Encounter 

Mango & Sticky Rice by Khristina Cruz

My favorite piece from Will Draw For Good 2020. You can check out her Insta here

Apparently there's an evolutionary theory that the reason why Africa has so much wild big-ass megafauna while the big-ass megafauna on all the other continents went extinct is because they evolved right beside humans, and knew us well enough to not get hunted into extinction.

So while everything from giant koalas to giant sloths barely had the time to think "what the fuck is that" before getting pierced by a spear and getting their bone marrow gently fed to babies and the toothless elderly, Africa had elephants who had all the time in the world to learn to tell apart human languages and teach the next generations of their herd which human sounds mean that this tribe won't hurt you, but humans who make this kind of sounds are a danger. And hippos learned to conclude "I think I'll fuck up this two-legged weird shit on sight."

Catcalling :3

The Argent 

A Ghoster mini-comic. 

Read online

Suitable for inducting future children of the night into the horror genre, for horror fans new and old, this film is an essential viewing featuring horror icon Bela Lugosi in the titular role of Dracula.

Overall, this film has quite the suspenseful cinematographic atmosphere though it can feel a bit stiff and disconnected at times. Some of my favorite scenes involve Dracula getting out of his coffin under his creepy crypt or when the camera focuses on his eyes when he compels his victims. Honestly, Lugosi brings out the Stranger Danger!!! bell warnings every time he appears on the screen.

Aside from Bela Lugosi, I personally felt that Dwight Frye and Edward Van Sloan, who played Renfield and Dr. Van Helsing respectively, really stole the show with their acting especially Frye when portraying Renfield's madness. Sloan really brings out Dr. Van Helsing's confidence in dealing with Dracula with his arsenal of crosses and wolfsbane.

The entire movie is roughly over an hour so it's a good pick for a quick horror sesh and as I've said before, due to the lack of blood and at most, suggestive biting from Dracula himself, the movie can be a good introduction to young minds ready to be warped into the horror genre.

Happy Hauntings!

Science News

Water beetles can live on after being eaten and excreted by a frog

After being eaten by a frog, some water beetles can scurry through the digestive tract and emerge on the other side, alive and well.

Imagine yourself as an insect, a water beetle to be exact, swimming around searching for food when all of a sudden, a giant frog swallows you whole! What would you do then?

For Regimbartia attenuata, the only option besides accepting your fate and dissolving quietly is to search for the rear-end exit. Shinji Sugiura, an ecologist at Japan's Kobe University, discovered that these amazing beetles actively escape death by swimming through a predator's digestive tract and exiting from its butt, intact with no observable damage.

Regimbartia attenuata escaping from the vents of Pelophylax nigromaculatus and Hyla japonica (4× speed). Video credit to Current Biology

While rare, the phenomenon is not unheard of as certain snail species are known to seal their shells shut and await excretion to survive being eaten by birds or fish. However, what makes this particular research fascinating is that the prey (water beetle) is actively escaping the predator (frog) rather than passively waiting for the digestion process to be complete.

Hypothetical escape route of Regimbartia attenuata through the frog digestive system. Photo credit to Kobe University.

For further reading, you can click on the following link for the research article published in Current Biology on August 3, 2020.

Writing has two stages:

1. you can't stop

2. you can't start to save your life

Book Review: Informania: Ghosts by Christopher Maynard (2000)

Title: Informania: Ghosts

Author: Christopher Maynard

ISBN13: 9780744577105

Informania: Ghosts offers a brief introduction to everything ghost-related from ghost hunting to films about ghosts. Suitable for young readers and enthusiastic adults alike, the book is divided into five sections:

An abridged version of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Empty House”. Short but suspenseful nevertheless.

A scrapbook by famed ghost hunter Dee Bunker detailing her findings and favorite cases. Dee talks about her experience, her golden rules of ghost hunting, and more.

A tour booklet through the National Museum of Phoney Ghosts. Led by Sir Ghastlie Mones, visitors will see how some of the best ghost sightings can also be the worst scams imaginable.

A Fright Night film guide for all ghost-related movies. Not necessarily horror, but the listing is quite interesting no less, with line-ups like The Cat and the Canary (1927), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), and A Chinese Ghost Story (1987).

A handy reference guide to all things ghost-related such as a timeline of hauntings, a map detailing different variants of spooks, and even an internet listing for further reading.

The book itself is quite entertaining and good for early exposure to the world of the paranormal. However, since it was published in 2000, some of the information present within the book may be outdated.

Happy Hauntings!