Grave musings.

We’ve got a lot of the Christmas makeover up.

As usual, don’t worry too much, it’s temporary.

I need some better photoshopping skills to get the new Recondite banners up to par as well.

Anyhow, it’s that time of year when I climb into a hole and start researching ideas for next year.

“Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi.

But, I’ll be honest. I started research early this year. Way back in September. The children have been asking for it for years. Finally, I gave in this year. They want a graveyard, fine, we’ll make a graveyard…

I don’t really have an aversion to graveyards. I just have never really seen them as ‘spooky’ or ‘creept’ or anything, really, other than a fun peaceful place to go look up names and take rubbings. As with many things, it’s all mom’s fault. Finding some headstones from a hundred years ago was just part of a normal family vacation for us. Heck, I associate graveyards much more with spring than I do Halloween as a result.

But, every year, the kids see those “halloween stones” going up at the amusement park, or around the neighborhood, and they want to do their own.

Ok. I’ll give in. Once.

So, I set out trying to find ways to put a personal spin on the graveyard scene.

I sure wasn’t going to have vampires and witches sitting in it, I needed something more unique. I wanted a Ghoul. But, no, I was not satisfied with the modern interpretations that have them hardly distinguishable from zombies. No, I wanted to look into a Ghul. They had intrigued me while listening to the History of the Calif Vathek.

Bedouin tradition holds that a Ghul is a Djinn. Created of smoke and fire, shapeshifting, dangerous. Ghuls fell into the wastes, and thus live on whatever they can find.

Just how I’m going to conjure up such imagery, I’m not entirely decided upon yet, but it sure sounds like it’s going to be fun to try.