Today I'm off to take part in the day-long Harry Potter Fest 2011! I hope to see some of you there.


Here's one last haunting photo from Pere Lachaise, Paris:




Text of the Day: Today's text is an eerie supernatural novella by Vernon Lee (pseudonym of Violet Paget) first published in 1886: A Phantom Lover: A Fantastic Story. Set in a Kentish manor house, the story concerns a portrait painter commissioned by a squire, William Oke, to produce portraits of himself and his wife, the eccentric Mrs. Alice Oke, who bears a striking resemblance to a woman in a mysterious, seventeenth-century painting... Cue the spooky music!

Excerpt:
I seemed to see that sanguine sunset, washing like a sea of blood over the heather, to where, by the black pond and the wind-warped firs, there lay the body of Christopher Lovelock, with his dead horse near him, the yellow gravel and lilac ling soaked crimson all around; and above emerged, as out of the redness, the pale blond head covered with the grey hat, the absent eyes, and strange smile of Mrs. Oke. It seemed to me horrible, vulgar, abominable, as if I had got inside a madhouse.

Read the complete novella.

Download an unabridged narration from Librivox.org.