Season of Shadows Blog » Spooky Locations

Music to Corpse By

John Wolfe — Sat, 21 May 2011 13:32:21 +0000

I was first turned on to the foreign, dark ambient music scene through raison d’etre, via Pumpkinrot, several years ago, and ever since I’ve enjoyed listening to many artists in the genre. As time’s gone on, I’ve found my favorite stylings to be dark ambient combined with chant-like sounds.

Speaking of which, today’s vid features just that. The project is called, “Arduinna”; the song is “Memento Mori”; and the album (though there’s no CD released yet) is “Weris.”

Source: YT user, azze12

I’d love to feature this track in the Halloween Radio section. I’ve been in touch with the creator of Arduinna and I’m keeping my fingers crossed I receive permission to bring the song on-board the player.

Since this type of music puts me in that creative spooky mood, I’m headed out to the shop to get back to “corpsing” Little Grim. I’m hoping to have him finished come mid-summer, so I can post him in a giveaway before Halloween.

Lost in the Darkness

John Wolfe — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:48:44 +0000

Some photos of dense forests and deep woods, accompanied by Nox Arcana’s “Lost in the Darkness,” gets the spooky vibe going in this vid entry.

Source: YT user, piotrpw1976

For more info on Nox, visit NoxArcana.com. And stay tuned to SOS in September, because I’ll be hosting a really cool CD giveaway sponsored by Nox!

Dark Ambiance 10

John Wolfe — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:28:48 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve added an installment to my Dark Ambiance series of posts, so to dust off the cobwebs, here’s a vid with some hauntingly beautiful imagery and voices. The music is from Interview With The Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, but I sure wouldn’t have known that had it not been for the vid’s description. Though it’s going on sixteen-years since I last saw that movie, I’m suddenly very curious about listening to the rest of the soundtrack.

Source: YT user, Frigg567

Spooky Old House

John Wolfe — Sun, 16 May 2010 21:48:17 +0000

Filmed at an abandoned home place in Northern Ireland, “The Old House” is loaded with awesome camera work and creepy atmosphere. Set to the wonderfully, dark ambient sounds of Vir Unis, the tension builds to the point it feels like someone or something could jump out at any moment. This vid is about as ghostly as you can get short of an actual apparition appearing–it’s a shame something didn’t show up during the piece.

Source: YT user, Hirnduebel

Kelly Ghost Town & Mine

John Wolfe — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:36:27 +0000

After taking a ton of photos and video, I somehow managed to whittle my collection down to a ten minute film. It was hard to do because the old Kelly ghost town has really grown on me and I would have loved to have made a longer vid, but I think ten minutes is enough to capture the essence of the location. I hope you enjoy the way I’ve arranged it. Also, Dr. Necropolis and ssflipo13 were asking if I had any paranormal experiences while visiting. I did have an interesting encounter (unfortunately, it wasn’t caught on film) that I was going to write about in this entry, but I’ve decided to save that for tomorrow’s post.

Since this footage isn’t in HD quality, I’ve also uploaded the film to Season of Shadows and added a link so it can be played on your computer’s media player. The vid contains several scans of very old photos taken during Kelly’s heyday and the quality will probably be less than favorable when viewed on You Tube’s embedded player.

Click here to view on your media player: Kelly Ghost Town

Day Trip: Old Kelly Mine

John Wolfe — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:44:17 +0000

I spent the entire day yesterday taking photos, shooting video and doing a little communicating with the “other side” at the old Kelly, New Mexico ghost town (established around 1883). This was my third trip to Kelly in the last three years and probably one of my most memorable. I grabbed a good bit of footage of the mine’s external structure, the town cemetery, and a couple of dilapidated old buildings, and I’ll be working on turning it all into a video entry over the next couple of days. The shot accompanying this post features the headframe above the mine shaft (click on the image to see a larger pic).

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Cemeteries of Lodz and Prague

John Wolfe — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 17:44:28 +0000

Always on the lookout for amazing cemetery locations, I discovered the following vids on YT. First up is a short, but incredible slide show of the New Jewish Cemetery in Lodz, Poland, established in 1892.

Source: YT user, snakeeyesPL

Up next is the Old Jewish Cemetery, located in the Czech Republic’s capital city of Prague. The vid starts out around the location, but eventually makes its way to the burial grounds, where the amount of tombstones are overwhelming.

According to Wikipedia, the tombs are layered on top of one another, with an estimated 12,000 visible headstones and as many as 100,000 burials in all. The oldest surviving stone dates back to 1439, belonging to a rabbi and poet named Avigdor Kara, but some scholars believe the cemetery has been used for burials since the fifth century!

Source: YT user, dagschweinerei

Creepy Forest

John Wolfe — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:36:58 +0000

Desolate, wooded areas, in the throws of winter, always inspire my imagination. There’s something stunningly haunting about forests, especially on overcast days, when naked, gnarled tree branches jut across the backdrop of foreboding clouds–looking like sharp fingernails poised to scratch an immense blackboard in the sky.

As I’ve spent time walking along the Bosque (meaning woods or forest in Spanish), here in New Mexico, I always do my best to take a mental snapshot of the spooky imagery. Then, I try to infuse the feelings that imagery evokes into the creative process of making my props and setting up my yard haunt.

Just in case you don’t live near any creepy woods or happen to have access to the Bosque, YT user, oRisinai has created some footage that will bring those locations to you. Though it’s very short and has no plot or major storyline, the vid does a great job of capturing the haunting atmosphere and ambiance I love about woods and forests.

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Haunting Poetry

John Wolfe — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 23:41:01 +0000

Once again, I’m revisiting You Tube user, bonbichie’s haunting work. Several of his collaborative artistic endeavors have such a beautifully dark, ambient feel to them. This particular piece is concrete enough to set a spooky mood, but still abstract enough to allow the viewer to interpret its meaning in his or her own way.

Plus, he features several shots of a cornfield and if you’ve seen my 2007 and 2008 Halloween haunt images, then you already know I’m a sucker for cornstalks.

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Ghostly Hitchhikers

John Wolfe — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:10:11 +0000

In continuing with entries pertaining to urban legends, today’s post features three videos recounting tales of ghostly hitchhikers. Similar to La Llorona, there does appear to be legitimacy to certain parts of the legend, based on eyewitness accounts.

This first video focuses on the overall legend of ghost hitchhikers:

Source: YT user, twothumbsupdvd

This next piece features a man’s personal experience with a ghostly passenger:

Source: YT user, tombstoner79

This last vid contains personal and second-hand experiences with a faceless roadside phantom:

Source: YT user, shane8109

In closing this post, I’d like to relate a true story that I’ve only shared with a couple of people:

Roughly twelve years ago, I had an early morning encounter of my own with what appeared to be two phantom-like pedestrians. I had just finished working the graveyard shift and was headed home between 3 and 4 AM. The particular stretch of road I was traveling ran right through a sleepy village whose origins date back to the 1600′s.

As I approached an area where the road straightened out for a good distance, I noticed nothing unusual or out of the ordinary. The moon was full and my headlights were illuminating my path extremely well.

After a few seconds, I saw what appeared to be two objects up ahead and to the right, in a location where there had been nothing just moments before. Always on the lookout for something spooky, this struck me as odd and since, at this ungodly hour, there were no other motorists out, I slowed down well below the 35 mph speed limit.

Drawing closer, I could see the objects were two “people” standing a few feet from the edge of the road. They weren’t hitchhiking, they were simply standing there, up to their knees in weeds, facing towards my oncoming headlights.

As I slowly drove past their location, I could see no discernible facial features whatsoever on either one of them. That fact, in and of itself, was enough to freak me out, but after passing them up, I immediately looked in the rear-view mirror and despite the moonlight, neither one was visible! It seemed both had vanished.

Unfortunately, I have no way to prove what I saw, so my experience joins the annals of the ghostly hitchhiker legend. Since I never saw them again; there were no other witnesses and I had no proof to verify who or what they were, I’ve always been tight-lipped about sharing this particular experience, but after watching the faceless ghost vid, I was inspired to put it in writing.

An interesting sidenote to this story:

The location where I spotted these two strange individuals is roughly two or three miles from a cemetery. This is the same cemetery where my mom and I encountered what we believe to be the ghost of a woman (walking twenty feet in front of us) wandering around the headstones.

I discussed our June ’09 cemetery encounter in previous posts and on my Halloween Webcam back in October, but I’ll probably do a full blog entry with all the details in a future article.

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