HoloVista: Mixed Reality Magic From Aconite
The first release from mixed reality storytelling platform Aconite is surreal, lush, and illuminating.
Author: Sonya
The devil may care but I don't mind.
Go Heathen or Go Home: An Interview With Kristen J. Sollee
Kristen J. Sollée is a Haute Macabre favourite, and for good reason. Her first two books, Witches, Sluts, Feminists and Cat Call, deftly weave pop culture with academia, social justice with humour, and research with memoir. They’re complex in the best way, but you’ll still attempt to devour them in one sitting. I love them. […]
Luminous Linens To Get You Through the Winter
The world is ending, the sky is dark, and as we pace between our too-few rooms from sunrise to sunset, the bedroom continually calls out in whispers. Respite, it promises. A new day. Or perhaps just a chance at temporary obliteration. Bedrooms are sacred, liminal spaces. They shock in the morning, alarms going off and […]
Red All Over: An Interview With Adam Nevill
Years ago, I read a horror book called The Ritual. I don’t remember how it crossed my path, though I do have a fondness for both wilderness spookers and Scandinavia — probably it was on a list of books compiled by someone I trusted, or maybe the Internet’s various algorithms simply delivered me to its […]
The Feral Feminine: An Interview With Kristen J. Sollee
When we discovered that Haute Macabre favorite Kristen J. Sollée’s follow-up to Witches, Sluts, Feminists was a book about cats — more specifically, about the connections between cats and women, the feline and the feminine — we eagerly awaited its release. Cat Call: Reclaiming the Feral Feminine is out now from Weiser Books and during […]
The Fabulous Impracticality of Karolina Laskowska
Lingerie has long been an obsession of mine. As a child, it seemed a quintessentially adult thing that would welcome me into a strange world of autonomy and responsibility. I pictured myself in my first apartment, surrounded by books and hosting lavish dinner parties, draped in layers of silk robes or wearing nothing but a […]
Haute Haunts: Building A Mystery (House)
My parents are divorced, so from elementary school to high-school I spent my holiday breaks flying in and out of the San Jose airport. Four times a year, I lived a life filled with California things: rollercoasters and hot dogs, road trips under the redwoods, oysters and sourdough and fog and saltwater. Yet despite spending […]
Sex With A Fairy, Tea With A Ghost: Interview With Kelly Link
Kelly Link’s writing first found me at a feminist clothing swap, because of course feminists bring books to a clothing swap. The book was worn, paperback — one of those not-for-resale tomes that someone got from someone who knows someone else who once sneezed vaguely in the direction of the publishing industry. Pretty Monsters was […]
Haute Haunts: A Ghost In Manchester
So often when people travel, they speak about falling in love with a city. That love-at-first-sight feeling, that moment where everything clicks and you think, this is where I am meant to be. This is home. It’s never happened to me. I’ve enjoyed places I’ve traveled to, certainly. I love Paris and I try to […]
Sootless in Seattle: Washington State Legalizes Composting and Aquamation of Human Remains
Just in time for World Goth Day, Washington governor Jay Inslee signed SB 5001 Concerning Human Remains into law this past Tuesday. The bill allows for new alternatives to burial and cremation and makes Washington the first state to legalize human composting, or recomposition, which converts human remains into soil using a process called natural […]
Haute Macabre Staff Favorites For 2017: Sonya’s Picks
2017 was a strange, potent year and I can’t say I’ll miss it. I traveled (to France, Florida, Salem, and Iceland), got engaged to my partner Gregg (of Golden Gardens and Goodnight Cairo), left a full-time job in marketing writing to do freelance journalism, and battled mental health demons with chamomile tea and podcasts. I […]
Dr. Bloodsucker: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love My Pet Leech
The other day I found myself at the home model and eccentric Jessie Lynn shares with third-generation coffin maker Jack Bennett — Jessie and I were planning to spend a few hours watching bad horror movies and drinking wine, but she also had new pets I was itching to take a peek at: hirudo medicinalis […]
Artist Spotlight: MUA Kirra Cruz On Style, Veganism, And The Most Important Love
Kirra Cruz is a makeup artist based in the Pacific Northwest — her Instagram is full of stunning looks and moody greenery, with cameos by locals like photographer Olivia Lazer and model Jessie, whose collaboration is shown above. It’s also a space where she, a longtime vegan, showcases leather alternatives by Haute Macabre friends Deandri […]
Japan’s “Corpse Hotels”: It’s There That No One Will Stare
“Checkout time, for the living and the dead, is usually no later than 3 p.m,” writes Motoko Rich. She’s talking about the Hotel Relation in Osaka, whose accommodations include plain twin beds, flat-screen televisions, and plastic-wrapped cups and toothbrushes — oh, and, the corpses are across the hall. Hotel Relation is just one of Japan’s […]
Never Let Your Activism Be Artless: An Interview With Lucien Greaves of The Satanic Temple
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing The Satanic Temple‘s Lucien Greaves about art, activism, and what religion means as a framework rather than a faith. “Recently” isn’t quite right — these questions were written back in February, as you might notice by the news reference in one of them, but we hope you’ll forgive us […]
Kieran Crowder ‘Liberates’ Ashes, Makes Art
This past weekend, a very unique exhibit was on display at Turner Fine Arts in Birmingham. Here Lies is the result of over thirty years’ work and incorporates ashes “acquired from a crematorium the artist worked at when he was a teenager in the 1970s,” according to the art gallery’s description. For those unfamiliar with […]
The Mysteries of Cimetière de Montmartre
The other week I had the pleasure of again visiting Paris, one of my most favorite places in the world — partly, I think, because it expects you to earn its love. Paris is like me, or like how I prefer to think of myself: challenging, but worth exploring. It doesn’t require patience so much […]
Agnieszka Osipa: Fashion Where Slavic Folklore Reigns
Polish designer Agnieszka Osipa’s creations feel like home to me, embodying a sort of feral holiness I associate with Slavic folklore and imagery. Its grand and decadent but wild, refined yet chaotic — her fashion often inseparable from the moody, atmospheric dreamscapes she creates with her photographers. Each image is uniquely powerful, with intricate beading […]
“The Demonologist” Author Sues Conjuring Films Because Demons Aren’t Real
Husband-and-wife duo Ed and Lorraine Warren founded the New England Society for Psychic Research in 1952 and went on to author numerous books about spirit activity, often speaking to packed crowds at universities and lecture halls. Many of the hauntings they claim to have witnessed are ghost story classics: the Warrens were some of the first […]
Ask Baba Yaga: Folkloric Advice From Taisia Kitaiskaia
Taisia Kitaiskaia is a Russian-American poet and writer with not one but TWO forthcoming books you’ll want to add to your stack. The first is Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers (co-created with artist Katy Horan) and the second, Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles, just opened pre-orders. Though American perception […]
Bela Lugosi’s Dead (but You Can Live in His House for $3 Million)
Bela Lugosi’s mansion — where the actor lived from 1934-1937 — is on the market. For only $3million dollars, you can buy the Tudor-style Hollywood home, built by architect Frank W Green and complete with a ballroom-size living room with stone fireplace, a formal dining room with “banks of iron glass windows” (because why not), a library with […]
Catching Feelings: The Myth of Victorian-Era Tear Catchers
I’ve had this article on my to-write list for months — tear catchers or “lachrymatories,” those gilded vials you often see next to mourning wreaths and crushed velvet capelets, are the very height of romanticism. During the Victorian Era, it’s said, the grieving would weep into the delicate containers which turn up now and then […]
Scary Stories Tribute Art Exhibit Is Beautifully Terrifying
Earlier this month we were alerted to a new kind of art exhibit by John Squires at Bloody Disgusting: work inspired by the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books was on display from 7pm to 12am in a small San Antonio, Texas gallery, whose Instagram served as a live feed for those of […]
Our Favorite Independent Publishers, For The Discerning Bibliophile
There has never been a better time for books — or, rather, to be a reader of them. Because of the Internet and the literary devotion of independent editors and publishers, many of whom run presses as a side passion project and not an actual revenue stream, we have unprecedented access to books on nearly […]
The Forbidden Desire of “Lover’s Eyes”
Few things in life are as intimate as eyes, whether we’re talking about symbolic gateways to the soul or the visceral suckerpunch of lingering gazes across a crowded room. That so much emotion can be held in such a small physical space inspired a short-lived jewelry trend we have come to know as Lover’s Eyes. […]
Magic For The Modern Mystic: Interview With The Hoodwitch’s Bri Luna
An online community and website, The Hoodwitch is devoted to sharing metaphysics, folk medicine, and wellness in a modern and accessible way. “Magic is creating change by connecting with the energies of nature, at will,” says founder Bri Luna, who works to honor the inner knowledge we so often forget or learn to ignore. It’s a […]
W.I.T.C.H. PDX: Portland Brings Back The Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell
“We need witches right now,” says Elissa Hall, a Portland-based witch, in a recent article for Bustle. “While Trump’s election is disastrous, it is a call to action for witches, at least for me personally. It’s time to unleash that power we’ve been cultivating because there is so much to protect.” This sentiment is echoed by […]
Witch Baby Soap: Making Bath Time Magical
Witch Baby Soap is heaven in a bath. A spooky, intoxicatingly-scented glitterbomb heaven, that is. These purveyors of bath bombs, body butters, sugar scrubs, solid perfumes, and other delights are a cult favorite on Instagram, and for good reason. Their goodies are 100% vegan, hand-made with the finest witchy ingredients, and often contain hidden messages […]
Slow Holler Tarot Deck: Queer + Southern Artists Re-Imagine The Arcana
I’ll admit that tarot has never been one of my favorite mediums for art or divination, somewhat because divination as a whole gives me anxiety but mostly because the gender symbolism in the arcana has always felt incredibly constricting, a word I don’t particularly want to associate with my future. Thankfully, Slow Holler is here […]
Petite Mort: Textile Talismans from Julia Berg
Julia Berg of Petite Mort grew up in the neighborhood wool shop owned by her grandfather and remembers always making something creative out of the materials around her. Self-taught in knitting and crochet like her mother and grandmother, she transitioned to jewelry after training in film school. It “happened naturally,” she says. “While still in […]
