Adell Lashawn

17/09/2025

ARC Shelf — September (no spoilers)
Reading ahead of release:
• 9/23 — The Garden of Before (Ryan Leslie): otherworld rules; every power has a price.
• 9/30 — The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre (Philip Fracassi): darkly funny Nightfire slasher.
• 9/30 — The Mean Ones (Tatiana Schlote-Bonne): cult-survivor pulled back into ritual horror.
Comment with the one you want reviewed first.
ARC provided via NetGalley; opinions my own.

16/09/2025

Macabre Monday: September Horror TBR
If your nights feel extra long, here are six books that read like equinox weather—rituals, carnivals, haunted houses, and campus curses. I’m reviewing one next Monday and want your vote.
The list: Harvest Home (Thomas Tryon), Dark Harvest (Norman Partridge), The Fisherman (John Langan), Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury), The September House (Carissa Orlando), Plain Bad Heroines (Emily M. Danforth).
👇🏾 Comment your pick & tell me what I missed.

14/09/2025

Before it was a reservoir, this basin held roads, homesteads, churches, cemeteries, stores—and Black communities whose names don’t always make the tours. Progress raised a dam; the valley filled. People moved, buildings were razed or left to the water; some graves were relocated, some… disputed.

What we bury has a way of surfacing.

13/09/2025

What if your horror TBR had a built-in soundtrack? I paired 10 books with 10 Evanescence tracks—vibes only, no spoilers. From Mexican Gothic × “Haunted” to We Have Always Lived in the Castle × “Sweet Sacrifice,” this list is all atmosphere, grief, rot, and razor edges.

What if your next horror TBR came with a soundtrack? Press play, turn pages, feel the haunt.

11/09/2025

🎬 Wicked Watch Wednesday: The Night House (2020)

Why it lingers:
This film bends grief into architecture. A widow, left alone in her lake house, begins uncovering strange blueprints and an unfinished mirror image of her home hidden in the woods. The “house” itself becomes a liminal space between the living and the dead.
• Haunted architecture: Houses that double themselves, rooms that shouldn’t exist.
• Folklore echoes: Reflections and mirror-worlds as thresholds.
• Themes: Grief, secrets, the fear that death might not be the end — but something far more unsettling.

Aftercare Ritual:
If you’ve just watched it and feel the edges of the uncanny:
• Cleanse your mirrors with salt water or Florida water, wiping clockwise.
• Whisper: “Only truth reflects here.”
• Leave a candle burning until the flame steadies, then s***f it.

03/09/2025

✨ Twisted Truth Tuesday — The Greenbrier Ghost (1897)

In the winter of 1897, a young woman named Elva “Zona” Heaster Shue was found dead in her home in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Her husband, Edward “Trout” Shue, rushed the funeral. He insisted Zona be buried in a high-necked dress with a stiff scarf around her throat, refusing to let anyone adjust her body.

But her mother, Mary Jane Heaster, knew something wasn’t right. She prayed for clarity. For four nights, she claimed her daughter’s ghost appeared at her bedside, whispering:

“He broke my neck.”

Mary Jane carried this story to the prosecutor, who—reluctantly—ordered an exhumation. The autopsy revealed the truth: Zona’s windpipe was crushed, and her neck was broken between the first and second vertebrae.

Edward “Trout” Shue was tried and convicted of murder. Historians note the evidence sealed the case, but it was Mary Jane’s ghostly testimony that triggered the investigation. To this day, Greenbrier is remembered as the only U.S. murder trial where a ghost’s story helped solve the crime.

🌑 Reflection

Was this a mother’s grief-fueled intuition—or proof that the dead can speak through the living
Either way, the Greenbrier Ghost reminds us how folklore and fact often intertwine.

🔮 Ritual Aftercare

Stories like this linger. To ground yourself tonight:
• Draw a thin salt line across your doorway
• Whisper: “Only peace may cross this line.”
• Wipe it away at sunrise

RationalDread

23/08/2025

Spirits & Spirits Friday
Converse & Chaos: grey Chucks on the grass.
Current read: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
Book mood: velvet glamour over creeping rot; a house that breathes.

Pairing
Paloma or NA Paloma — recipe below.
Tincture boost (optional):
• Paloma (with tequila): 10–20 drops non-sedating blend (ginger + rosemary / citrus bitters).
• NA Paloma: 1 mL glycerite (tulsi + lemon balm or ginger-lime).

Ritual for the read
A thin salt line at the door. Whisper: Only peace may cross this line.

Recipes
Paloma: salt rim • 2 oz blanco tequila • 2 oz grapefruit • 1 oz lime • top with soda • stir on ice
NA Paloma: salt rim • 3 oz grapefruit • 1 oz lime • 3 oz soda water • stir on ice

Safety
21+ if alcohol. Avoid sedating herbs with alcohol. Grapefruit may interact with some meds. Avoid in pregnancy/nursing. Education only.

Your vote: Paloma or NA
Tag a friend who should read Mexican Gothic with you.

22/08/2025

Throwback Thursday: V.C. Andrews starter stack

If you grew up sneaking paperbacks, you know this spine. Velvet darkness. Family secrets. Houses that feel alive. Start here:

Flowers in the Attic — siblings hidden away; the attic becomes a world
Petals on the Wind — escape isn’t an ending; grief grows thorns
If There Be Thorns — the past blooms back through a child’s eyes
My Sweet Audrina — a locked room inside a memory
Heaven — found family vs. inherited curses
Ruby — bayou secrets and bloodlines

Aftercare ritual: one candle, one quiet cup, a thin salt line at the door. Whisper: Only peace may cross this line.

Which one haunted you first
Save for your reread list and tag a friend who read these with you.