TALES OF THE DARK GOAT O' PENN'S WOODS, DAY ONE
15MIDNIGHT!
(Well, it must be midnight SOMEwhere)
Iä! Shub-Niggurath!!
The goat with 31 stories!
– (Hey, is there a CENTER command in the Meh formatting commands?) –
Gather 'round, me goaties! The equinox is passed, Samhain approaches, ye coffee houses are filled with ye pumpkin spice - 'tis time to sip ye cider and cuddle by ye fireplace for gas of a different sort - dark tales of the misfortunes of others! (For dark tales of your OWN misfortunes, submit to the Blame Thread.)
I have had a fondness for horror stories since I was a child IN the '60s, thrilling to the wonderful (to me at the time) Alfred Hitchcock’s Haunted Houseful, Robert Arthur’s story collections, and moving up from Marvel’s Amazing Tales and DC’s House of Mystery to the (not-code-approved) Warren comic books Eerie and Creepy. Later I discovered Lovecraft and the Weird Tales stable in 7th grade, and moved on to the contemporary, hem, kings of horror. I DO like a lot of modern horror, particularly Ramsey Campbell and the Preston & Child books, but even Steven King has gotten off a few good ones.
Heh heh heh - I WAS going to inflict some of my OWN horror tales on you - but there’s only so much space in a post, and anyway, uh, I didn’t get any finished. Somehow August got away from me and September went nuts and here we are. I blame me!
Anyway, I still love those wonderful, out-of-copyright horror tales of a bygone age - Poe, Stoker, Hodgson, Chambers, ESPECIALLY Lovecraft, M.R. James, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; honorable mention to Algernon Blackwood, Oliver Onions, and Walter de la Mare. So to cut to what chase there is, I hope to surprise you with a couple authors you may not know, or a couple of stories you don’t know by authors you do, and maybe throw in a couple pastiches to keep it interesting.
And so, without further ado, here is a link to one of my favorite story collections from my 2nd favorite out-of-copyright horror author of all time:
Montague Rhodes James
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
- 10 comments, 47 replies
- Comment
Well! Good start!
/giphy awesome
Oh boy. This is gonna be sumptin’ and a pumpkin. Welcome oh October Goat!
Awww yissss. I really enjoyed my goatdom in October years ago. I feel like I’ll enjoy this October as well.
Let me a popcorn and hot cider so I can enjoy this more!
@JnKL It is not yet midnight where I live (50 minutes to go in CST) so I’ll have to blame you for something. Hmm fleas on my cats that I am still battling and ants still in the bathroom. Once you have dealt with those you are free to sit back enjoy your hot cider and popcorn. And the stories that will be told.
@JnKL @Kidsandliz that’s new - did mediocrebot learn some new tricks? is blame the trigger?
@JnKL @stolicat Naw, it’s just that @mediocrebot is gaining sentience.
@mediocrebot @stolicat @therealjrn yep, last month, insects were my fault!
And I am not sure I want to see a sentient bot.
/giphy yippee
Blame the scapegoat for not having a center feature in mehdown markup.
@mike808 looks like the scapegoat tag is not working for medicorebot. Wonder what happened?!.!
1 2 3 4 get your scapegoat @JnkL on the floor
@mike808 @tinamarie1974 It just doesn’t work for Mike. He was spreading #FakeGoatNews about #PeakGoat.
@mike808 @therealjrn @tinamarie1974 Yeah not midnight yet and while @JnkL now has the dead goat icon, likely didn’t have it 2 hours ago.
@JnKL @Kidsandliz @therealjrn @tinamarie1974
And just who do you think is to blame for that conundrum?
@JnKL @Kidsandliz @mike808 @therealjrn @tinamarie1974
@JnKL @Kidsandliz @mike808 @stolicat @tinamarie1974
The Center
@JnKL @Kidsandliz @mike808 @stolicat @tinamarie1974 Damn that’s hard work. You have to use the (ALT Key+255) for each space.
@JnKL @Kidsandliz @mike808 @therealjrn @tinamarie1974 yeah, mine didn’t work.
@JnKL @Kidsandliz @mike808 @therealjrn @tinamarie1974 I think there’s a trick you can do with tables, but it’s too late and I’m too tired to read it all and figure it out …
https://help.github.com/en/articles/organizing-information-with-tables
Great first choice! Can’t wait for the eldritch horrors ahead!
Scary true story. The mehtizenry runs out of goats, and there is no scapegoat to blame! Oh the horror!
#PeakGoat
@mike808 Given that we have Abiogenic Goats, all will be well.
Unblame. Finally! Landlord installed a new toilet!
Fuck. Blame.
Unblame. Maintenance fixed it.
@mike808 As a landlord, that warms my cold cockles. Why do you have a landlord, why aren’t you a property owner by now?
@mike808 Ha ha! I didn’t notice the first pic. That is hilarious. Sorry/Not sorry.
Blame. Now you can’t get in because the door doesn’t open wide enough. WTF, people?
@mike808 That is truly messed up.
Unblame. Sometimes, you just gotta fix shit yourself. It’s a rental. I’ll patch it with ramen and toothpaste when I move out of this dump.
@mike808 And you put in a tile floor! Nice.
@mike808 @therealjrn Another horror story…
Tales of the Toilet
@mike808 @therealjrn And you put on a new door that has panels in it. Looks like you will just have to put the old door back on, scrape the tiles off the floor and then refinish the wood floor. (snicker). Should have made the slot bigger so that cats can get in and out.
I can see a household of kids spying on each other through the hole. And then… “MOOOOOMMMMMM Johnny’s looking at me”. “MOOOOOMMMMMM Emily punched me in the eye through the hole in the door”…
@Kidsandliz @therealjrn
Like I said, I’mma fix all that with ramen and toothpaste.
@Kidsandliz @mike808 Don’t forget the can of white spray paint for your tub instead of cleaning it. (True story)
@therealjrn
True story done in your younger, more foolish days or you know someone who actually did that? Now I’d suspect some of my slumlords of stunts like that to “fix up” a place, although most of those just let you move into a dirty place…
@mike808 The question then becomes what happens when water hits that repair.
Don’t be fucking ridiculous @Kidsandliz. It was done by a tenant.
@Kidsandliz @therealjrn - This thread went down the toilet FAST!
@therealjrn Why the anger? I didn’t know you were a landlord. You must have seen some “novel” ways people cover up messes they make in hopes of not being caught. I have heard students I have taught talk about how they were planning to hide damage and have sometimes lived in places where stunts were pulled - although nothing like that video.
@Kidsandliz What anger? I’m not mad. I just said don’t be fucking ridiculous.
I mentioned in the same thread I am a landlord. I don’t talk about it as much as you talk about living in a shithole with thieving workers, a crappy car, and a broken computer, but I have mentioned it before.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
No worries. Carry on. :happy_smiley_face:
@Kidsandliz @therealjrn - At our old house we had an original (@ 1960) tub where a steady drip had worn the enamel away, and got some kind of ‘special’ paint that was supposed to fix stuff like that. It actually worked pretty well, but didn’t QUITE match the color of the existing enamel.
@aetris @Kidsandliz Yeah, that stuff does kinda work for that. A 99 cent can of Lowes white spray paint surprisingly does a poor job of it. lol
@therealjrn Obviously I don’t read all posts carefully in a thread, or necessarily even read all of them in a particular thread to remember that you are a landlord. Seems to me being a landlord would be one of the better ways to have an income stream independent of the economy presuming there is a good way to make sure you have tenants that don’t screw you.
I realize you dislike me as you have made that clear repeatedly, but there is no need to add put downs in answers/being mean to people you dislike. I had only asked you if you did that when you were younger or knew someone who had done that since you had said true story. You could have just said, as a landlord, you had an asshole tenant do that to you. And hopefully, if this is the case, you found out prior to refunding their deposit as that is a pretty asshole thing to do to a landlord.
@Kidsandliz @therealjrn - Now listen you old goats, as presiding goat I DEMAND that you STOP BICKERING and BLAME ME!
Man! The work a guy’s gotta do to get blamed around here!
@aetris
/giphy blame!!
now you satisfied?
@aetris I ain’t mad, or even bothered. It’s a big fat /NO BLAME. My jimmies remain rustle free.
Yer not getting off this easy.
Hmmm… @nolrak started his month off with a story that lasted two whole submissions. Now you’ve gone and linked to a story instead of writing your own. I’m a bit leary of these promises @aetris!
@cinoclav - I got thrown off by the limit on text you can put in a single post, but now that I think back on @f00l’s replies, it occurs to me I can just break stuff up into Reply blocks. On the other hand, I WAS just going to post “Casting the Runes”, but by linking to the whole book you get a bunch of choices that are all good. Imma stick with it for now, see how it goes. May wind up being author-dependent.
@aetris You know I’m just playing. I have total faith in you!
@cinoclav Of course there is the rumor I am starting right now that @aetris plans to deliver pizza to whomever can prove they read all the stories and books linked to this month.
@cinoclav -
@Kidsandliz -
@mediocrebot You know I think sometimes you alternate between an auto bot and your “handler” making individualized comments while impersonating you.