The Dusty Grimoire

Where does one go to find the strange, weird, and macabre? Sweep back the veil and enter the Morbitorium, where you'll find horror stories—both real and fictitious—and a slew of other morbid oddities from the life of Macabre Mary.
April 30, 2023

Risky Art Business: Don’t Trust Strangers on Instagram

Anyone who has a business or hobby—or even a cute dog—on Instagram is probably aware that it’s rife with scammers looking to swindle you out of money. I’ve been approached by numerous shady individual accounts claiming to want me to be an influencer for their…
EditorialNews
Read More
April 14, 2023

At the Mountains of Madness: Part X (1931) by H. P. Lovecraft

Many people will probably judge us callous as well as mad for thinking about the northward tunnel and the abyss so soon after our somber discovery...
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
April 11, 2023

At the Mountains of Madness: Part IX (1931) by H. P. Lovecraft

I have said that our study of the decadent sculptures brought about a change in our immediate objective.
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
March 23, 2023

Berenice (1835) by Edgar Allan Poe

MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform.
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
March 22, 2023

Macabre Book Review: Eating Bull (2015) by Carrie Rubin

Carrie Rubin’s Eating Bull provides a compelling narrative that not only touches upon a concerning health issue for the community at large but also the ableism that plagues our society.
Book RecommendationsBook ReviewsCryptic Commentary
Read More
February 2, 2023

Wednesday (2022): The New Wednesday Addams

Wednesday Addams has come a long way from her origins in Charles Addams’s dark, yet humorous comics.
External PublicationsNews
Read More
December 8, 2022

At the Mountains of Madness: Part VIII (1931) by H. P. Lovecraft

Part VIII Naturally, Danforth and I studied with especial interest and a peculiarly personal sense of awe everything pertaining to the immediate district in which we were. Of this local material there was naturally a vast abundance; and on the tangled ground level of the…
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
December 3, 2022

Macabre Book Review: Living Death (2021) by David Musser

I love zombies—absolutely and completely—they are my favorite type of apocalyptic event. David Musser's Living Death is a love letter to zombie fans everywhere.
Book ReviewsCryptic Commentary
Read More
November 30, 2022

The Masque of the Red Death (1842) by Edgar Allan Poe

The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague known as the Red Death by hiding in his abbey. He, along with many other wealthy nobles, has a masquerade ball within seven rooms of his abbey, each decorated with a different color.
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
November 30, 2022

Macabre Book Review: Goddess of Everything (2021) by Paul DeBlassie III, Ph.D

A blood-curdling tale of a Mother’s affection for her son, and her son’s struggle for truth, freedom, and love. Paul DeBlassie III, Ph.D. is an award-winning writer out of New Mexico, as a psychologist, he is in the ideal position to craft thrilling and energetic…
Book ReviewsCryptic Commentary
Read More
November 4, 2022

At the Mountains of Madness: Part VII (1931) by H. P. Lovecraft

Part VII The full story, so far as deciphered, will eventually appear in an official bulletin of Miskatonic University. Here I shall sketch only the salient highlights in a formless, rambling way. Myth or otherwise, the sculptures told of the coming of those star-headed things…
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
October 15, 2022

At the Mountains of Madness: Part VI (1931) by H. P. Lovecraft

Part VI It would be cumbrous to give a detailed, consecutive account of our wanderings inside that cavernous, aeon-dead honeycomb of primal masonry—that monstrous lair of elder secrets which now echoed for the first time, after uncounted epochs, to the tread of human feet. This…
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
October 3, 2022

The Pit and the Pendulum (1842) by Edgar Allan Poe

Impia tortorum longos hic turba furoresSanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent. [Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris.] I WAS…
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
October 1, 2022

At the Mountains of Madness: Part V (1931) by H. P. Lovecraft

Part V I think that both of us simultaneously cried out in mixed awe, wonder, terror, and disbelief in our own senses as we finally cleared the pass and saw what lay beyond. Of course, we must have had some natural theory in the back…
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
September 24, 2022

At the Mountains of Madness: Part IV (1931) by H. P. Lovecraft

Part IV It is only with vast hesitancy and repugnance that I let my mind go back to Lake’s camp and what we really found there – and to that other thing beyond the mountains of madness. I am constantly tempted to shirk the details,…
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
September 18, 2022

At the Mountains of Madness: Part III (1931) by H. P. Lovecraft

Part III None of us, I imagine, slept very heavily or continuously that morning. Both the excitement of Lake’s discovery and the mounting fury of the wind were against such a thing. So savage was the blast, even where we were, that we could not…
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
September 13, 2022

At the Mountains of Madness: Part II (1931) by H. P. Lovecraft

Part II Popular imagination, I judge, responded actively to our wireless bulletins of Lake’s start northwestward into regions never trodden by human foot or penetrated by human imagination, though we did not mention his wild hopes of revolutionizing the entire sciences of biology and geology.…
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
September 9, 2022

At the Mountains of Madness: Part I (1931) by H. P. Lovecraft

I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why.
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
September 4, 2022

Dagon (1919) by H. P. Lovecraft

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from…
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
September 2, 2022

The Cask of Amontillado (1846) by Edgar Allan Poe

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
August 17, 2022

The Oval Portrait (1842) by Edgar Allan Poe

The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night...
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
August 12, 2022

The Black Cat (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)

For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it...
Classic HorrorSinister Stories
Read More
April 13, 2021

Indie Horror: Scare Me (2020) & Make Cool Sh!t

Let's talk indie horror. I had a chance to talk to Josh Ruben (Scare Me) and Aaron Kheifets (Make Cool Sh!t) about their experiences with the filmmaking process and what it's like to be human in the entertainment industry.
News
Read More
November 30, 2020

The Surreal Movement Among Communist Mexican Artists

The Surrealism movement didn’t really take over the Mexican art world until the late 1930s, as Hitler’s power grew it became more and more evident that Europe was heading into another war and many progressive artists feared for their lives—some escaped to New York, others…
Art AnalysisHaunting History
Read More
November 19, 2020

The Lasting Effects of War on the World’s Perspectives

In this installment of Explorations in Art, my selection of artists is a little eclectic, but that was done intentionally. I wanted to show the audacity of expression through different perspectives. The rippling effects of World War II through the eyes of artists who are…
Art AnalysisHaunting History
Read More
November 5, 2020

The Early 20th Century: The Age of Anxiety

It’s quite interesting to think that the first half of the twentieth century dealt with, at length, the same issues that persist today, even if they are presently not as violently represented. If we’re to be honest, the Age of Anxiety has not even begun…
Art AnalysisHaunting HistoryNews
Read More
October 29, 2020

Romantic Perspectives and Preferences

There is something to be said about the swiftness in which trends affect the culture of everything—political unrest, as we saw in the last art analyzation brought artists together in a common theme. The stylized commentary made upon the state of the world around us…
Art AnalysisHaunting HistoryNews
Read More
October 18, 2020

Revolution—Where Art and Political Unrest Intersect

Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine-Habsbourg, eine de France et ses enfants (1787) Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was born in Paris in 1755; before her father died when she was only twelve years of age, Le Brun received artistic training from him…
Art AnalysisHaunting HistoryNews
Read More
October 16, 2020

Reichskulturkammer, or How Hitler’s Germany Cultivated Propaganda Out of Folklore

As a travesty of history, we have all of the events that surrounded the holocaust—because the truth of the matter is that antisemitism, reshaping of an entire body of cultural literature, and the ensuing power struggle came well before the beginning of the attempted extermination…
Haunting History
Read More
October 15, 2020

Most Intimate Knowledge

A mammoth vision of deep espresso stain, she towered, undisturbed and pensive as an overflowing well of knowledge. Four deep shelves were heavily laden with bodies, thick and thin, a forest of corpses; rigid bones in dust jackets. Mysterious symbolisms that communicate the concepts, beliefs,…
Original WorkSinister Stories
Read More
October 13, 2020

Artemisia Gentileschi: Baroque Feminism

A Powerful Figure in a Patriarchal Era of Artwork Born on July 8, 1593, Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi is now considered one of the most accomplished seventeenth-century artists. Gentileschi’s career as a painter began at age fifteen, in an age where women had few…
Art AnalysisHaunting History
Read More
September 30, 2020

Bright Blue Eyes

A speculative fiction on what it would truly be like if walls could talk.
Original WorkSinister Stories
Read More
September 16, 2020

Analyzing the Visual Elements of Art

This week we're going to explore the visual aspects of artwork in its many elements, whether that be line, shape, tone, color, pattern, texture, or form. I was tasked with finding artwork that resonated with me, presenting my opinion of the pieces, and analyzing the…
Art AnalysisHaunting History
Read More
September 15, 2020

The Witch Who’s Black as Pitch

The Witch Who's Black as Pitch—Oh foulest witch, you inspire so much spite.
NewsOriginal WorkSinister Stories
Read More
September 9, 2020

Drawn From Dreaming

This was another assignment written for my creative writing class this semester. It was written while focusing on sound devices in poetry.
NewsOriginal WorkSinister Stories
Read More
September 5, 2020

After the Rain…

Taking a creative writing course this semester, this week one of our prompts was to write a poem based on two contrasting paint colors—I immediately knew which colors I wanted to use, so here is After the Rain...
Original WorkSinister Stories
Read More
September 1, 2020

A Glimpse Into My Writing Space

An impossible convergence of the tidy and the disheveled, I sit in an almost ironically retro office chair from the 70s—I don’t want to admit it, but this hideous faded tiger-orange cushion-covered chair that I scavenged from the transfer site has grown on me.
Original WorkSinister Stories
Read More
January 17, 2020

Emptiness

How emptiness of the spirit can be compared to the emptiness of a cavern's depth.
NewsOriginal WorkSinister Stories
Read More
December 4, 2019

Desire

Desire can swell as large as mountains and are just as difficult to break down.
NewsOriginal WorkSinister Stories
Read More
November 5, 2019

Bobby’s Torment

Original WorkSinister Stories
Read More
November 4, 2019

Bitterness of Love

Original WorkSinister Stories
Read More
October 14, 2019

The Barfly – A Love Letter to Alcoholism

The life of a barfly isn't glamorous, nor is it a life that most people would choose. Some people are just driven to that lifestyle and once entangled are hard-pressed to remove themselves. Enter Freddy and his true Alaskan story.
Original WorkSinister Stories
Read More
October 10, 2019

Fight For Your Life – A Flash Fiction Story

Post-apocalyptic survivor Jenna has found the only way to kill the predators that hound the remaining humans--will she be able to make it through alive?
Original WorkSinister Stories
Read More