Green Tea (A Ghost Story)

 For today's countdown to Halloween, a reading suggestion, which I blogged about back in 2017. And I have some recommendation about your reading ritual, should you decide to give this story a go. It's the spooky season, it's autumn, if it's getting cold where you are, I suggest you sit down comfortably and grab yourself a nice cuppa. You will see, you will enjoy the story even more, getting into the atmosphere. So anyway, Green Tea is the second ghost story of Sheridan Le Fanu I have read. You can find it in In a Glass Darkly. Or in various anthologies. But you can also find it online here, among other places. It's about a clergyman haunted by a demonic monkey, seen only by him and otherwise immaterial, which may be an hallucination caused by an excessive consumption of green tea. So yeah, get yourself some tea, green tea if you dare, sit down in a comfy place, one late afternoon, read this ghost story and tell me of your experience in the comments. Or, if you read Sheridan Le Fanu before, this story or another, tell me in the comments too.

In a Glass Darkly

For today's countdown to Halloween's reading suggestion: In A Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu. It contains a few short stories and novella, all but one are horror stories. It also has its most famous work, Carmilla. Aka that story with a lesbian vampire, which I blogged about recently. A story now in the shadow of a far more famous vampire. While I prefer Dracula as a novel and a vampire story, Le Fanu's creation stands on her own and so does his writing, which has never been surpassed or erased by Bram Stoker, who in the end was a one hit wonder. Carmilla is a deliciously creepy tale of infatuation in an exotic setting, with just enough blood and violence, but the other stories should not be neglected. Green Tea is maybe my favourite, where a clergyman is haunted by a demonic monkey, which may be an hallucination caused by an excessive drinking of green tea. I'm not making it up. It's classic Gothic horror at its best.

Matcha Matsu and Me

Many businesses celebrated the Chinese New Year recently on social, including David's Tea. They associated each sign of the Chinese Zodiac, so I learned on their Facebook page that as a serpent, I should celebrate with Matcha Matsu. And... Well, I don't know. I generally drink black tea, but I do enjoy some green tea from time to time. It's meant to be very healthy. It looks and sounds very exotic, according to its description.

Ghosts and green tea

Quick blog post for Halloween. It is both a reading suggestion and a warning and sorry if there is no spooky picture to accompany it. So anyway, I have recently rediscovered Sheridan Le Fanu by reading In a Glass Darkly. For the third time in my life, I read Green Tea, the story of a clergyman haunted by a demonic black monkey which may be an hallucination triggered by... green tea. Or else green tea is the drug used to unleash the forbidden gates of Hell, or something. I strongly suspect that the monkey was embodiment of Darwin's theory of evolution, but nevermind that for now. You can read this spooky tale online here. As for green tea, it appears that it was like heroin or a powerful sort of LSD for the man of God of the Victorian era. So drink it in moderation. That was my warning.