Countdown To Halloween - Greetings and Salutations

Greetings, Gentle Readers. Welcome to Blackwood. Since this is likely to be our first meeting, an introduction is certainly in order...

We used to live in a duplex when I was little. My mother's parents lived on one side of the structure and my father on the other side. My bedroom was in the middle of the two houses. While my father was out at work, which was every weekday twelve to eighteen hours a day, my grandparents were my primary caretakers. So, at bedtime if my father was still at work, I would be put to bed at the proper time by my grandmother.

On this particular night I had been put to bed and my father, just arriving home from work, came in to see me and tell me goodnight. I remember his silhouette moving across the room in the dark, around the bed and kissing me whilst reaching over to turn on the light.

Turning on the light was a mistake.

As the light from my little lamp flooded the room and my eyes adjusted, I saw my father standing over me, covered, from head to foot, in blood.

I was told I screamed and cried. I don't remember that, (I was slightly more than a toddler and my family is amazed I can remember anything at all), but I do remember the feeling of fear. It took him a few moments to understand my reaction as he had forgotten all about his appearance.

My father had just come home from filming the famous pig blood scene in the movie Carrie.

As a child, and even now as an adult I have grown up among the most amusing images. Some tangible, some pictorial. There is a series of photographs, (my father has a couple of them and I know some of the others appeared in magazines), of my father and Sissy Spacek, covered in blood, arms around one another, big smiles, looking as though they are posing for their prom picture.

I am told that the following day, I begged to be taken to the set. So began the macabre fancies of a little girl, now grown, living in LA. Today, I hunt down evidence of things paranormal, take classes in forensic science at the Hertzbeg-Davis Forensic Science Center and have just been accepted into the Parapsychology program at the Rhine Research Center. Mostly, I long for a place where its always Halloween.

Feel free to roam about as you like or you can select something from the list to your right, The Best Of Blackwood. You'll find stories from paranormal investigations I have done, macabre historical pieces, strange stories of "old" Hollywood and LA, plenty of ghost stories, creepy music for your playlist, and various oddities.

- Merricat

Original artwork by Steve Troop