The Goblet of Shock
Michael Aronovitz
Horror Author, College Professor, and Rock Critic
Hello fellow metal and horror junkies! I received this awesome email from Darren White of the band Running From Shadows, and it seemed a perfect time to talk music and terror!
Business first: Darren described the record his band is putting together and provided us a link to Spotify for a taste of what will be the self-titled EP. My fave is “Bi Polar,” featuring a rich guitar sound accented with just enough delicious mud and angry crunch to satisfy the stoners and sludge freaks, and the perfect amount of “blast” to make the head-bangers happy. They also have an ass-kicking mix of traditional and growl vocals, and a strong rhythm section right in the pocket.
RUNNING FROM SHADOWS
Darren White – Vocals and Guitars
Caleb Callender – Drums
Spotify Link: Songs – Fix Your Posture / Bi Polar / The Pines / Woe’s Me / Cassette Tapes
https://linktr.ee/RunningFromShadows
Almost like retiring to the drawing room, (or going out to the bar after practice) I asked Darren to tell me a ghost story. Here is his response.
Me and my brother used to see and hear things when we were kids all the time. My brother would always hear someone call his name, but no one was there. Fast forward years later, my parents were fighting a lot, and me and my brother would stay in our rooms. I would see this silhouette figure that was tall and had a hat. He was standing in my doorframe. I’ve seen him at least three times. I even saw him at my friend’s house. Years later me and my brother were talking and he brought up that he saw the same thing. I got goosebumps all over my arms. We never talked about it until then and it scared me. The next year I was working at a church camp and I did some research; apparently a lot of people see this thing. They see it when they have sleep paralysis and some people just see it staring at them. It’s actually called the Hat Man. Just reading that let me know that what I saw was real! And no lie, literally the day before yesterday my aunt saw something like that and told her boyfriend. She said her bf told her not to freak out but his daughter had been seeing things. She decided to draw them. And you’ll never guess what she drew:
My Response:
Now that is a fucking ghost story! Darren, my thanks for sharing your music and a scary tale in The Goblet of Shock. This is the point in the article where I relate a bit of my work. My first novel was a ghost story too, titled ALICE WALKS. It is about three middle school kids who break into a mausoleum for kicks and look at a fourteen-year-old girl’s dead body. Her spirit falls in love with one of the boys and stalks him! Here is a cut from the novel in chapter two when they first view the corpse in the coffin:
“The bottom half of her was bathed in a wash of darkness that came off sort of foggy because of the dust webs draped across her like masts on a ghost-ship, but she lay there clear as night from the neck up. She looked lightly away toward the wall, her skin partly sloughed off, blackened and stretched like old parchment off the cheekbones and lips, making a hideous, buck toothed grin. There was hair, but most had fallen off the skull, lying on the satin backing like a halo of thread worms. Her eyes were vacant black craters, and the wide bone of her forehead had burst through. Lower down, her neck wrinkled like a dish towel you’d just wrung the water out of, and from there she was covered by an emerald green dress with white lace.”
ALICE WALKS, the electronic (and best) version is available through Cemetery Dance Publications on the link below:
https://www.cemeterydance.com/alice-walks.html
Michael Aronovitz has his 4 th novel titled THE SCULPTOR coming out September 2021 through Night Shade / Skyhorse Publishing and his lifetime collection of shorter works titled DANCING WITH TOMBSTONES comes out September of 2021 as well, through Cemetery Dance Publications.
Metal Heads Forever Readers: email me with new postings for music, terror, or both!!!
mikemetalheadsforever@gmail.com
