Scared for Life
The Black Lady
I've always been a fan of all things spooky going back as far as I can remember. The blame for this I place squarely on my five older siblings, with my brother Gene (the eldest) being the ringleader.
Gene is eight years older than me and as such became the guardian of all six of us on summer days when my mom was at work. To describe the ensuing child-rearing scenario as any sort of productive, positive day-care experience would be laughable. It was more like a wolf pack...comprised of yapping canines of various sizes...led by an alpha-male with his own obsession with the macabre. What could possibly go wrong?
The family circa 1966. Gene is on the left. I'm holding my mom's hand...safe for the time being.
On an everyday basis, Gene would lead us through group activities that tilted towards the dark side. He would scrawl eerie messages in lemon juice on blank paper. The juice would vanish when dry, only to re-emerge in ghostly burnt brown when held over a candle.
He once got his hands on some glow-in-the-dark Play Doh, so he prepped the basement with green globs around the room, all at forehead height, then finished with one glob on his actual forehead. He would shout for the rest of us to come down in the pitch black whereupon we had to figure out by feel which of the glowing globs was actually 'the monster'. As soon as the monster was found all Hell broke loose on the basement stairs to reach safety upstairs. As much as my five-year-old self wanted no part of this game, I also didn't want to be left alone on the main floor during it, and so down into the dark I went (likely the last one in line).
But possibly his best pranks involved the use of a rubber 'dead man's' mask...a hideous leering corpse face with blue lips and yellow rotting skin. He would put the mask over a football then lower it from his bedroom window to bump against the living room window below. Whoever was unfortunate enough to investigate the sound and part the curtains would receive the shock of their lives. My parents' cocktail parties were a great time to pull this prank.
But the neighborhood at large was also traumatized by the hideous head, even in broad daylight. Gene would borrow one of my dad's trenchcoats and button it up over top of his own head. This created a lurching, headless monster which was capped off by the dead-man-masked football. He would stagger out into the street (accompanied by his henchmen, brothers Ross and Steve), clutching his false noggin in place with both hands. When they encountered an unsuspecting child he would approach and with a grunt, raise this ghastly "head"off his body to show it wasn't attached. How many trike-riding preschoolers were scarred for life by this gruesome display, we'll never know.
Elements of horror have crept time and again into my artistic life. The best film I ever made in high school with my buddy Bernie was a horror one.
Our Nosferatu-inspired film "Killer", 1981.
In recent years I curated a horror-themed art show, "The Haunted Canvas" at Montgomery's Inn.
And when I started painting my ten-part Christmas Carol series, the first painting out of the gate (which I needed zero motivation to get to work on) was the Ghost of Christmas Future confronting Scrooge in the graveyard.
Scrooge's Reckoning
So thanks Gene...and no...I won't be going into the basement if I know you're down there.
The White Lady
If you would like to see our 1981 film "Killer", it's been remastered and is available on Youtube. It's only 20 minutes long, and I think it still has a pretty eerie vibe. Treat yourself to a viewing one spooky night this month! Here's the link:
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