Check-In to the Notorious Cecil Hotel in LA - Guest Post on Spooky Little Halloween

The Cecil Hotel in DTLA
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Last year I shared the 5 Spookiest Haunts in Orange County on Spooky Little Halloween's blog as part of her Travel Tuesday summer series. This series is really neat since it features many different Halloween bloggers sharing haunted locations from all over and it is just in time for summer vacations! I participated again this year, and my contribution to Spooky Little Halloween's Travel Tuesday features another dreadful destination right in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

This time, I'm inviting you to check into the old Cecil Hotel (which is undergoing renovations and has been re-branded to Stay-on-Main to distance itself from its violent reputation). This historic landmark has a dark history filled with grisly murders, tragic deaths, and macabre mysteries, and is said to be one of the most haunted locations in LA. It has hosted serial killers (yes, plural), been the location of one of LA's most disturbing deaths in recent memory, and the dark halls have even inspired a season of American Horror Story. Check out an excerpt from my article on the Cecil below, then head to Spooky Little Halloween to read the rest of the article:

Macabre Non-Fiction Books for Darklings

I simply adore catching up on reading over the holidays - my family knows I love books, so I usually get a pretty good book haul for Christmas. Then for the next few weeks I usually spend my spare time on the couch curled up with one of the books I received. It's bliss!

This year, there are many new non-fiction releases that I have my eye on and that I've added to my Christmas wish list. The ones I've chosen below explore death culture and customs around the world, gorgeous cemeteries to visit before you die, grisly methods of Victorian surgery and medicine, historical charlatanism involving "cure-alls", and the popularity and downfall of spirit photography.

These nefarious non-fiction books are perfect for yourself or for that special someone who is into macabre history and death-positivity. Check out my non-fiction recommendations below for darklings!

Attend an Evening of Witches This Walpurgisnacht

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Walpurgisnacht (Witches' Night) usually occurs on April 30th (unless it's a leap year), and marks the halfway point to Halloween. Historically it was believed that on Walpurgisnacht the veil between worlds becomes thinner (just like Halloween), and witches were able to take to the skies and travel to their mountaintop sabbats. You can learn more about Walpurgisnacht from an article I wrote previously, and I am so thrilled that the good folks over at Death and The Maiden are celebrating it and allowing others to join in the fun with their Night of the Witches event!

The event will be held on Walpurgisnacht (April 30th) at Phantom Carriage Brewery in Carson, California. There will be death positive talks on the funeral industry from mortician Amber Carvaly as well as an illustrated talk on Walpurgisnacht from Sarah Chavez. Food and drink specials will be served from Phantom Carriage's taproom, and a very special screening of The Love Witch by Anna Biller will be shown.

Cemetery Gates Volume 5, Part 1: Cities in Dust

The whole end of December and all of January have been rather challenging for me, so I apologize for the absence. Besides all the usual holiday-craziness/traveling, my sweet cat Havoc got sick right before Christmas (and right before I was heading out of town). I took him to the emergency vet before leaving, and he seemed okay after getting checked out, but when I got back he still wasn't himself, so we've been going back and forth to the veterinarian (this is the first time he has ever been sick in 11 years!). He isn't quite out of the woods yet, but he seems better. And as if that wasn't stressful enough, I caught the nasty flu bug going around and have been sick for the past two weeks and haven't had energy to do much besides sleep, not to mention the awful state of the U.S. at the moment.

Anyways, it seems like I am on the mend (fingers crossed) and next week I'll find out if my dark prince Havoc is doing better. At least while I was sick I had the chance to catch up on some long-overdue reading, including Cemetery Gates Volume 5, a DIY zine created by the badass Kendy aka MissMuffCake! She releases many amazing zines (you can check them all out on Etsy!), and this one is filled with cemetery stories and photography. I've shared past issues of Cemetery Gates (check out Volume 1 and Volume 3!) and loved them, so I was stoked to dive into Volume 5!

Goth Gift Guide: Nefarious Non-Fiction for Curious Creeps

My idea of the perfect gift? BOOKS! I'd be happy buried beneath books, and while I really, really try to limit my collection these days due to space issues, I am finding it hard to resist adding the non-fiction books below to my personal Christmas wish list! There are books featuring hidden wonders from around the world, photographic collections of macabre items, recollections of 31 days of October spent in Salem, Victorian ways of death, haunted histories, personal art collections, and even a horror-inspired coloring book. These are all fairly new items, released just this year, and any of these are sure to make my fellow creeps happy!

Check out the nefarious non-fiction books I've selected for fellow spooklings below:

Heritage Square's Halloween Mourning Tour

Heritage Square's Victorian mansions and hearses on display from 

Coffin Cartel Hearse Club for the Halloween Mourning Tours

Last weekend I visited Heritage Square Museum, a collection of preserved, renovated and currently being renovated Victorian homes tucked away in a nondescript cul-de-sac of Los Angeles. Every year around Halloween they hold a weekend of Halloween Mourning tours, where they bring alive Halloween celebrations and mourning customs from the Victorian age to the '30s and '40s with re-enactments, costumes, decorations, and traditions.

Guillermo del Toro's At Home with Monsters Exhibit

Angel of Death from Hellboy II greets you as you enter the exhibit.

I was finally able to get over to LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) to enter the world of Guillermo del Toro through his "At Home with Monsters" exhibit. I love many of del Toro's films and other projects he has been involved with including Cronos (1993), The Devil’s Backbone (2001), Hellboy (2004), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and Crimson Peak (2015). His influences range from the Victorian era, to sci-fi and comics, to horror to his own tumultuous childhood.

The "At Home with Monsters" exhibit boasts works of art from del Toro's own personal collection as well as props and items from his films and is broken into different sections that reflect his influences. The exhibition begins with a section on "Childhood and Innocence," before moving through the galleries "Victoriana," "Magic, Alchemy, and the Occult," "Movies, Comics, Pop Culture," "Frankenstein and Horror," "Freaks and Monsters," "Death and the Afterlife", and there is even a "Rain Room" with storm clouds projected on the ceiling and rain beating against some gothic windows while lighting flashes. The visit was enthralling, and to be surrounding by so much gorgeous artwork was exhilarating!

Tickets for the special exhibition were $25 (which included admission to the other parts of the museum as well, barring their special rain room exhibits) and though the weekend crowds were a bit much at times, I took my time to absorb all of the wondrous art exhibited in the space and made sure to wander through the space several times so I didn't miss anything!

I took a ton of photos (yes, photography was allowed!), but wanted to share some of my favorites below:

The Occult Activity Book Returns with Volume Two

The Occult Activity Book is back, and bigger and better than ever! The first volume was filled with wonderfully dark art and activities, and the second is packed with even more! In fact, this new volume has doubled in size and it is bristling with 52 pages of gore-geous artwork, eerie activities, gruesome games, and all sorts of fiendish fun! Where else can you immerse yourself in activities like Mad Libs-inspired incantations, building your own papercraft coven, solving the sexiest occult-themed crossword puzzle ever, mastering macabre mazes, learning about the Gilles de Rais, Ed and Lorraine Warren, Madame Blavatsky (and more) while coloring in their illustrations, testing your knowledge of the esoteric, all the while listening to a hand-crafted witchy playlist?

Mummies by Candlelight: The Marvelous Dead and Darkness Tour with Dr. Koudounaris

The Mummies of the World exhibition is the largest collection of real mummies and artifacts assembled, providing a glimpse into the lives of ancient people from South America to Europe to Africa to the South Pacific and beyond. The exhibition has been experienced by over 1.4 million visitors across the world, and its limited engagement at the Bowers Museum is the first time the exhibit has been to Orange County! The exhibition teaches visitors about the world of mummies and mummification and shows how modern science helps us understand how and why mummies were created, where they came from, and who they were. 

Ok, as if that awesome description didn't get me hyped enough, I was even more excited to hear that a special nighttime lantern-lit tour of the exhibit would be led by none other than Dr. Paul Koudounaris, author of The Empire of Death,  Memento Mori, and Heavenly Bodies, who delighted so many (including me) at Death Salon in LA last year (read about that here). Tickets included a prix fix dinner at the museum's restaurant, Tangata, plus live entertainment by DJ Decadanse spinning gothic tunes and puppet shows by Rasputin's Marionettes. I was so in (and yes, I made sure Tangata had vegan options before buying tickets)! 

The Marvelous Dead and Darkness Tour was a really memorable event, and I'll walk you through my evening and share my photos below, which includes my overall thoughts on the organization of the event, a short review of the prix fix meal at Tangata (because of course!), as well as sharing photos of the mummies we saw by lantern-light!

Please note: below you will see photographs of real bodies, including some children and animals, so continue at your own discretion.

Happy Birthday, Edward Gorey

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Today, February 22nd, marks what would have been Edward Gorey's 91st birthday. He was born in 1925 and died April 15, 2000. His numerous pieces of work were usually pen and ink illustrations, often with morbid Victorian/Edwardian themes. He had a very peculiar style, one that is instantly recognizable. His strange and unusual artwork is near and dear to many people's dark hearts, including my own.

Why not celebrate this wonderful artist by throwing around a skull, like the 

Victorian ladies in his "Dull Afternoon" above? 

Or bake up an impressive birthday cake for Mr. Gorey's ghost!

Happy birthday, Mr. Gorey, and thank you for your wonderful illustrations that will continue to delight many for generations to come. 

Book Review: The Occult Activity Book

The recent boom in adult coloring books (yes, I'm a fan!) has given rise to some intriguing books for those of us that aren't necessarily going to be interested in coloring flowers or pastoral scenes. There are coloring books for Halloween, classic horror, goths, and other creepy categories, but I have to say that the newly released Occult Activity Book trumps them all! It features not only fantastical drawings of macabre magics, historical figures, arcane rituals, and so forth, but also witchy word games. This is the perfect adult coloring book for those with darker tastes!

Spooky News - Halloween Prep, Death, Tacos, Vegan Butchers and Horror Movies

Wow, was this ever an eventful week, full of both sorrow and elation, encompassing a wide array of topics, from deaths to new vegan places opening up to new horror movie trailers to starting to prep for Halloween! There was so much going on that I've shared across so many different social media platforms, that I wanted to gather it all in one place and share it all at once.

There has been so many celebrity deaths lately, but the two that really stood out for me on a personal level have been Angus Scrimm, best known for the role of Tall Man in the Phantasm movies, and Alan Rickman, most beloved for his Severus Snape role in the Harry Potter films (but he was amazing in so many other films). The passing of these two really hit me in my gut, and I'm still processing my grief over two gentleman whom I never knew but admired greatly. Scrimm I was lucky enough to see in person at a Fangoria convention several years ago, and he was so charming, sweet, and funny! I'll always cherish that memory. And I've always swooned over Rickman as Professor Snape, because what goth girl hasn't? He was one of my favorite Potter characters. Both of their talents will be sorely missed.

Watch Now on Netflix: Nightcrawler

One of 2014's underrated gems was Nightcrawler, a dark and gritty neo-noir film starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a young hustler who gets sucked into the sordid but lucrative business of trolling the streets of Los Angeles to film fires, car crashes - and murder. It's not precisely horror, but its wickedly dark tone certainly caught my attention - and it is now available on Netflix streaming!

Here is the official synopsis:

Los Angeles denizen Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) survives by scavenging and petty theft. He stumbles into a new career as a cameraman and -- armed with a camcorder and police scanner -- begins nocturnal forays across the city in search of shocking and grisly crimes. When he catches the eye of a shopworn news director (Rene Russo) who welcomes the chance to raise her station's ratings, Louis goes to increasingly greater lengths to catch the "money shot."

The film was thrilling, especially set against the reflection of neon and flashing red and blue lights in LA's blood-soaked streets, Crime photography has always fascinated me, and the dark side of it the movie presented really drew me in. I also really dug the weird-o character Gyllenhaal played (he did such a phenomenal job in this role), who I actually started to sympathize with as the film went on, despite how he far he spiraled. And the quirky bits of dark humor his character injected into the film really made me like him even more! The social commentary aspect of the movie was also timely, especially when most people have access to film/photograph almost anything 24/7, not to mention our culture having an intense fascination with disasters and accidents that may lead to death.

I highly recommend you check out Nightcrawler, streaming on Netflix now, but also available on other places as well as on Amazon!

A Day at Death Salon Getty Villa: From Ancient Necropolis to LA's Metropolis

This past Sunday, April 26th, I had the absolute pleasure of attending the Death Salon held at The Getty Villa in Malibu, California, whose broad focus was "From Ancient Necropolis to LA's Metropolis". The Death Salon is curated in part by The Order of the Good Death, who helps put on these events in different locations around the world. This time they partnered with J. Paul Getty Museum and The Getty Villa to bring Los Angeles a view of death that the ancient Etruscans, Romans, and Greeks held, plus touching on some local LA death-centric topics. But wait, you might be asking yourself...just what is a Death Salon? The Death Salon website explains, "In the spirit of the eighteenth-century salon – informal gatherings of intellectuals – Death Salon encourages conversations on mortality and mourning and their resonating effects on our culture and history."

My Sweet 666th Post: Death Artwork, Death Zines and the Upcoming Death Salon

This is my six-hundred sixty-sixth post, which I wanted to recognize it by, what else, talking about death! I've got some cool things to share, like rad death-inspired artwork, an awesome cemetery zine, and the epic Death Salon coming up! Check 'em all out below!

"Bad Vibes" pin set and "Hang in There" print by

Matt Darling

If you don't know the name Matt Darling, you should! He is one of my favorite new artists and I've been drooling over his work over on Instagram. Who can resist anxiety ghosts, scaredy cats, and old hags? Not me! I finally made my first purchases of his work - I bought his delightfully downbeat "Bad Vibes" pin set (spooks, black cats, skeletons skulk around gravestones etched with phrases like "Naw Man", "Can't Win, Don't Try", "Here Lies Who Cares", and my personal favorite "Whatevs 4-evs") as well as a "Hang in There" print. So pleased with everything! You can check out his artwork for sale on badvibes4lyfe.bigcartel.com!

Watch Now on Netflix: Killer Legends

I watch a lot of Netflix and am always looking for new things to watch, so I thought I would start this new section called "Watch Now on Netflix" to recommend titles I've recently enjoyed! All titles are streaming on Netflix at the time of posting, but you can also find them on other streaming services, on DVD or on Blu-ray (links below will lead to titles' Amazon pages).

The other night I watched Killer Legends, a documentary that follows Joshua Zeman (who brought us the chilling documentary Cropsey which I also highly recommend) and Rachel Mills as they explore four urban legends and their shocking true-life origins. They find that the truth is sometimes far more horrifying than fiction.

A Vegan Horror Movie, Vegan Convenience Store, Vegan Ice Cream Parlor, and the Urban Death Project - Four Crowdsourced Campaigns Worth Supporting

Crowdsourcing is the way to get things done these days, and there are so many worthy causes out there trying to raise money to start their business or take their business to the next level. Sometimes the amount of fundraising campaigns can be overwhelming, making it hard to decide where your hard-earned money should go. I too usually struggle with the over-abundance of crowdsourcing campaigns, but recently I discovered four very different businesses that really caught my attention and that could use your support!

Food Review: Dissection of the Fatally Yours Chocolate Box

Fiends, I finally did it! After years of pining for Vegan Treats' "gore"-geous Fatally Yours Chocolate Box, I finally succumbed to its siren call and ordered a box for myself! Rarely do I do something so extravagant, but I just can't stand another Valentine's Day without it. Plus, this box couldn't be any more perfect for me! It's delightfully spooky, vegan, and I actually used to run a horror site called Fatally Yours (you can check out the archive here) and "Fatally Yours" was my writing moniker for many years! So I could actually say this chocolate box literally has my name written on it, nyuck, nyuck!

I wrote about the box last month, but I wanted to provide a review aka detailed dissection of it for you, dear readers. That way you can see its bones and what you get with this luxurious Valentine's Day chocolate box.

Hang with Other Future Corpses at Death Salon LA

Death Salon is returning to Los Angeles on April 26th, 2015 to the beautiful Getty Villa! The event will host many exciting guest speakers who will be discussing a variety of topics centered around death. You can join other future corpses like me and attend this event by buying tickets (they go on sale this morning, February 5th, 2015 at 9 AM Pacific time!).

Let's Talk About Death, Baby!

Goodbye Darling headstone at St. Helena Cemetery, St. Helena, CA

Ok, this is going to be completely different than what I usually write about, and a topic that might become more of a mainstay here on the blog. "Let's talk about Death, baby! Let's talk about you and me!" Yes, I want to talk to you about great big ol' Death and how I've been awakened to finally accept death and openly discuss the subject in a positive light. I have been wanting to write on the subject for a while, and was finally spurned to action after finishing Caitlin Doughty’s mortician memoir Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory.  In this fantastic book, Doughty recounts her start in the death industry working in a crematorium and how this job led to her eye-opening journey to death acceptance. I have followed Caitlin’s delightful straight-talk about death from her YouTube series Ask a Mortician to her site The Order of the Good Death and now to her memoir. It is always a delight to read about her accounts in the death industry, and how she encourages death acceptance and death positivity instead of the closed-off view of death modern society currently suffers from.