LITERAL REMAINS

Sixteen year old Jacob looks back at his not too distant childhood and can’t believe he thought all his grandfather’s stories were true.  His grandfather had lived in an orphanage at the onset of WWII before running away to join the fight.  His grandfather told him fantastical stories of the other kids who lived at Miss Peregrine’s home, a girl who could float, a boy with bees living inside him, an invisible kid.  Of course his grandpa had some old photographs to back up the stories, but it wasn’t too long before Jacob knew that these were fairy tales invented by his grandfather.

Sixteen, though, turns out to be a crucial year for Jacob Portman.  His grandfather hasn’t been doing so well, and the family believes dementia has set in.  Jacob’s dad doesn’t know what to do for him, and the two have never been close (Grandpa Portman traveled a lot for business).  Jacob is the only one with any real genuine concern for the old man, mainly because he and his grandfather are closer than Jacob and his own dad.  Even with grandpa’s fairly tales, which he insist are true, Jacob becomes more protective and understanding.  When his grandfather is having “a spell”, Jacob rushes to diffuse the situation.  What he finds is his grandfather murdered in the woods.  A quick glimpse of the killer changes Jacob’s thoughts on his grandfather’s stories.

What he witnessed in the woods sets Jacob on a journey to a little Welsh island.  Playing on his father’s love of birds, and thanks to his doctor’s advice that Jacob needs closure about his grandfather, the father and son travel to where Grandpa Portman spent the happiest times of his childhood before the war altered his life.

What Jacob finds on the island is a ramshackle old house barely standing at all.  Miss Peregrine’s home was bombed seventy years ago by the Nazis, and no one has lived there since.  Only forgotten memories and old photographs live in the decayed residence now.  It only seems like a dead end, as you might have guessed.  Jacob gets a taste of what life was like for his grandfather in the 1940s, and encounters a world of magic, mystery, and peculiarities.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is full of pleasant little surprises, and I fear telling any more of the book’s secrets will spoil its charm.  Ransom Riggs has come up with quite a story that incorporates vintage photographs.  He has woven the pictures seamlessly into the novel, and they provide a great support to the tale– the story and the photos play nicely off each other.  In fact, I wish there had been more photographs in the book; they are wonderful to look at on their own.

My only problem with the book is that it has an identity crisis.  It would have been a great book  for all ages, but it’s too adult at times for some younger readers.  Jacob is a welcome relief of a teen character, and is easy to relate to no matter how old you are; he has to make tough decisions and take on responsibility.  He would be a great literary character for kids to share his adventures, but some of the language (and a little of the violence) would have to be toned down.

From the ending of the book, I’m guessing this is the first of a series of novels.  It’s a unique start, and I hope Ransom Riggs can keep it that way.

4 out of 5
John Jason

From all of us at Literal Remains, we hope you have a Happy and Safe Halloween.  See you in a week.  Howl at the moon as much as you can.

Autumn, for me, has always been a reflective time of year.  Maybe it’s the leaves changing, or the heated hustle of Summer being left behind for the crisp new chill in air, knowing Winter isn’t long to follow.  It’s perfectly natural, I suppose, especially since October 31st was the New Year’s Eve of the Celts.  Or maybe it’s just me getting a little older.

It’s a combination of things that has led me to the more spiritual, the more traditional, side of Halloween.  I still like the decorations, the haunted houses, the trick or treating with the kids, and all that stuff, but I guess it’s like with Christmas:  I know there’s more to it.  I like the idea of this being a time to honor those we’ve lost, the loved ones and dear ones who have passed away, and of being thankful, too, for what the harvest has yielded.  Being thankful for all we’ve been blessed with this past year.

This has been, overall, a good year.  Since last October, I’ve experienced  highs and lows.  According to the Bible, tribulations brings patience, and it can be a difficult lesson.  As much a time of reflection, I think this season is also a time of renewal.  The old passing, the new to emerge.  I don’t want to make resolutions, I want to state desires.  The desire to be a better person, a better friend, a better man for the people I love.  Old habits die hard, and those habits can be fears, insecurities, and doubts just as well as smoking, biting your fingernails, or cracking your knuckles.  I quoted from the Good Book, so I’ll quote from the Beatles, too:  I get by with a little help from my friends.

Here’s to the New Year.  Blessed Be.

Peace.

John Jason

…and his whole life’s focus came down to either kicking the habit or giving into it.

Alex Decker is an undercover vice cop working the mean streets of Los Angeles.  Mean streets is an understatement, really.  It’s been three years since the new President had enacted laws to keep America pure and moral.  Part of the new laws ban not only drugs and alcohol, but other vices too, such as tobacco (cigarettes, cigars) and pornography.  A lot of cops have quit the force and headed to Mexico where you can still partake of some of those vices legally, and other have joined the resistance.  Even Alex’s ex-girlfriend, Rachel, still insisted on illegally smoking; it’s what drove them apart.

Alex, himself, is a smoker.  For three years he has worn a nicotine patch, battling the criminals and his own habit.  When he is partnered with one of the new recruits, one of the perfect non-drinking, non-smoking, vice free officers of the new War On Drugs, he quits the force.  And first thing he does is seek out El Diablo, a drug dealer who can get you anything you want.  The only problem is that El Diablo may be an urban legend.

Unemployed, alone, and with the last of his money, Alex ventures into the slums to look for the ultimate dealer to satisfy his vices.  What he gets is more than he bargained for.

The Dealer of Needs is a straight-no-chaser horror story by author Brian Moreland.  It’s a great little treat that just might make you wonder how far you’d be willing to go to sate your own addictions.

John Jason

I was of the mindset that this movie would be so bad that it would be good.  I was completely wrong.  It’s just bad.  I couldn’t even gleam any satisfaction from the crappy acting.  From start to finish, the preposterous scenes fall like dominoes, one right after the other.  You’d think a movie like Hellraiser: Revelations, made in a matter of two or three weeks, would have something going for it.  It doesn’t.  It is the vortex of suck.  It is the center of the universe for complete shit.

THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD.  But this movie sucks a big one to such an extent, I don’t recommend you see it at all, so I don’t mind telling the plot twists.

Two friends, Steven and Nico, run away from their privileged lives to Tijuana, Mexico.  Why?  Because they are tired of their privileged lives, and they have grown bored of suburbia and its hypocritical inhabitants.  Once in Mexico, they drink a lot, meet some women, and Steven passes out in a dingy bar’s bathroom while Nico has sex with a prostitute in a stall.  When Steven wakes up, Nico has killed the hooker.  Who has this not happened to?  Ahh, Tijuana.

What are the best buds to do?  Ignore it and walk away.  It is a dead hooker in a public restroom in Tijuana after all.  It’s then, while deciding what to do next, they meet a stranger who gives them a puzzle box.  This puzzle is, naturally, the Lament Configuration, which is a portal for the Cenobites to come through in order to harvest souls.  WARNING:  No one in this movie dies soon enough.

Nico, the more adventurous of the two, attempts to solve the puzzle while Steven films it.  Yes, Revelations incorporates the found footage gimmick into its plot.  So, Steven films Pinhead popping up unannounced and claiming Nico.  Steven survives but becomes demented and kills a hooker on his own, and somehow Nico is trapped in the motel mattress even though I don’t think he died on it.  Steven then kills more hookers to help Nico escape Hell.  But Steven has a change of heart and refuses to kill anymore hookers (good for him and Tijuana’s prostitution trade), so Nico kills Steven and takes his skin.

Revelations is told through flashbacks and cuts back and forth between what happened to the guys and what is going on in the present, which a nice evening dinner between their parents and Steven’s sister, who was Nico’s girlfriend.  So everyone is together, still sad over the boys’ disappearance, but they keep watching the tape from the recovered camcorder and whine and overact and try to look sad and bothered.  Then Steven’s sister finds the puzzle box in the recovered belongings and opens it, and Steven (which is really Nico) shows up, and then he forces Steven’s sister to open the box and Pinhead shows up and I’m tired of relating these events.

This movie sucks.  I can’t stress that enough.  It has two things going for it, though:  it’s short (just a little over an hour), and the gore effects are okay.  Those two bright spots do nothing to help save it, however.

Everything else, right down the toilet.  The only revelation is that this series really needs a shot in the arm, and that wasn’t really a revelation to begin with.  The new guy playing Pinhead, Stephan Smith Collins, ain’t no Doug Bradley.  It would be difficult to fill those shoes anyway, but this was the best actor they could find?  Really? Either Collins’ name was picked from a hat or he drew the short straw. Either way, he’s not much of an actor.

Hellraiser:  Revelations was only made so that Dimension Films wouldn’t lose their rights to the Hellraiser property.  If the proposed Hellraiser remake ever claws its way out of turnaround, I hope it will finally do justice to the legacy of Clive Barker’s genius and at long last give us fans a reason to champion the cinematic Cenobites.

0.5 out of 5
John Jason

Ingredients

1 (10 ounce) package frozen raspberries, thawed
2 1/2 cups cranberry juice
2 envelopes unflavored gelatin
2 liters ginger ale
2 liters sparkling apple cider (non-alcoholic)
6 gummi worms candy

Directions

1.  To make the frozen hand: Wash and rinse the outside of a rubber glove. Turn glove inside out and set aside. In a 4 cup measuring cup, combine the thawed raspberries and cranberry juice.
2.  Pour 2 cups of the raspberry mixture into a small saucepan. Sprinkle the gelatin over and let stand 2 minutes. Warm over low heat, stirring constantly, just until gelatin dissolves. Mix back into the reserved raspberry mixture in the measuring cup.
3.  Pour raspberry mixture into the inverted glove. Gather up the top of the glove and tie securely with kitchen twine. Freeze until solid, or several days if possible.
4.  To serve: Carefully cut glove away from frozen hand. Place frozen hand, palm side up, leaning against side of a large punch bowl. Pour in ginger ale and sparkling cider. Garnish with gummy worms.

16 servings

Note:  To avoid issues with people who may have allergies to latex, use a disposable glove that is latex-free. There is usually an alternative available in the cleaning department of your grocery store.

Recipe and picture originally found at All Recipes.

I can understand the hate some people have for Rob Zombie’s remake of John Carpenter’s classic 1978 stalk ‘n’ slash Halloween.  Carpenter’s version has class, a sense of suspense.  Zombie’s version, it doesn’t really have any class, it doesn’t really generate suspense.  But how many films are able to scare us horror hounds?  Carpenter reportedly told Rob Zombie to make the film his own, and Zombie did that.  2007′s Halloween is rude, crude, and low rent.  But I still like it, and I still recommend it.  The Unrated Director’s Cut, anyway– skip the theatrical version.

I’m not going to spend time discussing what this movie is about; chances are, especially if you’re a horror fan, you know the story of Michael Myers (plus I don’t have a lot of time today).  The one thing I really liked about Zombie’s take on the Myers epic, was that he opened it up, gave some backstory.  By the time of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, the series had really gone down the toilet.  H2O helped revive it and wash all that cult business away, and Resurrection– well, just bless its heart, it tried.

Zombie’s redo has some style of its own, though it’s not the smooth and easy glide of Carpenter’s film.  This Halloween has that rough and tumble feel that Zombie carried over from The Devil’s Rejects (a classic in its own right, and Zombie’s masterpiece thus far).  We don’t have Jamie Lee Curtis for this go around, but Scout Taylor-Compton is pretty good.  And of course there’s Malcolm McDowell, and a supporting cast of genre vets.

Zombie’s Halloween is not a classic, and it won’t be a classic ten or twenty years from now.  But it gets the job done, and it has a lot going for it.  Zombie took Carpenter’s advice, and he did make it his own, purists be damned.  And I, for one, am glad he did.

John Jason

Choose a Material

Styrofoam is good because you can buy it in larger thicknesses (2″ or more) at your local crafts store and it’s already textured so it looks more like a grave stone from the start. Sheets of styrofoam insulation from a building supply store can also be used. Styrofoam can be tricky to do the lettering on, is more fragile and thicker pieces get expensive.

Plywood is easy to work with, durable and you may already have scrap pieces buried in your garage. A standard 4′x8′ sheet will be enough for about 6-10 tombstones depending on their size and shape.

Choose a Design and Epitaph

Tombstones come in many shapes and sizes.  Start with a basic and simple design such as a rectangle with the top corners rounded off.  Think of what to write on your tombstone; be funny or morbid, or both.

Build the Tombstone

1. Determine the size of your tombstone. 18″w x 24-30″h is a good size for a basic stone. Make sure there is enough room to write the epitaph.

2. Trace out the design of the tombstone on your plywood or styrofoam. A French curve or cans of various sizes are good tools to help with drawing curves.

3. Cut out the stone. A jig saw works well for plywood. You can use a keyhole (drywall) saw or large utility knife for styrofoam.

4. Paint the stone. For plywood, start with a base coat of grey or off-white. Next, apply a coat of stone texture spray paint to give it a weathered appearance. For styrofoam, you can just use the stone texture paint.

5. After the paint has dried, paint the epitaph and any other design elements (skull, scrollwork, etc) on to the stone with a small brush and black paint. For styrofoam stones, it helps to press the letters into the foam first before painting them.

6. The last step is to attach mounting stakes to the back and place the stone in your yard. Use whatever you have available to keep your tombstones in place. For styrofoam stones, plant stakes pushed into the bottom work well. For plywood stones, you can screw shelf brackets into the back then use tent stakes to secure them into the ground.

Graveyard Accents

1.  Don’t mow the grass for a couple weeks to give it a neglected look.

2.  Spread fallen leaves around.

3.  Leave dead flowers on some of the graves.

4.  Place fake bones, hands and skulls around the graveyard.

5.  Dress the family up in ghoulish graveyard costumes to scare and entertain visitors.

6.  Position lanterns or electric candles in front of graves.

7.  Make a “Danger” or “keep out” sign from a scrap piece of wood. Use a jig saw to cut jagged edges on the ends for a broken look.

8.  Use a fog machine or dry ice to cloak your graveyard in a blanket of fog.

9.  Hang moss on your grave stones and other props.

Directions and picture originally found at Squidoo.

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It’s been a long time since the original film, The Howling, was released.  Thirty years, actually.  A lot has changed since 1981, but there is one constant that we can almost always rely on:  any subsequent Howling entry, be it a sequel or remake or re-imagining or whatever, the quality will be a toss up.  It’s either going to be good or bad, with very little room in between.  That’s what makes this attempted reboot of the series such an oddity- it’s not that good, but I can’t dislike it completely.

There have been mutterings and rumors on the World Wide Weird that Reborn was going to be more Twilight than The Howling.  I can see that.  There is a romance between a werewolf and a human girl, but I didn’t really find this to be a Twilight rip-off; I think since the Twilight franchise is all but an extra limb of our culture now, we can’t help draw comparisons between it and a horror-themed movie with a young cast of characters experiencing a budding supernatural romance.  It’s a sad day when that happens.  Reborn is more amusing though.

The Howling Reborn doesn’t offer anything new to the werewolf genre, other than Lindsey Shaw as Eliana Wynter, the love interest of new werewolf Will Kidman (Landon Liboiron).  For most of the first half of the film, it’s difficult to tell if it was the The Howling or An American Werewolf In Paris being given the redo treatment.  Will isn’t that interesting, he’s a amalgamation of every nerdy teen loser in, pretty much, just about every Dead Teenager Movie horror has seen.  He has a best friend who is an aspiring screenwriter and an expert on werewolves.  When Will discovers he is one, he also learns of a nefarious plot to create more lycanthropes by a seedy gang of other werewolves.

Somehow, this all goes down in their high school.  The bad werewolf gang pays off the security guard, and…you should probably just watch it.  You could waste your time in worse ways.

This is not a classic by any means; it’s the farthest thing from it.  Yet, it does have moments where it actually works.  It also has those moments of complete idiocy and those times where it just disgraces the original (although, most of the sequels in this franchise disgraced the original, too, so it keeps that tradition alive).  There is some witty dialogue, some bad acting, some horrible writing and directing, but it’s cool when the most annoying characters get killed off.  A few of them anyway.

If this is the first in a new series of Howling movies, it wouldn’t take much to turn this around into something better.  If the producers want to do more than cash in on the youth craze, there is some potential here.  But that’s a big “if”.

2.5 out of 5
John Jason
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Some towns have all the luck.  Take Orangefield, for instance.  They are the pumpkin capital of the world.  Every Halloween, the town hosts a pumpkin festival that boasts pumpkins of all shapes and sizes, bands of every musical variety, games, food, good old fashioned fun, and death.  That’s right, death.  Every Halloween in Orangefield, Samhain, the Lord of the Dead, pays a few visits to Orangefield since the veil that separates this world and the next is at its thinnest, allowing him easy access to cross over and cause some havoc and bloodshed.

Some towns have all the luck, it’s just that sometimes that luck is all bad.

This year, Corrie Phaeder has chosen to return home after a twelve year absence.  Actually, he didn’t really choose to return to Orangefield, he was sort of compelled.  He really never had the intention, at least not of his own free will, to come back to his hometown, especially since most people think he murdered his own mother.  Detective Bill Grant, a rough and tumble guy you don’t want to cross or wrong, is one of those people who believes Corrie got away with matricide.  Of course Grant knows that things aren’t always what they seem in Orangefield, particularly at Halloween.

Corrie returns because he’s been haunted since he was seven years old by something.  He thought they were dreams, or hallucinations, but they are very much real.  And these spirits that torment him, and others in town, will only become worse as Halloween approaches.  Samhain wants Corrie, Detective Grant, and few others out of the way because the Dark Lord has some plans for the entirety of reality.  It’s up to Corrie to put a stop it.  At least that’s what the scarecrow has told him.

This is the first book of Al Sarrantonio’s Orangefield stories, and like the other two (Horrorween and Halloweenland), it’s a mixed bag.  Sarrantonio is such a good writer, though, the book is entertaining and keeps you glued, but he tries to stuff too much into Hallows Eve.  It’s forty-two pages too long.  Horrorween contained the excellent story “Hornets” (and then some mediocre ones), and Halloweenland had the bonus novella “The Baby” (which Sarrantonio worked into the first chapter; the rest of the book wasn’t as good).  Hallows Eve is a complete novel, and is really good in spots, very evocative, but goes dim in certain areas when all the supernatural beings have to have meetings to discuss this and that.  It takes away too much from the creepy fun, and it dissipates some of the mystery and dread.

But there is something just Halloweenishly attractive about the Orangefield stories.  Al Sarrantonio just knows how to write October, you know.  You can practically feel the chill in the air and smell the candles burning in the jack o’ lanterns.  This is a good book, but not a great one, but it is just right for the season.  That can be said for the other two Orangefield books as well.  Nice for this time of year. It’s worth a read if you can find it.

3 out of 5
John Jason

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Montague Rhodes James was a highly respected medieval scholar.  In 1902, he discovered a manuscript fragment that led to an excavation in the ruins of the abbey at Bury St. Edmunds, West Suffolk.  This excavation uncovered the graves of 12th Century abbots that had been lost since the 1500s.  He did Latin translations, and even translated the New Testament Apocrypha.  But M. R. James is best remembered, and regarded, for his ghost stories.

James was born August 1st, 1862, in Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, England, and he lived the majority of his life in Suffolk.  He lived for many years at King’s College, Cambridge, as an undergraduate, then as don and provost.  King’s College is the setting for several of his stories.

According to James, the story must “put the reader into the position of saying to himself: ‘If I’m not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!’” He also perfected the technique of narrating supernatural events through implication and suggestion, letting his reader fill in the blanks, and focusing on the mundane details of his settings and characters in order to throw the horrific and bizarre elements into greater relief. He summed up his approach in his foreword to the anthology Ghosts and Marvels (Oxford, 1924): “Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo.… Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage.”  He also noted: “Another requisite, in my opinion, is that the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story.”

Many of his stories were written as Christmas Eve entertainments; telling ghost stories at Christmas was a Victorian tradition.  He often read these stories to his friends and family as part of the holiday festivities.  His ghost stories followed a basic formula, but that didn’t stop them from becoming popular, or from James being hailed as the greatest writer of ghost stories in history.

For further information on M. R. James, please visit Wikipedia, the source of this article.

Suggested reading:  Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James

A selection of free stories by M. R. James can be found at Project Gutenberg

John Jason
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“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill house, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

That is the first paragraph to Shirley Jackson’s classic novel of the supernatural, The Haunting of Hill House.  If there is a greater opening passage in the realm of literature, I don’t know it.  It is one of my favorite passages from any work, and it sets the stage for what will be a weird, chilling, cerebral tale of terror and suspense.

Hoping to experience a true haunted house, Dr. Montague arranges for a vacation at Hill House, purportedly plagued by ghosts.  Luke, a thief and liar who stands to inherit the foreboding mansion, hosts the good doctor and two other guests Montague has invited:  Eleanor, a recluse and socially awkward young lady, with psychic ability, who has spent the last few years caring for her sick mother, and Theodora, a vivacious woman who accepted the invitation mainly just for kicks.

Hill House is a home of turbulent history rife with death and even suicide.  It has never been considered a happy place, afflicted with bad luck practically from the day it was built.  Hugh Crain, the patriarch who had it constructed as the base of his empire, lost three wives while living at Hill House.  His first wife died in a carriage accident in the driveway on her initial visit to the place.

With sprawling lawns and woods, the entire estate is huge.  The house itself is full of dark rooms, unexplained noises, and doors that close by themselves.  But is it truly haunted?  A lot of interior rooms have no windows, and the doors are hung at a slant so that they will close on their own; the slanted doors can also cause a certain delirium in guests.  The general impression of the house is one of sadness.  Is there really something supernatural lurking the halls of Hill House, or is it all the product of someone’s fractured and fragile psychological state?

According to the Wall Street Journal, The Haunting of Hill House is ”now widely regarded as the greatest haunted-house story ever written.”  If you’re looking for blood and guts, look elsewhere.  If you’re looking for a true classic of the genre, a story that will keep you up at night with the lights on and goosebumps on your arms while your heart races, you’ve found your home at last.

John Jason

I don’t know about you, but when I hear the term “sin-eater”, a rather poor Heath Ledger film pops in my head.  But I don’t want to share with you my thoughts on that disappointing motion picture, I want to share a little about real sin-eaters.  There actually were sin-eaters, and, even though they reached the height of their prominence some centuries ago, it’s a service that is said to still be practiced today.

It was once believed that if a soul was not freed from its sins before the body was buried, it would not pass on to paradise but be cursed to haunt our would every Halloween.  To prevent their loved ones such a torment, families often employed sin-eaters.  A sin-eater would place food or drink on the dead body, allowing it to absorb, through ritual means, the sins of the deceased.  The sin-eater would then consume that food or beverage, thus “eating the sins” and freeing the soul of the departed.  And they did this until the dead’s family was satisfied that the job was done, until they felt their lost loved one’s sins were completely ingested by the sin-eater.  When the grieving family was happy, the sin-eater was paid and ushered out the door.

Sin-eaters were usually poor, either from impoverished families trying to survive, or they were beggars going town to town to provide their services.  Some towns kept a sin-eater on retainer; and the families that practiced this religious magic often passed the job down from generation to generation.  To have a couple within the family was convenient as the only way a sin-eater could exorcise the sins they collected was for another sin-eater to eat the sins.

For further reading please consult Gerina Dunwich’s A Witch’s Halloween.

Picture: Sin Eater by flea-sha

John Jason

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Lawrence Talbot, yes, that Lawrence Talbot afflicted with the curse of the werewolf, has a special request of a friend.  Not just any friend, though– his friend is a scientist with a great intellect and some powerful connections.  Talbot is looking for something very specific:  his soul.

Harlan Ellison’s Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54′ N, Longitude 77° 00′ 13″ W will probably be the strangest story to make it onto this year’s countdown.  I’m certain it will be the most challenging.  I don’t want to give away too much of the story; you just have to read it, and then you may have to read it again.  I admit, it’s something else.  It gets weird.  But it’s a great example of Ellison’s work.

You can find it in Harlan Ellison’s classic short story collection Deathbird Stories.

John Jason

Original Butterbeer

1 cup butterscotch schnapps
7 cups cream soda (almost one 2 liter bottle)

Carefully mix just before serving, adding the schnapps to the soda then stirring gently to mix well, or the fizz will dissipate too soon. To keep butterbeer on hand, pour 1 cup cream soda out of the 2-liter bottle, quickly add 1 cup butterscotch schnapps, and recap the bottle.

Makes 2 quarts.

Butterbeer Light (non-alcoholic)

1 cup sugar-free butterscotch or English Toffee flavoring syrup (Torani’s or similar)
7 cups diet cream soda (almost one 2 liter bottle)

Carefully mix just before serving, adding the butterscotch flavoring to the soda then stirring gently to mix well, or the fizz will dissipate too soon. To keep butterbeer on hand, pour 1 cup cream soda out of the 2-liter bottle, quickly add 1 cup butterscotch flavoring, and recap the bottle. Sugar-free and alcohol-free.

Makes 2 quarts.

Recipes and image originally found at Britta Blvd.

Literal Remains