Supernatural Friday: Binging on Horror: 13 Scary Films, Plus One More

I know there are many more good horror films, but here are thirteen, plus one more to get you started on binging for Halloween, beginning in September.

1. The Haunting (1963). Based on the novel, The Haunting of Hill House. Don’t rent the 90s stinkero remake. Get this one. But with Netflix to have The Haunting of Hill House as a TV series to binge watch beginning October 12, 2018, I think going back to watching the black and white film is perfect now. Premise: Dr. Markway, doing research to prove the existence of ghosts, investigates Hill House, a large, eerie mansion with a lurid history of violent death and insanity. With him are the skeptical young Luke, who stands to inherit the house, the mysterious and clairvoyant Theodora and the insecure Eleanor, whose psychic abilities make her feel somehow attuned to whatever spirits inhabit the old mansion. As time goes by it becomes obvious that they have gotten more than they bargained for as the ghostly presence in the house manifests itself in horrific and deadly ways. The film doesn’t need special effects to scare you. So grab this film, turn off the lights, huddle on the couch or your favorite chair, and be prepared to be frightened.

2. Dog Soldiers (2002). No this is not a military film, though there are English soldiers in it. Plus a pack of werewolves they end up battling for their lives. And all set in the Scottish wilderness. Intense, this is one of the best werewolf horror films I have seen in a while. 

3.  An American Werewolf in London (1981). A horror film with werewolves that will make you think twice about traveling to English and hiking through it with your buddy at night and during a full moon.

4. Cabin the Woods (2011): The premise sounds old hat in horror films: “Five friends go for a break at a remote cabin in the woods, where they get more than they bargained for. Together, they must discover the truth behind the cabin in the woods.” But honestly, it takes a surprising about-face, added with a dash of Lovecraft. I loved it. 

5.  30 Days of Night (2007). This is a vampire film that is intense from beginning to end. If you are looking for those breaks in humor, forget it, this movie won’t give it to you. If you’re looking for vampires that sparkle, forget it. These vamps are vicious and out for one thing you can give them, and it is not to love, but blood.

6.   Psycho (1960). Premise: a young woman steals $40,000 from her employer's client, and subsequently encounters a young motel proprietor too long under the domination of his mother. Though black and white, this Alfred Hitchcock film will scare you as only Hitchcock can. Famous for the shower scene.

7.  Evil Dead and Evil Dead II (1981 and 1987–both by Sam Raimi). First one is more grade-B horror, while the second one, a kind of remake has humor in it. The second one is the movie that made Bruce Campbell a B-movie icon and won Sam Raimi a whole lot more directing gigs. This film has equal parts humor and gore, but when the scares happen, they happen on a grand scale. Ever wondered what it would be like to fight your own hand? You won't have to wonder anymore after watching this movie. But still, I thought I point out the first one, too.

8.  28 Days Later (2002). Undead, or zombies as they are calling the ghouls of these films these days, this is a good one. Many movies have tried to recreate what a major city could look like after an apocalypse, but not many do it as hauntingly well as Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later." The terrifyingly fast zombie-like creatures roaming the landscape proved to be so effectively scary that the movie spawned a wave of movies featuring fast-paced zombies. And the zombies don’t have to die to change and are logical in why they act the way they do.

9.   The Descent (2005). This movie will terrify you if:  1) You’re claustrophobic. 2) You’re scared of the dark. 3) You have a fear of being trapped under the earth.  4) You have a fear of being trapped under the earth with vampire-like creatures that can see you but you can’t see them. netflix has the sequel that you can watch too.

10. Trick 'r Treat (2007): Now it's after Labor Day, we can go full blown Halloween crazy. Premise: Four interwoven stories that occur on Halloween: An everyday high school principal has a secret life as a serial killer; a college virgin might have just met the one guy for her; a group of teenagers pulls a mean prank; a woman who loathes the night has to contend with her holiday-obsessed husband. Perfect Halloween horror tales that will make you nervous about answering the door to trick-or-treaters.

11.  Alien (1979): “No one can hear you scream,” as the crew is stuck on a mining spaceship nowhere near Earth, where they run across something on a planet, what remains of a giant alien and what appears to be eggs or weirdly shaped rocks. One of the objects opens and something leaps from it to clasp onto the helmet of the crewmembers. Nostromo battle something that proves ET is not so friendly.  

12. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982): This science fiction body horror movie is based on the short story, “Who Goes There” by John W. Campbell that I had read back in college in an anthology, and John Carpenter's version is a more faithful adaptation than the 50s version with James Arness. It will make you question if your friend is really your friend or something that may want to take over the Earth.

13. A Quiet Place (2018):  Another science fiction horror movie with monstrous killing aliens. Premise: On a devastated Earth overrun by lethal and ever-hearing predators of a possible extraterrestrial origin, the Abbotts and their children struggles to survive in a desolate world in a new era of utter silence. As this new type of invader is attracted to noise, even the slightest of sounds can be deadly; however, it's been already twelve months since the powerful monsters' first sightings, and this resilient family still stands strong. To learn the rules of survival in this muted dystopia is essential; nevertheless, an otherwise joyous event is threatening an already frail stability. Now, more than ever, don't make a sound.

I am adding a 14th movie: Halloween (1978): with the new film by John Carpenter that says all but the first film never happened, where Jaime Lee Curtis returns and ready to battle Michael,  and releasing close to Halloween this October, this is a good time to watch the original film. Premise: This American slasher film directed and scored by John Carpenter, starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut. The film tells the story of Michael Myers, who was committed to a sanitarium as a child for the murder of his older sister Judith Myers but escapes back the house he grew up in on Halloween.

Supernatural Friday: Monsters' Hunting Season (Original Poem)

Enjoy this original poem by me for Supernatural Friday. Do share the blog link ans not the perm, so others cab con and read it.

"Winter is Coming, That Mean's It's Soon Hunting Season"

Winter’s not here yet, 

It's just autumn

But the leaves are dropping

And winter's cold fingers touches my skin.

Nothing to fear,

Except freezing to death;

Right?

But the coldness

Brings the monsters

They want to play;

Play with you

In so many ways.

Less people in the woods,

It’s Sasquatch’s time.

Werewolf is drawn

To towns full of human prey.

Ghosts don’t feel

So they hunt, cold or hot

Zombies?

They can eat anytime!

As for vampires

They’re icebox cold too.

So who told you winter’s safe?

It’s just another hunting season

For monsters!

Supernatural Friday: Truth on the Living Dead

 

I want to set some records straight, as I noticed more and more people consider zombies to be flesh eaters, thanks to "Night of the Living Dead," and zombie horror flicks after that. In reality all undead is living dead. 

This goes back to Gilgamesh and maybe even back to caveman times. Vampires in Eastern Europe did not begin just drinking blood, but flesh too. They were also mindless like zombies, coming from their graves to attack their relatives, not everybody. Later this changed to any person could be a victim of the vampire.  Watching an episode of  "Game of Thrones," they had white walkers, but they di not bit or eat the living to change them. Those people died. It took the head walker with a crown on its head and do something--obviously magic--for the new dead to arise. So not all dead eat flesh, but all dead that rise from death are the living dead, or undead.

Zombie was a term a reporter called the ghouls of Night of the Living Dead. Romero thought of them as ghouls, not zombies. A zombie is supposed to be the living dead: people who die and are resurrected, but without their souls. According to legend, a zombi is someone who has annoyed his or her family and community to the degree that they can no longer stand to live with this person. They respond by hiring a Bokor who turns that person into a zombie. They can take orders, and they're supposed to never be tired, and to do what the master says.

Zombies are the product of spells by a voodoo sorcerer called a bokor. The word is believed to be of West African origin and was brought to Haiti by slaves from that region. Slavery was hard and cruel and it coud even be thought that maybe zombies was developed to keep a slave from killing themselves to escape slavery.  To become a zombie was the slave's worst nightmare: to be dead and still a slave, an eternal field hand. There are several ways to destroy zombies in fiction or movies and TV shows (decapitations or gunshots to the head are popular), though according to Haitian folklore the goal is to release the person from his or her zombie state, not to outright kill the person. There are several ways to free a zombie; feed the zombie salt; others say that if a zombie sees the ocean its mind will return and it will become self-aware and angry, trying to return to its grave.

The word "zombi" —spelled for years without the "e"— first appeared in print in an American newspaper in a reprinted short story called "The Unknown Painter" in 1838.  Then William Seabrook wrote about seeing "voodoo" cults in Haiti and the concept of the zombi to many readers. Several film scholars believe the book was the basis of the classic 1932 horror film White Zombie. The most famous studies of Haitian zombies was ethnobotanist Wade Davis' 1985 book The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombies, and Magic. Wade studied the case of Clairvius Narcisse, a man believed to have been turned into an actual zombie through a combination of drugs (including puffer fish venom and toad venom) in order to mimic death. Then they gave him the hallucinogenic drug tetrodotoxin to keep him in a zombie-like state.

So zombie does not mean the undead person is a flesh eater. Let's call the undead what it is-undead, living dead, walking dead. Because that is what they all are.

 

Supernatural Friday: Risen Dead: Vampire and Zombie

I will talk about two more well known denizens of the risen dead. Next week, I have to write about more. Today for Supernatural Friday, it is about the vampire and the zombie.

 

People think any person rising after dying is either a vampire or zombie. Vampires drink blood. Zombies eat flesh of the living.

Actually in Eastern European legends from way, way back, vampires not only drank blood, they ate flesh too.  And they didn’t just attack anyone. They went after their ‘dear ones,’ a term you heard about if you read any of The Strain novels, comics, and TV show.  Dear ones, in other words, their family in life.

 

Now vampires were almost entirely unknown to the European imagination prior to 1730, and Johannes Flückinger’s strange report became known as the most thoroughly documented–as well as the most widely circulated–vampire narrative in the world. Following the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, much of the region now known as the Balkans was ceded to the Habsburg Monarchy by the Ottoman Empire. Along with it came a rich folkloric tradition which quickly merged with European ideas of witchcraft that had gripped the continent for the past three centuries. These stories would be widely reproduced in French, German and, later, in English, to eventually find their way into the hands of an obscure Irish writer and theater manager by the name of Bram Stoker.

 

 Countess Elizabeth Bathory: said to have bathed in virgins' blood to keep her skin supple and young. She was a real person.

Personally, I am sure that vampires were known, as every parts of the world have blood sucking. Flesh eating fiends in their myths and legends, just not called vampires directly.  In European stories, the making of new vampires came through bites or contaminated blood. They had the ability to transform into specific animal “familiars” (especially wolves and bats), and the method of dispatching the undead by murdering them in their coffins while they slept, would all be borrowed directly from Slavic folklore. These individuals thought to be the undead would later be exhumed, the red fluid in and around their mouth or nose would only confirm the original assumption. In actuality, during the normal process of decomposition the lungs become loaded with a dark red sanguinous fluid and the brain liquefies. Depending on the orientation of the body, this liquid would have leaked out as it was acted on by the pull of gravity. Add to this the eruption of sanguinous fluid when a stake is hammered into their lungs (an event that can emit sounds from a low groan to a high pitched scream as gases are forced outwards) and the misinterpretation would be complete.

Rabies can also be a cause for what might be thought as vampirism. The one with rabies would go and try to bit others. This of course, can be attributed to werewolves. It is notable that in the early Slavic accounts there was no distinction between vampires and what we would now call werewolves; in some versions a vampire was simply what a werewolf became after they died.

Other, older, versions of the vampire were not thought to be human at all but instead supernatural, possibly demonic, entities that did not take human form.  Clear foundations for the vampire are in the ancient world, but it is impossible to prove when the myth first arose. Suggestions that the vampire was born out of sorcery in ancient Egypt, a demon summoned into this world from some other. Many variations of vampires are told in myths and tales from around the world. There are Asian vampires, such as the Chinese jiangshi (pronounced chong-shee), evil spirits that attack people and drain their life energy; the blood-drinking Wrathful Deities that appear in the "Tibetan Book of the Dead," and many others.

Finding a vampire can have many ways to do so worldwide.  According to one Romanian legend, you need a seven-year-old boy and a white horse. The boy should be dressed in white, placed upon the horse, and the pair set loose in a graveyard at midday. Keep an eye on the horse as it wanders around, and whichever grave is nearest the horse when it finally stops will be a vampire's grave. Potential revenants can be identified at birth, usually by some abnormality, some defect, as when a child is born with teeth. Children born with an extra nipple in Romania, with a lack of cartilage in the nose, or a split lower lip in Russia are suspect. When a child is born with a red caul, or amniotic membrane, covering its head, this was regarded throughout much of Europe as presumptive evidence that it is destined to return from the dead. Minor deformities were looked upon as evil omens at the time.

It didn’t help that sometimes someone might die after going unconscious and not reviving. These people are buried. Centuries later, there are coffins unearthed and the contents hold a skeleton with its hands at the top, scratches in the wood. Obviously these people revived—not really dead—and found themselves buried. Then they died for real. If any were exhumed by villagers and found this way, I am sure a wooden stake, or more likely an iron stake or knife, was plunged into the chest or even the mouth.  Other ways of killing vampires include decapitation and stuffing the severed head's mouth with garlic or a brick. In fact, suspected vampire graves have been found with just such signs. In 2013, archaeologists in Bulgaria found two skeletons with iron rods through their chests. this pair are believed to have been accused vampires, according to an article in Archaeology Magazine.  You can read the article here.

Ways to protect yourself if a vampire comes after you? One of the best ways to stop a vampire is to carry a small bag of salt with you. If you are being chased, you need only to spill the salt on the ground behind you, at which point the vampire is obligated to stop and count each and every grain before continuing the pursuit. Another says that vampires cannot enter a home unless formally invited in. Supposedly, garlic keeps the vampire away and maybe a good thing to post at window. Of course, it would keep many away, not just the blood sucking undead.

 

As for zombies, that was a term a reporter called the ghouls of Night of the Living Dead. Romero thought of them as ghouls, not zombies. A zombie is supposed to be the living dead: people who die and are resurrected, but without their souls. According to legend, a zombi is someone who has annoyed his or her family and community to the degree that they can no longer stand to live with this person. They respond by hiring a Bokor who turns that person into a zombie. They can take orders, and they're supposed to never be tired, and to do what the master says.

Zombies are the product of spells by a voodoo sorcerer called a bokor. The word is believed to be of West African origin and was brought to Haiti by slaves from that region. Slavery was hard and cruel and it coud even be thought that maybe zombies was developed to keep a slave from killing themselves to escape slavery.  To become a zombie was the slave's worst nightmare: to be dead and still a slave, an eternal field hand. There are several ways to destroy zombies in fiction or movies and TV shows (decapitations or gunshots to the head are popular), though according to Haitian folklore the goal is to release the person from his or her zombie state, not to outright kill the person. There are several ways to free a zombie; feed the zombie salt; others say that if a zombie sees the ocean its mind will return and it will become self-aware and angry, trying to return to its grave.

The word "zombi" —spelled for years without the "e"— first appeared in print in an American newspaper in a reprinted short story called "The Unknown Painter" in 1838.  Then William Seabrook wrote about seeing "voodoo" cults in Haiti and the concept of the zombi to many readers. Several film scholars believe the book was the basis of the classic 1932 horror film White Zombie. The most famous studies of Haitian zombies was ethnobotanist Wade Davis' 1985 book The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombies, and Magic. Wade studied the case of Clairvius Narcisse, a man believed to have been turned into an actual zombie through a combination of drugs (including puffer fish venom and toad venom) in order to mimic death. Then they gave him the hallucinogenic drug tetrodotoxin to keep him in a zombie-like state.

 

Next week, I will post more undead creatures of legend. Since I have Marscon next weekend and will be out of town Thursday, I will post it a day early, on Thursday morning.

Supernatural Friday: Winter is Coming, That Mean's It's Soon Hunting Season

(Another original poem of mine--please just share the link for others to read it here, not shre the poem on your site. Thank you. )

"Winter is Coming, That Mean's It's Soon Hunting Season"

Winter’s not here yet, 

It's just autumn

But the leaves are dropping

And winter's cold fingers touches my skin.

Nothing to fear,

Except freezing to death;

Right?

But the coldness

Brings the monsters

They want to play;

Play with you

In so many ways.

Less people in the woods,

It’s Sasquatch’s time.

Werewolf is drawn

To towns more.

Ghosts don’t feel

So they hunt, cold or hot

Zombies?

They can eat anytime!

As for vampires

They’re icebox cold too.

So who told you winter’s safe?

It’s just another hunting season

For monsters!

Supernatural Friday: Zombies Never Came From George Romero

Zombies are a term some reporter titled the ghouls in George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead." The zombie and the horror movie were married very early in the history of films. In fact, the 1932 movie, “White Zombie” which stared Bela Lugosi pretty much type cast the zombie as a movie monster.

Interestingly enough, zombies actually come from the Congo and not Benin where Voodoo comes from. The word, “nbzambi” refers to their primary sprit and/or refers to one’s soul. When the Trans-Atlantic slave trade mixed peoples from all over the African Atlantic Coast, the zombie found a new home in Voodoo.

Four kinds of zombies are in Voodoo; the Great Spirit, the Spiritual Soul, the Herbal Zombie, and the Bargained Zombie.

Li Grand Zombi: this is the snake spirit in Voodoo given the Congolese name for the same principal entity. The snake used by Marie Laveau in New Orleans was said to have been called “li grand zombi.” The Louisiana mud snake used in rituals is sometimes called “ouncongo.”

Now, that familiar living dead zombie of movie familiarity has two versions, one is spiritual and the other, chemical.

Spiritual Zombie: this follows an African belief that a person has two souls. One is called the Great Angle. The other one is called the Little Angle. When a person dies, the Great Angle immediately knows the person is dead and departs the body. The Little Angle, on the other hand, takes about three days to realize the body is dead (this seems to be close to how when someone passes away, it takes three days usually before they are buried. During that time, a witchdoctor may invoke the Congolese Ghédé spirit to reach the Little Angle and cause it to believe the body is not dead. The corpse is reanimated, using the Little Angle as a motor.

Herbal Zombie: The West Africans were master chemists in use of herbs and poisons.  To make a zombie chemically, it was necessary to cause the victim to have the appearance of death, then apply an antidote to revive them. The basic poison comes from the common blowfish. Dried and powdered, it is a nerve poison, and is applied mainly in one’s shoes, surreptitiously, and absorbed through the sweet glands in the feet. The poison inhibits the natural conductivity of the nervous system and causes the body to atrophy and look decreased.  This phase completes the deception of death. In the second phase the antidote, a paste from the seedpod of the angle’s trumpet flower is applied. The seedpod contains two types of active ingredients. The first is atropine to counteracts the nerve poisoning. The second is a hallucinogenic that causes both amnesia and disorientation. The final result is a person who appeared to have died, is resurrected, and is now mentally incoherent, but physically functional. A form of control.

In Haiti, which is most closely associated with the resurrected zombie, it is considered a fate worse than death to become a zombie. A zombie is supposedly an immortal slave. To become a zombie is considered a great catastrophe and a terrible fear far worse than death.

Bargained Zombie: This is a voluntary arrangement in which the volunteer bargains to have his lesser soul exorcised and keep by a Voodoo Queen. Due to this arrangement, the Voodoo Queen can protect and give advantages to the volunteer. At some point, the volunteer has to surrender the rest of his soul. This usually occurs when the Voodoo Queen dies, and is no longer able to protect the volunteer. The classic example of this the case of Jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton and his godmother, Voodoo Queen, Eulalie Hécaud.

Rougarou: Ah, this creature was used a monster of the week in a “Supernatural’ episode. There’s a swamp creature in Louisiana that is half man, half beast. It is a strong figure in Cajun folklore. Like a zombie, he is often the product of the manipulation of a deceased soul by a witchdoctor.  Although the legends of the rougarou are closely related to European werewolf tales, there are several distinctions between the European werewolf, the French loup-garou, and the night lurking, bayou-wandering creature called the rougarou. Yes, like the French loup garou (werewolf), it often has red eyes and is usually nocturnal. But just like a zombie, it is deathly afraid of frogs. 

A person who encounters the rougarou draws one or three drops of blood, that person then has the spell, and from there, the tale can be either light or dark. In the darker tale, usually the person who encounters the rougarou commits suicide. The darker tale is almost always associated with a person who told of the encounter in less than a year. According to local stories printed in several sources in the Ellender Memorial Library archives, these animals roam the streets at night. They antagonize wandering people until they attack it, stabbing or shooting it. At the first drop of blood the animal will return to its human form. The rougarou will tell the attacker who he is.  Often the rougarou is someone the witness knows or has heard of. The rougarou usually tells the witness if he informs others of this encounter within one year and a day, he too will become a rougarou.

This popular folklore creature is often used to scare small kids into good behavior. The term rougarou has even become so popular in south Louisiana that it has evolved into a descriptive adjective, "rougarouing," used to describe a person who runs around or stays up late at night. The annual Rougarou ball on deep Bayou Goula happens every St. John’s Eve and is real.  

Supernatural Friday: Winter is Hunting Season

Winter is Hunting Season

by

Pamela K. Kinney 
(copyrighted to the author, so please just share the link, not take the poem)

Winter’s cold fingers touching my skin

Nothing to fear,

Except freezing to death;

Right?

But the coldness

Brings the monsters

They want to play;

Play with you

In so many ways.

Less people in the woods,

It’s Sasquatch’s time.

Werewolf is drawn

To towns more.

Ghosts don’t feel

So they haunt, cold or hot

Zombies?

They can eat anytime!

As for vampires

They’re icebox cold too.

So who told you winter’s safe?

It’s just another hunting season

For monsters!

Supernatural Friday: Eleven Scary Horror Films

October will be here in a couple of days and at the end of October is Halloween. At this time of year there are those who will read scary fiction or nonfiction ghost books, or watch scary movies. Personally, I watch the movies all year round or read the books the same. But today, on this last Supernatural Friday of September, I will start with what I think are eleven films to rent or buy on DVD, and watch.(Yeah-right, only I could make it an uneven number. . . )

1. Cabin the Woods (2011). This film just came out on DVD last week and I have watched it twice already. With Joss Whelon’s name as producer (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Serenity and The Avengers) attached to this film, I knew I had to have it, even though I didn’t catch it in the theaters this past spring. I heard it was worth the price of admission. And I will say, that is so true. Definitely a Whelon trademark, with some familiar faces too. The premise sounds old hat in horror films: “Five friends go for a break at a remote cabin in the woods, where they get more than they bargained for. Together, they must discover the truth behind the cabin in the woods.” But honestly, there is a surprisingly difference. I loved it. Watch the trailer here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/

2. The Haunting (1963). Don’t rent the 90s stinkero remake. Get this one.  It is based on the novel, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Premise: Dr. Markway, doing research to prove the existence of ghosts, investigates Hill House, a large, eerie mansion with a lurid history of violent death and insanity. With him are the skeptical young Luke, who stands to inherit the house, the mysterious and clairvoyant Theodora and the insecure Eleanor, whose psychic abilities make her feel somehow attuned to whatever spirits inhabit the old mansion. As time goes by it becomes obvious that they have gotten more than they bargained for as the ghostly presence in the house manifests itself in horrific and deadly ways. The film doesn’t need special effects to scare you. So grab this film, turn off the lights, huddle on the couch or your favorite chair, and be prepared to be frightened.

3.  Dog Soldiers (2002). No this is not a military film, though there are English soldiers in it. Plus a pack of werewolves they end up battling for their lives. And all set in the Scottish wilderness. Intense, this is one of the best werewolf horror films I have seen in a while. 

4.  An American Werewolf in London (1981). A horror film with werewolves that will make you think twice about traveling to English and hiking through it with your buddy at night and during a full moon.

5.  30 Days of Night (2007). This is a vampire film that is intense from beginning to end. If you are looking for those breaks in humor, forget it, this movie won’t give it to you. If you’re looking for vampires that sparkle, forget it. These vamps are vicious and out for one thing you can give them, and it’s not love!

6.   Psycho (1960). Premise: a young woman steals $40,000 from her employer's client, and subsequently encounters a young motel proprietor too long under the domination of his mother. Though black and white, this Alfred Hitchcock film will scare you as only Hitchcock can. Famous for the shower scene.

7.  The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II (1981 and 1987–both by Sam Raimi). First one is more grade-B horror, while the second one, a kind of remake has humor in it. The second one is the movie that made Bruce Campbell a B-movie icon and won Sam Raimi a whole lot more directing gigs. This films has equal parts humor and gore, but when the frights happen, they happen on a grand scale. Ever wondered what it would be like to fight your own hand? You won't have to wonder anymore after watching this movie. But still I thought I point out the first one, too.

8.  28 Days Later (2002). Undead, or zombies as they are calling the ghouls of these films these days, this is a good one. Many movies have tried to recreate what a major city could look like after an apocalypse, but not many do it as hauntingly well as Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later." The terrifyingly fast zombie-like creatures roaming the landscape proved to be so effectively scary that the movie spawned a wave of movies featuring fast-paced zombies. And the zombies don’t have to die to change and are logical in why they act the way they do.

9.   The Descent (2005). This movie will terrify you if:  1) You’re claustrophobic. 2) You’re scared of the dark. 3) You have a fear of being trapped under the earth.  4) You have a fear of being trapped under the earth with vampire-like creatures that can see you but you can’t see them.

10. Trick 'r Treat (2007). Premise: Four interwoven stories that occur on Halloween: An everyday high school principal has a secret life as a serial killer; a college virgin might have just met the one guy for her; a group of teenagers pull a mean prank; a woman who loathes the night has to contend with her holiday-obsessed husband. Perfect Halloween horror tales that will make you nervous about answering the door to trick-or-treaters.

11.  Alien (1979) and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). Since both are about creepy, monstrous aliens, then I think both should share equal billing, don’t you? In Alien, “no one can hear you scream,” as stuck on a spaceship not near Earth, the crew of the mining spacecraft, Nostromo battle something that proves ET is not so friendly. Same for The Thing, based on the short story, “Who Goes There” by John W. Campbell that I had read back in college, it is a more faithful adaptation than the 50s version with James Arness. It will make you question if your friends are really your friend, or something that may want to take over the Earth. You can even download the short story here: http://www.whogoesthere.info/download.php

There are many more films I loved, but could only put down ten. Other scary films included Poltergeist (1982), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dracula (1931-with Bela Lugosi), The Wolfman (1941-Lon Chaney Jr.), The Grudge (2004), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), The House on Haunted Hill (1999), The Woman in Black (2012), The House of Wax (1953—with Vincent Price), Salem’s Lot (1979 and 2004), Rosemary’s Baby, so many more. What are your favorites?

Supernatural Friday: Ghoul or Zombie: It's All How You Look at It

"They are neither man nor woman

They are neither brute nor human

They are Ghouls"

— Edgar Allan Poe

When George Romero's Night of the Living Dead came out, the press called the undead zombies. Except Romero never coined them that term. Instead he had called them ghouls. Which would be the right term, as zombies are connected to voodoo and are people drugged and controlled, not flesh eating monsters.

What are ghouls? A ghoul is a legendary evil being that robs graves and feeds on corpses.  It is one who shows morbid interest in things considered shocking or repulsive and supposedly lives in burial grounds. In Arabic folklore, ghouls are a type of jinn that could change their shapes but had one unchanging feature: donkey's hooves for feet. Even more horrible, it kills young children and even can lure unwary folk into abandoned places. By extension, the word ghoul is also used derogatorily to refer to a person who delights in the macabre, or whose profession is linked directly to death, such as a gravedigger.
Ghoul is from the Arabic ghul, from ghala "to seize." It is even thought to come from Gallu, a Mesopotamian demon. In Sumerian and Akkadian  mythology, the Gallus (also called gallu demons or gallas [Akkadian: gallû]) were great demons/devils of the underworld. Their job was to haul off unfortunate victims to the underworld and even accompanied Istar when she headed down to the underworld.
The ghul is a fiendish type of jinn believed to be sired by Iblis, known to the Devil in Islam. A ghoul is a desert-dwelling shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal especially a hyena. It lures unwary people into the desert wastes or abandoned places to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, drinks blood, steals coins, and eats the dead, taking the form of the person most recently eaten. In the Arabic language, the female form is given as ghouleh and the plural is ghilan. In colloquial Arabic, the term is sometimes used to describe a greedy or gluttonous individual.
In stories and films, I think Gollum as closest to the idea of a ghoul, and wouldn't be surprised this is what Tolkien had in mind when he wrote him into The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. What other beings in books or TV or film, do you believe they are ghouls?