I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: GOBLIN-“Suspiria” (1977).

A lot of the music I listen to is weird and probably creepy to other people, but I don’t necessarily think of songs as appropriate for Halloween or not.  So for this year’s Ghost Box stories, I consulted an “expert”: The Esquire list of Halloween songs you’ll play all year long.  The list has 45 songs–most of which I do not like.  So I picked 11 of them to post about.

I had never heard of Goblin, an Italian prog rock band.  They are primarily known for their soundtrack work.

This song is from the 1977 Italian supernatural horror film Suspiria directed by Dario Argento, which served as the inspiration for the 2018 film Suspiria, directed by Luca Guadagnino.

The song starts out quietly with bells and a twinkling piano–signalling either a children’s song or a demonic score.  The song reveals it full demonic side with some eerily strummed mandolin and then, creepiest of all a whispered voice singing “La La La La La La La” along with the melody.

This continues for about 2 and a half minutes before a spacey synth and a rumbling bass and drum jolt the song forward.  There’s more whispered words and some keyboard stabs.  This resolves into a fast keyboard version of the initial bells motif.

After two minutes of this the original music returns now with an echoing drum and a much clearer somehow creepier “La La La.”

I have never seen this movie, but if the soundtrack is an indication, it’s must be super creepy.

[READ: October 18, 2019] “The Vanishing American”

Just in time for Halloween, from the people who brought me The Short Story Advent Calendar and The Ghost Box. and Ghost Box II. comes Ghost Box III.

This is once again a nifty little box (with a magnetic opening and a ribbon) which contains 11 stories for Halloween.  It is lovingly described thusly:

Oh god, it’s right behind me, isn’t it? There’s no use trying to run from Ghost Box III, the terrifying conclusion to our series of limited-edition horror box sets edited and introduced by Patton Oswalt.

There is no explicit “order” to these books; however, I’m going to read in the order they were stacked.

This story isn’t scary.  It’s more thought provoking.  And, in fact, it has one of the most positive endings in a story that I’ve read in a long time.

The premise is that Mr. Minchell has been working for the same job, in the same life, forever.   He is forty-seven and today is his birthday.  He is trying to parse a spreadsheet of three thousand lines and his total just came up one number off the last time he did it.

On his way out of the office, he says goodbye to his boss who basically ignores him.  He wonders if the boss has ever said anything more than hello or goodbye to him.

He walks home and is ignored by the elevator operator and the store clerk who sells him a pack of Luckies but never looks up at him.  He thinks about a story he recently read where a man died and his ghost was walking around doing his job.  But he keeps repeating the word Ridiculous.

The story moves along smoothly although this line out of context was inscrutable to me:

Ghosts don’t wear $36 suits.

Given the time of 1955 I don’t know if this is an expensive suit or not.

Suffice it to say he’s having a bad day.  He looks forward to getting home, but when he does, his wife and son don’t see him either.  When he looks in the bathroom mirror he sees nothing but a distant fuzzy gray shape.

The surprise ending is kind of obvious, but maybe it wasn’t back then.  Nevertheless, the way the ending is revealed is pretty fantastic.  I really enjoyed this story a lot.

Read Patton Oswalt’s take here.