Greetings ghosts and ghoulies and welcome to The Theatre of Terror the home of horror comic news, reviews, classic comic scans and creepy art from around the world. Just remember, it's not for the nervous!
It will also probably also be available from Back From The Depths later on (where you can download issues of Hallowscream), and viewable online at MYEBOOK if it stops being awkward and lets me upload the bloomin’* thing.
The Back From The Depths 2012 HALLOWSCREAM! Hallowe’en Special has returned from the depths once more and is available to download as a totally free pdf file!
60pages of horror for your delectation, a bevvy of beasties and brutality behind a monstrous cover by Malcolm Kirk!
SEE the stomach-churning sideshow freak!
HEAR the bellowing countryside beast which feasts upon unwary wanderers into its domain!
SMELL the bodily emissions of the not exactly undead!
They sing! They dance!
Page 3 : Beaten Path Story by John J Owens, Art by Neil Roberts Page 9 : The Gravedigger Story by Matt Garvey, Art by Erick Marquez Page 14 : Sucked Story by Dirk Van Dom, Art by El Chivo, Letters by Jim Campbell Page 17 : Farmin’ Story by Paul Eldridge, Art by Chow Martin Page 19 : Cash 4 Souls Story & Art by Gordon Innes Page 20 : Youkai Chronicles : Mokumokuren Story by Dirk Van Dom, Art by Antony Rothwell Page 25 : Terrorvision Guide by Malcolm Kirk Page 26 : Gaki Story by Paul Bristow, Design by Malcolm Kirk Page 29 : Charles Wynford Lodge Movie Posters by Julian Jones Page 30 : Buck Tucker : Enemy of Love Story by Dirk Van Dom, Art by Bhuna Page 33 : Terribly Bad Monsters : To Be Frank Story & Art by Christopher Geary Page 34 : The Pond Story by Chris Sides, Art by Chris Travell Page 41 : Terribly Bad Monsters : A Curse Unwound Story & Art by Christopher Geary Page 42 : A Grim Tale : Freakshow Story & Art by Malcolm Kirk Page 43 : Dead Wood Story by Dave Roberts, Art & Letters by Michael Kennedy Page 47 : The Nuisance Story & Art by Antony Rothwell Page 49 : Rayne : Demon Hunter Story & Art by Rattan Bhagwandin Page 54 : AAIIEEE! Advertisement Page 55 : The Wanbies Story by Tim West, Art by Neil McClements Page 59 : Deadvertisements by Malcolm Kirk
…and… Page 60 : Back Cover Skull by Malcolm Kirk
You can now purchase printed copies of Hallowscream via the all new Comicsy website.
With just over 2 weeks until the launch of Hallowscream 4, we are delighted to announce you can now swot up on the 3 previous issues by taking a trip over to the wonderful new UK small press website Comicsy. This excellent site contains a whole host of comics, antholgies and small press doodlings from some awesome names in the UK comics scene, may of who have graced the pages of our beloved Hallowscream.
If you’re too skint to purchase Hallowscream, dont forget you can download them as free digital PDF’s by visiting the Hallowscream website.
Slender is a free pyschological/survival horror indie game by Mark J Hadley, based on the internet urban legend of the ‘Slender Man’, a supernatural creature, fond of kidnapping children and usually depicted as a tall, thin figure, dressed in a black suit and tie, with a completely featureless face and elongated arms, (and sometimes also has tentacly things sprouting out of his back).
If you want to know more about the phenomena, simply search for “slender man”. The internet’s crammed with stuff relating to it.
Slender, the game is a relatively simple affair. In fact, I find it very reminiscent of the 30 year old 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81, with Slender Man taking the place of the Tyrannosaur, and the maze replaced with dark woodland. However, do not let this lull you into a false sense of security. Despite appearances, 3D Monster Maze is still an incredibly tense game when you sit down to play it. Slender, too, may have a simple premise, but it’s also scary as hell. Seriously.
The aim of the game is to collect 8 pages, while avoiding contact with The Slender Man. Even looking directly at him is a bad idea. Instructions are included with the game itself and the controls are fairly simple.
I’ve lived in the countryside most my life. I’ve been around a lot of woods and foresty places. I’ve sometimes wandered around them when it’s been dark. I’ve then often wondered what the flip I’m doing there. This game captures the feel of that perfectly.
You can download the game from the official site here or this fansite, which has more information.
You may also want to check out some of the numerous YouTube videos showing people, (mostly grown men), screaming like little girls while playing this.
Best played in the dark, at night, when you’re alone, (if you want to scare the poo out of yourself, that is).
I’m lucky enough to receive random comics in the post, most of them full of whacked out weirdness and grisly goings on. Arriving on the ‘doorstep of doom’ this week is quite possibly one of the weirdiest (yeah, i made that word up) and wackiest comics I have ever had the pleasure to read. El Bigote: A Tequila-Drenched Reckoningis the first offering from Tekilla Comix, the brain child of writer Matthew McLaughlin and artist El Chivo. It’s only a thin preview issue of what’s to come in the future but is so packed full of wild ideas, it’s impossible to not be impressed.
Set in the untamed borders of the Mexican afterlife, our quill-flinging mustached hero, El Bigote (The Mustache), rides his trusty ostrich steed across the prairies dishing out retribution to undead banditos. I may have never typed a sentance more insane than that.
McLaughlin’s script dances illusively between English and Spanish, which only leads to highten the bonkerousness of the whole affair. Artist El Chivo is fully in on the madness and fleshes out this bizarre comic with his own neat touches.
With more issues on the way, possibly in the form of a web comic, I look forward to seeing what these two poco loco amigos can do.
Not the after affect of a heavy night on the pop, the Bloody Mary Illusion is an old urban legend and fun-time party game played at sleepovers around the world. There are many variations of the story but the general gist involves staring in to a mirror and repeating the name “Bloody Mary” somewhere between 3 and 14 times. (Think of it as an old school version of The Candy Man.) Other methods include chanting more than three times, chanting at midnight, spinning around, rubbing one’s eyes, running the water, or chanting her name thirteen times with a lit candle. In some versions of the legend, the summoner must say, “Bloody Mary, I killed your baby.”
It is said that if Bloody Mary is summoned, she would proceed to kill the summoner in an extremely violent way, such as ripping the face off, scratching the eyes out, cutting the head off, driving them insane, dragging them into the mirror with her or causing serious injury or death. Alternatively, if she doesn’t kill the one who summoned her then she will haunt them for the rest of their life.
While this urban myth is just a bit of fun, and ideal for proving how brave you are in front of college girls wearing nothing but tight t-shirts and knickers, there lurks a small element of truth in the story! Stare in to a mirror, and after a short time, you will begin to see an unfamilar face staring back. Go on try it. I dare you!
A recent report from the Department of Psychology at the University of Urbino has just published a paper on this optical illusion. Giovanni B Caputo’s Strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion study asked 50 unsuspecting volunteers to stare in to a mirror for 10 minutes. When questioned after many of the test subjects reported seeing…
huge deformations of one’s own face (reported by 66% of the fifty participants); a parent’s face with traits changed (18%), of whom 8% were still alive and 10% were deceased; an unknown person (28%); an archetypal face, such as that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait of an ancestor (28%); an animal face such as that of a cat, pig, or lion (18%); fantastical and monstrous beings (48%).
However, the paper also found:
…the frequent apparition of fantastical and monstrous beings, and of animal faces cannot, in our opinion, be explained by any actual theory of face processing. Neither constructive approaches nor top down accounts seem to provide adequate explanations.
it continues…
The participants reported that apparition of new faces in the mirror caused sensations of otherness when the new face appeared to be that of another, unknown person or strange `other’ looking at him/her from within or beyond the mirror. All fifty participants experienced some form of this dissociative identity effect.
Spooky, huh?
Did you try it yourself? If you did, you will likely have experienced one of the strange visions listed above. This, sadly, has nothing to do with the supernatural. Caputo attributes these visions as a variation on something known as the Troxler Effect. Discovered by Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler, back in 1804, it is part of the general principle in sensory systems that an unvarying stimulus soon disappears from our awareness. In otherwords, if you stare at something for long enough, your brain gets bored and begins to fill in the information for you. Have a look at the image below or visit Moillusions for more optical illusions.
Regardless of the cause, these illusions can be pretty creepy. If you want to give yourself a scare this Halloween, you can try it out and see for yourself. The best method is to use a 25 watt incandescent light, placed behind you so that you can’t see the light directly or it’s reflection, and five to ten minutes of staring at yourself in the mirror (from about 1.5 – 2 feet away). The low-level lighting that makes colour perception difficult and should increase the likelyhood of a trippy visual.
Bloody Mary Recipe
A quick recipe to mix one up and try it for yourself. Add dashes of Worcestershire Sauce, Tabasco, salt and pepper into highball glass, then pour all ingredients into highball with ice cubes. Stir gently. Garnish with celery stalk and lemon wedge (optional). Served On the rocks; poured over ice.
Ingredients:
45ml (3 parts) Vodka
90ml (6 parts) Tomato juice
15ml (1 part) Lemon juice
Drink 13 of these and we guarantee you’ll be seeing all sorts of weird!
Following the success of their debut event in October-November 2011, the UK’s festival of horror in the performing arts will be returning this Halloween for three weeks of macabre entertainment.
The Etcetera Theatre, Camden will play host to this year’s Festival, which welcomes a broad range of horror theatre, comedy, magic and performance art, from psychological spine-chillers to all-out splatter, improvised ghost stories to grotesque stand-up and séance magic to body horror, and almost anything else imaginable. The purpose is to foster new talent as well as nurturing the already burgeoning live horror scene within the UK.
Applications are now open for this year’s festival, and they’re happy to accept submissions from performers or companies regardless of whether they have explored the horror genre before. If you like a bit of performing arts then they’re looking for exciting and committed groups looking to push the boundaries of live entertainment.
We at Back From The Depths are once again looking for contributors for our free, annual pdf horror comic, HALLOWSCREAM…
…but…
we’re also looking for contributors for something else.
That’s right. This year we’re doing not one but two creepy comics, and we need all the scares we can get. What is this second scare-filled tome? I’ll tell you what it is – it’s a Christmas special.
It’s yet to be named, but we’re looking for yuletide based horror yarns along with the more general stuff.
HALLOWSCREAM GUIDELINES
Ideal submissions should be horror orientated and must be weird or spooky to make the final cut. We are mainly looking for completed comic strips between 1-7 pages in length. Script submissions should also preferably be around 1-7 pages in length. Eerie illustrations and artwork along with interesting horror/comic articles, scary short stories, petrifying poems or anything just plain creepy will also be considered.
XMAS SPECIAL GUIDELINES
Identical to the Hallowscream guidelines, but submissions must have either a Christmas or winter theme. Anything which doesn’t meet that criteria will be more likely to end up in Hallowscream.
GENERAL GUIDELINES
If you’re looking to illustrate something, get in contact and we’ll give you details of available scripts.
We’ll also consider material previously published elsewhere, as long as the contributors own the copyright.
Completed artwork can be either colour or black and white, and should preferably be A4 (21cm x 29.7cm) 300 dpi jpegs.
As this is a non-profit, small press publication, contributors will not be paid but they will retain copyright on any material submitted.
DEADLINES
Deadlines for the Hallowe’en and Christmas editions are identical. There’s no need to point out which issue your story is meant for, as it should be obvious from the story’s content.
Scripts, articles and text submissions : Sunday 22nd July
Artwork : Sunday 7th October
Completed strips : Sunday 21st October.
The finished issue of Hallowscream will be available online for FREE on October 31st. The finished issue of the Christmas special will likely be available online for FREE mid-December.
You will also be able to purchase print version via the online publishing site Lulu.
The year is 793 AD. Savage, heathen armies from the north invade Northumberland, for today is the day of the viking, but the night… The night belongs to something else.
Now available as a free pdf download, Blackfriars is a tale of vampires versus vikings by Michael Crouch.
The first episode appeared in the 2010 edition of Hallowscream, with further episodes appearing on Michael’s blog in weekly instalments. The story is drawn in the style of a serial from the classic British “Scream!” comic.
The cover is by John Caliber and there’s a short image gallery at the back of the collection with artwork by Andrew Milne, David Blankley, and Grant Perkins (with Mike Bunt inking and Owen Watts colouring).
AN ANNOUNCEMENT TO SINISTER SCRIBES AND OTHER VARIOUS FIENDS
Do you crave classic horror stories? Do you love the musty smell of a paperback anthology containing vintage horror? Stories about creepy old houses, aristocratic vampires, Lovecraftian creatures, and tales of psychological spooks?
We wanted to send a shout out to all interested parties who would want to submit pieces in this vein to MAD HOUSE, new digital magazine that’s eager to hear the terrifying tales that all you storytellers have to share. In addition to fiction, we’re open for nonfiction, poetry, and artwork.
If you pine after the Universal and Hammer horror films and worship authors like Poe, M.R. James, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, and many others, than MAD HOUSE is the monster mag for you!
The official deadline for any and all submissions for our premiere issue is MAY 5TH, 2012. We are planning on releasing the anthology in time for the Halloween season and need to have all materials at the ready by the above timeline. Don’t miss out on your chance!
At this time we cannot offer payment to our contributors. We’re putting this magazine together for the pure fun of it and out of our love for all that is classic horror. We hope to someday offer monetary compensation for the great work that we’re provided with. In the meantime it is our desire to simply put together a loving publication that we can all share with other terror-loving friends.
We prefer that your submission is in Word document format, 12 point Times New Roman, single-spaced.
Stories can reach up to a 7,000 word maximum. Maximum word count for articles is 5,000 words.
Attach it to your email and make sure you include the piece’s title and your name in the subject line.
We will request short bios upon acceptance of your piece(s).
Address all submissions to madhousemag [at] yahoo [dot] com.
MAD HOUSE will require the non-exclusive right to use submissions in our free online edition and any possible PDF editions. First world electronic rights revert back to the creators three months after publication in MAD HOUSE. Reprints are more than welcome. We only ask that creators notify us of previous appearances of their work and credit MAD HOUSE for future publication of their accepted piece.
Check out our blog for more information. Be careful as you traverse through MAD HOUSE and always keep your hands at the level of your eyes! You never know who you may run into.
Do you want to join the Scream team? We're looking for enthusiastic people to contribute articles on horror or comics here on The Theatre of Terror. Contact me for more info.
Not the after affect of a heavy night on the pop, the Bloody Mary Illusion is an old urban legend and fun-time party game played at sleepovers around the world. There are many variations of the story but the general gist involves staring in to a mirror and repeating the name “Bloody Mary” somewhere between 3 and 14 times. (Think of it as an old school version of The Candy Man.) Other methods include chanting more than three times, chanting at midnight, spinning around, rubbing one’s eyes, running the water, or chanting her name thirteen times with a lit candle. In some versions of the legend, the summoner must say, “Bloody Mary, I killed your baby.” 
Bloody Mary Recipe
Following the success of their debut event in October-November 2011, the UK’s festival of horror in the performing arts will be returning this Halloween for three weeks of macabre entertainment.
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