!Spooky stories --- agk's diary 29 October 2022 @ 12:17 UTC --- written on GPD Win 1 before my feverish baby wakes up --- As Halloween spooky times approach, roommate who loves spooky watched films with Evy + I. Below I review spooky stories I like! The Fiery Angel (1927) by Sergei Prokofiev, staged for Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (15/7/2018) by Mariusz Treliński. We watched the first 3 acts on youtube (via an invidious proxy: yewtu.be) so far. Music, voices, staging of this challenging opera stun. A woman, befriended by an angel as a child, grew to self- harming junkie desperately searching for Heinrich, who she believes embodies her angel. Treliński carefully maintained ambiguity: Is it the 10th century or Khrushchev era? Does Renata's knight and sadomasochistic companion Ruprecht summon devils with doctors of dark arts or just have heroin fever dreams? Spooky. The Master and Margarita (1940/1967) by Mikhail Bulgakov I listened to this novel's audiobook on long commutes. People tried to convince me to read it over the last 15 years but always made it sound stupid. It's not. What Bulgakov did with Pontius Pilate, smug intelligentsia, witches, censors, and the devils from hell visiting 1920s atheist Moscow is shocking, delightful, nothing short of amazing. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) written and directed by Werner Herzog, based on the 1922 film by F. W. Murnau, itself based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. Roommate bought the German-language version on VHS for Halloween this year. Dracula's creepy as hell. The plague visited on Wismar, Germany, when he moves there is apocalyptic. Even ugly vampires are somehow sexy. Veneno para las hadas (1984) AKA Poison for the Fairies, written and directed by Carlos Enrique Taboada We found this on rarefilms.com, a pirate stream- ing website. Now I need to watch more Mexican horror. When the new girl's introduced to the 1960s boarding school, she's bullied/befriended by a girl with a dead mother who says she's a witch. The movie had me on the edge of my seat with dread and fascination. Faust (1994) directed by Jan Svankmejer, based on Christopher Marlowe's play and Christian Grabbe's novel. I can't remember when I first saw this. Surreal claymation's the ideal medium for expressing how reality falls apart into inchoate horror when you seek arcane knowledge from a pact with Mephisto. Mephisto consistently makes my skin crawl. Evy saw him, ran upstairs, said, "Don't you ever show me anything like that again." Somehow it's uncom- fortably funny when most unsettling. Night in the Woods (2017) developed by Infinite Fall This is a video game I'd heard a lot about. I watched a play-through on youtube/yewtu.be when really sick. It ran about 8 hours. A girl returns to a dying Pennsylvania coal patch town after dropping out of college. She lives with her par- ents, bums around with friends when they get off work, goes to a bonfire, learns a dark secret. The game's pitch-perfect, entrancing. The Left Right Game (2020) produced by QCODE Roommate and I sat up late listening to this pod- cast he got me into, an episode after work each night. Based on a NoSleep reddit thread it builds a lush urban legend. Like Bloody Mary, something to do with friends to freak each other out. The landscape itself's the monster! We paused confus- ing parts to read the corresponding reddit posts. An ill-fated roadtrip. Souvenirs: grief, night- mares, more mysteries. Midnight Mass (2021) directed by Mike Flanagan Dying fishing village, isolated island, feels like it's off Connecticut or Maryland coast: a young man home from prison newly sober after acc- idental drunk vehicular manslaughter. Wonderful priest arrives to lead the small parish while the island's Father, afflicted with dementia, recov- ers from wandering-induced exposure on the main- land. Miracles occur. Supply priest counsels wonder. Supernatural horror slowly builds thru the Netflix miniseries. Roommate & I had plenty to puzzle and unpack between episodes. I found the end satisfying. Happy Halloween!