where the theme is "Asylum". So I full expect some cringe-worthy offerings, but at least one maker's doing something really fun.



These are Adam n' Eve's "Straight Jacket" shoes, in white (plain), from the event. Just for full revelation, I loathe peeptoe shoes. I don't know why--I like sandals, I like painting my nails, some styles are definitely cooler in the summer...but...peeptoes. Most of them deeply bug me.



These are the white shoes (bloody). Which are really well done. And these peeptoes...I can handle. I think they're really fun, they could so fly with a 'sexy nurse' costume, or even just a bloody dress for an evening out!

According to Seraphim's entry on the event, each shoe will retail for L$290 a pair, I think each pair comes with just one plain shoe, or one bloodied shoe, but I'll check and follow up on that when I go. I'm definitely interested in other colors, though. These have potential.

There are thirteen different colors in all, and the fatpack is only L$860 for everything. Sounds like a good deal to me!

crawl on me, sink into me, die for me, living dead girl

The dream started out in a way that should have been shocking, but for some reason, wasn't. A vision of a bloated, limbless, headless female corpse, floating naked down a river. Slow drifting of this...thing...through the summer sun in my mind's eye. I have no sense of smell in dreams, but considering I was just "seeing" it, not actually standing there "experiencing" it, the smell of rot and decay would not have come up.

I have strange dreams. I have a lot of nightmares. The nightmares I have off and on, but in all fairness, I haven't had the easiest life, and my subconscious does like to play with the generated themes.

I see this thing behind my eyes off and on, and while it is confusing, it is not horrifying. What becomes horrifying, the slow creep of dread as is often in dreams, is watching the people around me--I seemed to be working in some sort of law enforcement capacity in the dream, so family members, friends, and co-workers I was dealing with--slowly start to...turn. Lose aspects of their personalities, change from what I knew of them and their behavior, into...fairly mindless, shining-eyed drones. Cult members. Talking about the wonderful words that they were hearing. Every time I heard them talk, their eyes fever-bright, I had that strange vision of that bloated, floating corpse in the water again.

There's a lot I don't talk about, mostly because I still try to keep some distance between my "real" life and my Second life (though anyone who knows me, knows I talk about my RL a fair bit if I feel comfortable). That being said, some of my dreams just seem to be a collection of random events. This seemed...lyrical, but direct.

And then they started changing their names. To Story. Instead of Lisa Carlton, say, she began to insist that her name was Lisa Story now. That she was a listener to Story, so she would become a part of it. That was the direct corollary, and they all started sounding the same. "I listen to Story. I am a part of the Story. I will take Story's name, it will be mine, as I am hers."

There are also things I haven't shared about my work. About drama and painful events that have taken place behind the scenes at Sakura. Staff disputes, firings, viscerally emotional rumors being spread about us simply because the rumor-spreader can. I've tried to keep a great amount of this private, because I felt we didn't need any more drama and derangement than we already had.

And that's when the penny dropped, in the dream. I knew what this dream meant. I knew who Story was.

And I'm not going to address it now, but I do know what the dream symbolism meant. I still don't know why the storyteller's corpse was headless, yet speaking, but I absolutely know why she was female, and why others fell under her sway. I know exactly who she represents.

This dream has stuck with me for several days now. I'm hoping that by addressing it even in the terms of the nightmare, that it will begin to ebb now, dissolve into memory, become just another tattered shred in the dark.

That's the hope, anyway.

I will say this. As Laurell K. Hamilton says, you can't prove a negative, and I won't even try. But I am going to formally state some things for the record.

I am not involved in a real-life sex cult owned by the person behind India Canning on the grid.

I am not involved in a Second Life sex cult being run by Lynn Mimistrobell.

No one involved with Sakura in any capacity has ever reached out to my family RL and threatened their lives if I did not do something for either India Canning or Lynn Mimistrobell.

You draw your own conclusions. People will anyway. But I know these things are true. And I know the lies being spread about us, about Sakura are just that--ridiculous rumors, insane lies, being spread by someone who has no clue on who we are or how we operate.

And also for the record? "How we operate" involves solely the day-to-day operation of Sakura and Bellefleurs as businesses on the grid. No more, no less.

Hopefully I'll have a haunt or two to cover later, but I just wanted that out there, for whatever it's worth. Though I'm pretty sure that whenever I hear of one particular teller of stories from now on, I will see that rotting corpse on the river. Maybe it'll be a good image to reinforce how toxic she is.