The Spooky Dentist, a bit of nostalgia from Jennifer Weigel
This is an actual true story of my life. It’s not a ghost story or a Bigfoot sighting or anything, but I thought you might appreciate it anyway. I am posting it in honor of my father’s memory (his birthday would be today).
For a little background: My father was a dentist until he was forced to retire due to a prolonged auto-immune disorder. He loved horror films, especially the really campy old black and white ones of the Universal Studios Monsters era, but the more obscure the better. I think his favorite may have been The Invasion of the Space Preachers, but that may have just been the flavor of the day at one time. Personally, I always liked The Beginning of the End but then again the scene at the end with the giant grasshoppers let loose all over the Chicago skyline with the shot changing every time they crawled out onto the sky just tickled me.
Anyway, I found the perfect Christmas gift for my father on clearance after Halloween: the Spooky Hollow house of the Spooky Dentist. It looked like a wide grinning skull with stairs leading up into its gaping maw. It came with a green light bulb and was meant to be a part of your Spooky Hollow Halloween porcelain lighted town to ensure that you represented all of the wondrous merchants and businesses that the world had to offer and thusly procured yet more lighted figurines for your Halloween decor setup. What can I say – it was the late 1990s or early 2000s, and this fit right in.
So I picked up the Spooky Dentist and… my father adored it. He placed it prominently in the window front and center on the enclosed porch so that all who came to the house could bask in its beauteous green glowing glory. My stepmother did not feel the same, however, and so it became the leg lamp of our family for awhile. She would turn it off, and he would go turn it on again. When the light bulb finally died, he bought a new one online at way more than one should ever have to pay for a small green light bulb, just to get it up and running again. It’s wide-grinning toothy smile greeted everyone who came and went, and so it continued on until one fateful day.
Like the leg lamp of A Christmas Story lore, the Spooky Dentist met a similar fate. It fell to its inevitable demise while my stepmother was out watering her plants. In fairness, the enclosed porch was a veritable jungle of sorts, including something a bit too closely resembling a corpse lily, but that’s a story for another day. At any rate, the Spooky Dentist was knocked from its perch and fell to the concrete below, shattering like Humpty Dumpty into too many pieces to put back together again. The porch lost some of its sparkle, bereft of the green glow that had once greeted visitors and was no more. Sure, there was still the giant Mothra butterfly kite looming at the beacon supernova of a plant grow light bulb, but honestly it just wasn’t the same.
My father passed away in 2014. I wish I could find another Spooky Dentist to place prominently somewhere in my house to greet visitors, but alas I have not been able to procure one. I admit, being banned from eBay isn’t helping, but that’s a story for another day as well. At any rate, here are some pictures I gleaned online. Maybe someday I’ll run into one somewhere, and I’ll crank up the old Frankenstein laboratory, fix it up, and maniacally laugh as I bask in its glorious green glow.
If you want to get a sense for just how well this will fit into my decor when I finally find one, you can check out some of my art collection highlights here on Haunted MTL.
So I came upon a Liv doll with no wig and decided to make her a mourning ensemble. The result was so reminiscent of this Bloody Mary music video based on the Lady Gaga song, by Ruben Samuel Cortez for his film school final (not the Wednesday TikTok remix, though that is also fun) that I simply had to share.
The outfit is made up of really fancy thick black lace leftover from a skirt I decorated for a party and an old translucent black handkerchief. It really reminds me of the table dancers in the music video but black instead of white (though it also alludes to some of the other outfits too, and Wednesday’s dress from the TikTok remake).
I love the detail on the eyes on these Liv dolls, which are embedded and not painted on.
The Liv dolls’ eyes are just so lifelike. I think this is what attracts me to the Rainbow High dolls too, and why I had to turn the Makeover Failfix 2Dreami into Lady Amalthea of The Last Unicorn…
If you want to check out more of my altered dolls, I have posted several to Haunted MTL here:
Krampus
Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
Oh and here’s a bonus photo of the skirt that I got the lace for originally, titled Kiss My A$$.
So, as you may have noticed, we have a special fondness for spiders here on Nightmarish Nature. Well, they are kind of the spokes-critters for horrifying animalia, perhaps because they are so freakishly different from us. Or maybe it’s because I find them a little disconcerting for all that I try to take the “you mind your business, I’ll mind mine” approach, at least if they stay outdoors. Or just because I really like to draw spiders for all that I prefer not to find them sharing my home (though I’ll gladly take spiders over other bugs or mice or larger critters who didn’t get an invite).
Anyway, this segment is devoted to the largest Giants Among Spiders, as if you didn’t have enough to worry about already. And the top place is contested based upon body mass or leg length. Most of these are tarantulas, which globally take top place among the large arachnids.
Goliath Birdeater Tarantula
The Goliath Birdeater Tarantula of South America is the biggest brute of spiderdom, weighing in at over 6 ounces. They build funnel burrows and are known to eat birds (although rarely), mice, lizards, frogs, and snakes, but largely any big insects including other species of spiders. They have urticating barbed hairs that they fling at would-be attackers as an irritant to escape. And people even eat them after they singe the bristles off. Here’s a National Geographic video showing this spider in action, in case you wanted to see a giant spider take out a mouse.
Giant Huntsman Spider
And with the longest legs, we have the Giant Huntsman Spider of Laos, with a leg-span of 12 inches. Their legs have twisted joints and they move in a crab-like manner, which furthers their impressive appearance. ‘Cause they’ve got legs, and know how to use ’em. They prefer to live in underbrush and cave entrances. These are like the big relatives of their Australian cousins, which we’ve all seen online and developed a healthy aversion to.
Brazilian Salmon Pink Birdeater & Brazilian Giant Tawny Red Tarantulas
Next we have two more South American species: the Brazilian Salmon Pink Birdeater, which boasts one-inch fangs, and the Brazilian Giant Tawny Red, believed to be the longest-lived spider with a lifespan of up to thirty years. Both are in the tarantula family and have urticating hairs, a word you probably never read much before today unless you are in the hobby. So apparently South America is not the best travel destination for you if you struggle with arachnophobia, though I suspect you’d figured that out already. (I wouldn’t recommend Australia or Southeast Asia either.)
Face Size Tarantula
And finally the Face Size Tarantula, which has a very terror-inducing name reminiscent of the Face Huggers of Alien-glory. Anyway, these spiders have an 8-inch leg-span and live in India and Sri Lanka. They look kind of like big hairy wolf spiders with stripey legs, sometimes with pink and daffodil coloring.
If you enjoyed this eight-legged segment of Nightmarish Nature on Giants Among Spiders and their larger than life kin, please check out past segments:
So here is our last installment of our AI journey exploring the idea of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad wolf being one and the same. All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva. Feel free to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this exploration if you missed them.
A non sequitur I know, but I couldn’t resist. If you picked up where we left off you’ll get it.
Seriously?! Again with the cropped off head cop out…
Finally! That was a journey. And not even worth the result, in my opinion.
Anyway, here is a bonus montage I made out of a bunch of additional Red Riding Hood prompts for an article that never happened…
Prompts for Montage:
1.) What if Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf were one and the same being?
2.) Her wolf face peering out of her red cloak, fangs dripping with the blood of another victim, lost in the forest and never found.
3.) Little Red Riding Hood closes in for the kill, lunging from her red cloak, her wolf fangs dripping with blood.
4.) I am Little Red Riding Hood. I am the Big Bad Wolf. I am coming for you.
5.) Howling within, the rage sears forth from the red cloak, discarded in the deep woods. Red Riding Hood succumbs to the lycanthropy.
6.) Heaving breaths. Dripping blood. Red Riding Hood is not what she appears. She is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
7.) Her red cloak masks the fangs hidden below the surface.
8.) It starts with a long sighing breath. Waiting. The wolf within stirs.
9.) Red Riding Hood trembles. She succumbs to the lycanthropy.
10.) The wolf bursts forth from within. It takes over Little Red Riding Hood’s mind, her body, her being.
11.) Red Riding Hood howls. She is ravenous with hunger for blood. The wolf within has taken over. Mind, spirit, body. She feasts on the blood of the moon.
12.) Big Bad Wolf Red Riding Hood ravenous blood moon feast
13.) Blood moon beckons. I. Little Red Big Bad Riding Hood Wolf. Freedom howling night curse.
14.) Beware. Bewolf. BeRedRidingHood. Betwixt. Beyond.
15.) I pad quietly as the forest dissolves around me. Red Riding Hood and Wolf, one and the same.
16.) Wolf within howling dark recesses of the mind, Red Riding Hood lost
17.) Red Riding Hood HOWL wolf bane true existence polymorph within-and-without.
18.) Red howl Riding Wolf dark existence brooding within
So thank you for joining us on another AI art journey. You can still catch the last AI art journey on Haunted MTL here. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
