Sylvia Shults's Blog, page 57
December 18, 2018
The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day 6: The Brian and Sherri Show
From my good friends Brian and Sherri: Hello everyone! Make sure to join us for our Season Finale Christmas Show 12/18 at 9pm EST (8 pm Central). Special guest Author Sylvia Shults. Show will be live from Disney’s All-Star Music Resort Don’t miss it!!! Here is the link for the show. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/briansherrishow/2018/12/19/season-finale-christmas-show-special-guest-author-sylvia-shults?fbclid=IwAR3zi5DTypbQ5tsPbiYALhIp070Vij7iwym0Wqv85PXJloMsCb-MOGpfB3c
And don’t forget to wander on over to http://www.weirddarkness.com for your other daily dose of Christmas weird!
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December 17, 2018
The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day 5: Today I Learned …
The word “mistletoe” is an Anglo-Saxon word that means “poop on a twig”. As far as we can tell, the name comes from the fact that in ancient times, it was thought that life could arise spontaneously from dung. Follow the logic here: mistletoe grows on tree branches. Birds poop on tree branches. Therefore, that’s where the mistletoe came from: bird poop. The words “mistle”, meaning dung, and “tan”, meaning twig, were combined to form the word “mistletoe”. Happy smooching!
Please enjoy this blast from the past: Lights Out: Christmas 2016
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December 16, 2018
The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day 4: Not All Songs Are Jolly
This bizarre story comes to us courtesy of Karl P.N. Shuker, in his book The Unexplained.
Some songs have strange tales to tell, but few of them are more unnerving than the history of the song “Gloomy Sunday”.
It was written in Paris one rainy Sunday in December 1932 by the Hungarian composer Reszo Seress, on the day after his girlfriend had ended their engagement. Intensely depressed, Seress was contemplating just how very gloomy this particular Sunday was when a hauntingly sad tune began to play in his mind. Shocked out of his despair by this unexpected event, Seress jotted down the tune and entitled it “Gloomy Sunday”. The words that he penned for it told the tragic story of a man whose lover had recently died and who was now considering suicide in order to be reunited with her again. (Editor’s note: She’s just not into you, man. Move on!)
The first publishers to whom Seress took “Gloomy Sunday” turned it down, claiming it to be too melancholy. Indeed, one of them felt that it might be better if people never heard it. This proved to be prophetic, for soon after the song was published its unrelentingly sad strains gained a notorious reputation for inciting people to commit suicide.
The first of these happened in spring of 1933, when a young man sitting in a Budapest cafe asked the house band to play “Gloomy Sunday”. After they had finished the request, the man promptly went outside and shot himself. The song’s victims included singers who had added the fatal song to their repertoires. In one of the most disturbing cases, people living next to an apartment in London broke in, because the mournful sounds of the song were playing incessantly inside. When the neighbors broke down the door, they found the young woman who had been living in the apartment lying dead on the floor from an overdose. A gramophone in the room was playing the song in an endless loop. In all, around 200 deaths in total were blamed on the song’s influence.
By the late 1930s, “Gloomy Sunday” had incited such a degree of public alarm that the Hungarian government discouraged public performances of it. The BBC in England considered banning it altogether, and some radio stations on America did refuse outright to play it. The English-language version of “Gloomy Sunday” was written by Sam Lewis and recorded in 1941 by Billie Holiday. By that time, world events had begun to capture more of the world’s attention, and the song’s notoriety began to fade somewhat.
Even so, the song continued to give people the collywobbles. The English pilot Gordon Beck recalled that one of his fellow pilots would become very upset if he heard Beck playing his record of “Gloomy Sunday” (the Artie Shaw Orchestra version, with a female singer). The pilot claimed that it made him feel suicidal. Beck thought little of this, until he listened to it before one of his own flights. To his alarm, he found that the song’s haunting melody got stuck in his mind, and he could hear the melancholy earworm even over the sound of the plane’s engines. He never played the song again.
According to the author of The Unexplained, “Perhaps the most poignant cases linked with ‘Gloomy Sunday’ are those of the two people who were responsible for its creation. its composer, Reszo Seress, committed suicide in 1968 by leaping off a building, after confessing that he had never been able to write another hit song. As for the girl who had jilted him all those years ago, she had already been found dead, alongside a sheet of paper on which she had written the words ‘Gloomy Sunday’.”
For more information, follow this link (if you really want to); https://www.historicmysteries.com/gloomy-sunday-suicide-song/ As for me, I hope your Sunday isn’t gloomy at all. And to make up for today’s downer, tomorrow we’ll have another fun Christmas-themed Today I Learned, as well as a trip back in time to Christmas 2016. And don’t forget to visit Weird Darkness at www.weirddarkness.com, to see what Darren Marlar is up to today.
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December 15, 2018
The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day 3: Music To Get You In The Mood
I hope you guys are enjoying better music than Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer being played for the umpteenth time in the grocery store. Because I love you, and because I have some very strange, eclectic tastes in music, I have some suggestions.
Dubstep Christmas Music: Songs 2017-2018
More Dubstep: Best Christmas Dubstep (this is one of my favorites from years past)
Sam Haynes: The Gift of Christmas Fear (Horror Music for Creepmas). This link will take you to a YouTube video with a link below to a free download worth $8 (although you can pitch in a few shekels to help support the artist if you want). The download is of Sam’s award winning Amazon Top 20 album, “Ghost Stories”.
Pretty much anything by Mannheim Steamroller.
And let’s not forget Trans-Siberian Orchestra (2017: Ghosts of Christmas Eve)
You’re welcome.
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December 14, 2018
The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day 2: Today I Learned … And Presents!
Does your family keep the tradition of hanging a pickle ornament on the Christmas tree? There’s an interesting story about how this tradition came to be. Legend has it that during the Civil War, a Bavarian man named John Lower was held prisoner at the infamous Andersonville Prison. Starving, he begged one of the guards for a bit of food. The guard gave Lower a pickle out of his lunch pail. That pickle did wonders for the prisoner, and he survived his brutal stay at Andersonville. When he was finally released and made his way home, Lower began a tradition that held personal meaning for him — hiding a glass pickle on the Christmas tree, and telling his family that the person who found it would have good luck in the coming year.
And speaking of ornaments, I have a giveaway! I have eight lovely Christmas-monster themed ornaments to give to four lucky people. (You each get two of them, as they are small. There, I did the math for you. You’re welcome.) Just go to any Lights Out episode on Youtube and subscribe to my channel. If you’re already a subscriber, just say hey. Whatever you do, leave me a note telling me that you’re interested in scoring a couple of fun monster ornaments. I’ll do the drawing as soon as I get at least four responses, and we’ll start trimming the tree!
Remember to stop by Weird Darkness and chat with Darren Marlar. Tell him I said hi!
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Fun Times at the Library
So a couple of nights ago, I was at the Parlin-Ingersoll Library in Canton, Illinois, to do a Spirits of Christmas presentation. I had a great time, the audience loved it … and there was a fellow in the back row who took a couple of photos of the proceedings. I was rather wondering what he was up to …
… and this morning I found out. This wonderful article made the front page of the Canton Daily Ledger. http://www.cantondailyledger.com/ Go check it out!
December 13, 2018
The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day 1: T & A and Terror
Merry Saturkwanzukah, everyone!
I’m delighted to bring you the Twelve Nightmares of Christmas this year, just like I did last year. Boy, have I got some great stuff for you guys — a new Christmas episode of Lights Out, some super weird facts on Today I Learned, and even a giveaway!
We’ll start off with some radio. I’ll be putting in an appearance on Haunted Nights With Thorne and Cross, tonight at 7 pm Central. Check out http://tamarathorne.com under Haunted Nights LIVE/Guests. Tamara Thorne and Alistair Cross are a couple of my favorite people to hang out and chat with, so let’s enjoy an evening of banter, fun, and quite possibly dirty jokes.
And as an extra juicy bit of holiday goodness, and in honor of Tamara and Alistair’s (and my) shared love of horror, here’s a list of Christmas horror movies from The Lineup to chill your blood this season: The Lineup: 21 Christmas Horror Movies
Here’s the best part: I am once again partnering with Darren Marlar, of Weird Darkness, to bring you these twelve days of holiday cheer and chills. Be sure to stop by www.weirddarkness.com to check out what mayhem Darren and the Weirdos of Marlar House have in store for you.
Bundle up and enjoy the chills!
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December 10, 2018
Today I Learned …
Male and female reindeer both have antlers, but males shed their antlers during winter due to hormonal changes. They regrow them in the spring. Male reindeer only keep their antlers all year of they have been castrated. This means that Santa’s reindeer, who are always shown with antlers, are either females or castrated males.
December 3, 2018
Today I Learned …
Have you put your Christmas tree up yet? You can prolong the life of your tree (if you have a real one) with maple syrup. Before putting it in the stand, cut an inch off of the trunk, and stand the tree in a bucket of cool water to which you’ve added a cup of syrup. Let the tree soak two to three days before putting it in its stand and decorating it.
November 28, 2018
The Madness — Fun! I Mean Fun! — Continues!
Halloween may be over, but the spookiness doesn’t stop, oh no no no. We’ve got loads more wonderful (and creepy) stories coming in December.
So where am I going to be? You know a moving target is harder to hit, so let’s see how you do with target practice this month. On Thursday November 29 (which is technically NOT December, but I’ll remind you about it anyway) I’ll be doing the Spirits of Christmas program at Galesburg Library (40 E. Simmons Street, Galesburg).
As December rolls in, I’ll be at Farmington Library (411 N. Lightfoot Road, Farmington) at 6:30 for Spirits of Christmas, on Tuesday December 4 at 6:30. Then on Thursday December 6, I’ll be at Salem Township Library (102 N. Burson Road, Yates City, IL) for the same thing. I’ll be presenting Spirits of Christmas twice more, on Tuesday December 11 at 6:30 at Parlin-Ingersoll Library (205 W. Chestnut Street, Canton) and at Washington Library at 6:30 on Thursday, December 20 (380 N. Wilmore Road, Washington).
But the fun doesn’t stop there! I’ll also be doing a couple of radio shows. Listen on December 13 at 7 pm when I’ll chat with Tamara Thorne and Alistair Cross on their show, and join me on December 18 at 8 pm for the Brian and Sherri Show. I’ll post show links as we get closer.
Starting on December 13 and running through December 24, Christmas Eve, I’ll be partnering again with Darren Marlar to bring you the Twelve Nightmares of Christmas. And somewhere in there will be the Christmas 2018 edition of Lights Out, your virtual campfire.
So! There’s lots and lots of wonderful things in store for the rest of 2018. And boy oh boy, 2019 will bring some cool news too. Stay tuned, and stay spooky![image error]
