resonant: Ray Kowalski (Due South) (Default)
[personal profile] resonant
For the New House by Ursula K. Le Guin

May this house be full of kitchen smells
and shadows and toys and nests of mice
and roars of rage and waterfalls of tears
and deep sexual silences and sounds
of mysterious origin never explained
and troves and keepsakes and a lot of junk
and a flowing like a warm wind only slower
blowing the leaves of trees and books and the fish-years
of a child’s life silvery flickering
quick, quick, in the slow incessant gust
that billows out the curtains for a moment
all those years from now, ago.
May the sills and doorframes
be in blessing blest at every passing.
May the roof but not the rooms know rain.
May the windows know clearly
the branch and flower of the apple tree.
And may you be in this house
as the music is in the instrument.

Writing prompts for hauntings

Apr. 16th, 2025 09:45 am
dannye_chase: (Default)
[personal profile] dannye_chase
 

Want to write about a haunting? Take inspiration from history

Find six haunted places on my Weird Wednesday blog, with writing prompts:

The Amityville Horror: Infamous American Haunted House

The Mystery of the Moving Coffins: A Locked-Tomb Whodunit

50 Berkeley Square: the Scariest House in London

Borley Rectory: Haunting or Hoax?

Why the Nederlander Theater is Haunted: Chicago’s Little-Known 1903 Disaster

The Haunted Rail: Ghost Trains

A prompt for 50 Berkeley Square

  • Hold my beer. It’s funny how when you say things like “Nobody can spend a night in this house,” you get a long line of brave idiots volunteering to do exactly that. (There is a related trope, where they absolutely do not volunteer, such as in the story The Vampire and St. Michael, which I found when researching my post on vampires being compelled to count objects.) There are various possible motivations for a character willing to spend the night in a haunted house. It could be money or treasure (as in the movie House on Haunted Hill), bragging rights, an attempt to “cleanse” the house, overconfidence, or curiosity. The idea that someone can experience something life-altering in a very short amount of time is desperately fascinating. Some people are willing to risk death to find out what it is.

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

Today's medical tip

Apr. 15th, 2025 12:17 pm
resonant: Ray Kowalski (Due South) (Default)
[personal profile] resonant
If you sometimes have blood in your urine, even just a bit, even just now and then, and you test negative for a urinary tract infection, ask your doctor if you need to see a urologist. If it happens twice (especially if you smoke), TELL your doctor you need to see a urologist.

I've just had my follow-up appointment from having a small cancerous growth removed from my bladder. I'm fine! I feel fine! My prognosis is fine! But I'm glad we caught it early and wish I had gone to a specialist even earlier.

The doctor compared this procedure to removing a malignant mole from your arm or a polyp they find during a colonoscopy, so as procedures go this was a pretty simple one.

I now have to have a cytoscopy to watch for regrowth, and after four years the frequency will go down but I'll have to have them annually for the rest of my life, just another annual thing like a Pap or a mammogram.

I would have pursued more healthcare if I hadn't been scared. So if you're scared the way I was, I'll put some details below the cut; if you're squeamish, maybe don't click that arrow.


cut for gross stuff )

Benjamin Bathurst

Apr. 9th, 2025 11:21 am
dannye_chase: (Default)
[personal profile] dannye_chase
 

Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: Benjamin Bathurst: How to Become an Enduring Mystery in Just 10 Seconds

Welcome to Weird Wednesday! Today we’re going to follow a guy around a corner and see him vanish forever. Sound fun? Let’s get started.

In 1809, Europe was in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars. 25-year-old Benjamin Bathurst was a British diplomat sent to Austria to do diplomat things against the French that did not end well, and thus he needed to hurry home. It was thought the safest route from Vienna to London would pass through Prussia. Unfortunately for Bathurst, the route turned out to be terminally unsafe.

So why is the death of a random diplomat in dangerous territory still so famous? Because Bathurst didn’t simply die. He vanished. And according to legend (popularized by writer Charles Fort), he did it in a rather spectacular way.

Let’s join in on the night of Nov 25, 1809: Bathurst and his personal secretary, whose name is Krause, are traveling in Prussia under assumed names. Pretty wise in wartime. They stop at a post house in the town of Perleberg to get fresh horses for their carriage. They dine at the nearby White Swan Inn, and afterward Bathurst goes into a private room and writes a bunch of letters. 

The new horses are ready at 9 p.m. Bathurst comes out of the inn to get into the carriage, and then Krause comes out of the inn to get into the carriage, only Bathurst is not in the carriage. Bathurst is, in fact, nowhere.

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as: 

History’s mystery. What if the problem is not that you don’t see a missing man, but that you see him too much? A residual haunting is like a recording that plays over and over on the site of an emotional event. So say you’re a traveler stopping for fresh horses at a small inn, and while hanging out in the courtyard, you see a man in an expensive coat that’s a decade out of style. He walks around your carriage and then vanishes. When you run shrieking to the inn, the staff says, Oh, yeah, that’s Bathurst. His ghost shows up once in a while to disappear and we still don’t know what the hell happened to him. How maddening would it be to watch the vanishing over and over, and still not have a clue about where he went?

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers 


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