Dragon Fire Frights: Pretty Bird

Sometimes, I don't know what time it is or where I am, but today is one of my good days. Who's a pretty bird? Who's a pretty, bird? The bird I'm talking to is Franky; the folks here named him that, I think. When I put my fingers through the cracks in the cage, he bites at me. But I know he's just scared. I'd probably do the same thing if a giant hand came toward me. Lots of stuff scares me.

The sun was going to sleep, and I got really hungry. The nurse came to get me for dinner. She is real pretty too; her name is Julie. Who's a pretty bird? She holds my hand and takes me to the cafeteria: that word always give me trouble. The dinner tonight is meatloaf, and I like it with lots of ketchup. It's so much better than the mystery casserole.

Dragon Fire Frights: Franklin Street

"I had the dream again, Doc."

"Was there a difference this time?"

"Yeah, I was in a beat up pickup, instead of the Jeep, but still driving down the highway. Kept going faster—too fast. So I pushed down, real hard, on the brakes but couldn't stop.”

"We've been over this before. The dream is about taking control of your life and living at your own pace. You need to make changes, Paul."

Dragon Fire Frights: Mephitic

How I wished the mire had taken me that ill-boding day. Or maybe it had, and what lies before you is the leftover, inedible carcass of a man. My dreams decayed: putrescent past the point which not even the most wretched rodents could nibble for nourishment. Yet despite this, I have defied all that is natural by preserving this pathetic existence.

On the morning of my aforementioned misfortune, most unusually, I had been late. As the court's stenographer, I was to be there by 8:00 A.M.. My alarm was set to an hour before the trial, but I had a horrible habit of convulsing in my sleep, and unconsciously, I'd knocked the clock off my nightstand, causing it to shift the time.

Dragon Fire Frights: Fool's Ghost

An excerpt from page one of The Official Ghost Hunter's Guide to a Haunted House:

"To be a proper investigator, one must stay skeptical and scientific at all times. To achieve this goal, we must use a variety of scientifically proven ghost detecting tools: EMF detectors, digital cameras with infrared capability, hand held tape recorders, Geiger counters, thermal imaging devices, and white noise generators. And it is absolutely imperative to never make logical leaps when concluding whether a ghost is occupying a home or not." - Jim "Jimbo" Johnson

Dragon Fire Frights: The Wolves of Farsolm

Their howling can be heard each night, carried by a cold and bitter winter's wind, across the vast tundras of Farsolm. At its center was a small village encrusted in centuries old layers of ice, which was mostly a rest stop for expeditioners to the north pole and weary truck drivers.

I was the former, in this case:  A surveyor hired for an archaeological dig site. It was my job to accurately record the findings and report the team's progress directly to the financier, Mrs. Morgan York. She was a hermit that few ever met. I had only seen her once, myself, and it was the same day I was hired for this job.

Dragon Fire Frights: Missing Time

The following is my best attempt at putting into chronological order a decayed journal with the word read on it. What the author's real name is, I do not know. But it appears he was an aspiring journalist, in the late 19th century.

I have corrected errors in the transcription for legibility purposes. Photos were also discovered with the journal, and I have included some of them in this blog. Although, many have clearly faded through time, including the pages.

Dragon Fire Frights: The Writing of the Dead

Welcome to the first of, hopefully, many blogs to come. Dragon Fire Frights will be a running series of original horror shorts. Some may be based off purported real events and others will be completely fabricated. I, however, will never tell — Mwa ha ha ha ha ha! Our first tale is called The Writing of the Dead.

Top 10 Scariest Horror Movies

Being as it's Halloween season, I thought I'd make a top 10 list of scariest horror films. I'm also not listing ultra gorey and or exploitative films like Cannibal Holocaust, Salo, or The Human Centipede. Those types have never scared me as much as made me feel extremely uncomfortable and disgusted.

And films like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street just haven't aged well with me. Don't get me wrong, I still like them, but I wouldn't watch them if I wanted to feel scared. Also, all of those contemporary over-the-top CG effects based films that completely lack subtlety, just don't blend with realism enough to be scary. I find films like The Grudge or The Ring to be lazy writing. A good story needs to have a world with rules, and breaking them whenever doesn't work unless you also break the audience's sense of reality.

Top 10 Episodes of The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone (New and Old)

With the release of Prometheus, which I haven't seen, a lot of blogs are talking about cerebral science fiction. And for me, nothing has done this better than television. When I looked into making a top list of intelligence sci-fi movies, I was left pretty disappointed with it. I know everyone has their favorites like Donny Darko, but their have been episodes of Star Trek much deeper than that. And for me, few movies really fall into the science fiction genre clearly and are truly thought provoking. But a short list of films I've seen would include Contact, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 

Also, before anyone jumps on me, I've taken film classes and have pretty much seen every highly praised, artsy / classic science fiction film, like Brazil, Metropolis, and Akira. But none of the story telling has ever affected me as much as the writers of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. So without further ado, here is my top 10 list in no particular order.