RUE MORGUE

note from underground

Once upon a time, in a reality that couldn’t be further from the one I now occupy, I strapped on a helmet, elbow pads, and a pair of quads to roller skate in counter-clockwise circles while other skaters tried to turn me into a skid mark on the track. I played roller derby, in other words – that post-third wave/riot grrl movement that took a “sports entertainment” cultural curio from the 1970s and repurposed it into something grassroots and punk rock with an emphasis on feminine agency. For me, it was a great way to get some exercise, meet rad folx, and vent some frustrations through my derby alter ego – “Hellbat” (so dubbed by my teammates because I skated as quick as the proverbial winged mammal loosed from the…

post-mortem

I GREATLY ENJOY the content of each issue, but felt you took the chintzy way out by not having your last anniversary issue and milestone issue RM#200 square-bound. I am hoping they will return soon! JEFF PUBAL – ADDRESS WITHHELD We blame the pandemic and hope to be able to bring back perfect binding soon! - Ed I ALWAYS SAVE Bowen’s Basement till the end. It’s my favourite, and this time it hit home in a special way. My folks saw Gargoyles on a date night when they were first married. They thought it was the bee’s knees. They saw it again in the ’90s and thought it sucked, now it’s one of my mother’s go-to stories. “When your father and I were first married, we saw Gargoyles. We thought it was so…

coroner’s report

WEIRD STATS & MORBID FACTS ISSUE #201 Earlier this year, researchers sonified the structure of a spiderweb, assigning different frequencies to web strands to create “notes” that generate haunting melodies when played using a harplike instrument. Star Shawnee Smith was four months pregnant with her son Jakson during the filming of 2005’s Saw II. One superstition echoed by cultures from all over the world warns that you should never whistle at night. In most versions of the legend, doing so attracts wandering ghosts, demons, or the Devil. The 1944 film The Mummy’s Ghost is one of a very few Universal Horror Classics where the female lead doesn’t survive the movie. Every weekend through May 2021, “vaccination marathons” were held at Romania’s Bran Castle, popularly known as Dracula’s Castle. Nationals who got the shot received a “vaccination…

mystery inside the winchester house

While the reviews for 2018’s Winchester weren’t terribly kind, it’s actually a competent haunted house tale with some effective visuals, plus you could do far worse than casting Helen Mirren as the matriarch of the infamous Winchester House. The problem, though, is that the film uses the ever-sprawling estate as a vehicle for a straightforward ghost story when the true story is far more compelling. When Sarah Winchester moved from Connecticut to California in 1886, she brought with her a fair amount of grief, having lost both her infant daughter and her husband. William Winchester, the son of Winchester Repeating Rifle founder Oliver Winchester, left his widow with 50% ownership of the company and what today would be over $500 million. Needless to say, Sarah had the means to make some renovations…

whatever happened to…

If there’s one thing about The Lost Boys’ fictional town of Santa Carla we’d love to actually experience, it’s an outdoor Tim Cappello concert on the boardwalk. However brief his oiled and shirtless appearance in the 1987 Joel Schumacher film was (twelve seconds, to be exact), it was memorable enough to make the Sexy Sax Man into a pop culture icon, even going so far as being parodied by Jon Hamm on Saturday Night Live in 2011. Unbeknownst to some, the Conservatory-trained Cappello has had an illustrious career performing onstage as a gig musician alongside Tina Turner, Ringo Starr, and Peter Gabriel, among others. The pandemic put a damper on his solo tour (his first CD, Blood on the Reed, came out in 2018), but his Lost Boys role was…

needful things

1 BLOODY ZOMBIE BOOKENDS $39.95 USD Keep your undead library in check with a pair of hand-painted resin zombie bookends. Measuring 7 inches high and 11 inches wide (combined), they’re the perfect complement to your collection of zombie survival guides. Cardio not included! Designtoscano.com 2 CORPSE PAINT FACE MASKS 6€ Pamper your mortal coil with death metal with these corpse paint mask packs from Finnish skincare brand Kaamos Cosmetics. Available in soothing green tea and moisturizing rice bran formulas, they may be vegan and cruelty-free but the original artwork by J.P. Ahonen is nothing short of brutal! Kaamos.co 3 HELLO KIDDIES SWIMSUIT $60 - 65 USD Summertime means haunting the lagoon like the creature that you are, so Poltergeists and Paramours has you covered (the important bits, anyway) with this line of spooktastic swimwear! With a variety of patterns and…