The Return

Sunrise comes in a smear of blood red. Trees make black shadows against the low light. There's a hint of cold in the breeze as it moans over the window ledge. Autumn.

Outside bulging spiders hang on cobwebs. Some days drops of mist dangle on the thin strands instead. The first dead leaves gather under hedges.

Haws make clots of dark red on the field edges and the pheasants stalk amongst the stubble. Dusty asters bloom in neglected gardens. There has been mist rising from the rifes, the ditches that drain this low-lying land.

Mildew coats the marrow leaves with grey. Neither a bloom nor a leaf remains without a spot, a ragged edge or a stain of decaying colour.

The Wedding Ghost stirs in the cooling soil. The lengthening nights call to her.

Time to come back.

Top Ten Tuesday

This has taken a while but here's a selection of Ghostly Brides. I shall start with the skull-faced Edwardian 'beauty'. Even the flowers she carries are dead.

Here the setting in Highgate Cemetery and her translucency all add to the eeriness. 

 Another see-through spectre. It's the way she challenges you to follow her - and yet the floor of the ruin shines right through her. Chilling.

A ghost bride doesn't have to be white European to be be sinister - this one is both beautiful and disturbing.

Of course, there are other ways to be scary. This zombie bride would rip anyone apart.

 Dead brides are unnerving. Would she 'wake' if you got too close?

And the sadness of this deserted bride -is it contagious, could she pass on her desperate plight?

Another waiting bride - this time from the twenties. The peeling wallpaper tells its own tale.

It's hard to beat a graveyard for the habitat of the supernatural .This bride is already in mourning - who for, I wonder?

But this has to be my Number One. There is something so implacable about her. She would never stop chasing you - slowly.

Brides and burials

On Sunday I was walking around a churchyard in Itchenor looking at gravestones. They can be very beautiful and sad - like this one here. This is from Chicago - so young and so lovely.

They can also be quite unnerving. This extraordinary funerary statue is from Brooklyn.

Rather older, this one seems to be in a shroud - or some sort of Greek veil.

It doesn't have to be white marble to be eerie. Bronze will do just as well.

I think it is the idea that they are waiting that people find unsettling. 

Dia de los Muertos

The Day of the Dead, celebrated in Mexico and other usually Catholic countries.

The last time I was looking for images to go with my post about the Mistletoe Bride - I found one or two to do with  Dia de los Muertos. I put them on one side , resolving to use them later.

As it so happens, I have been invited  to a Mexican themed party. Immediately, I thought of Frida Kahlo - though not perhaps like this - dressed as a traditional Mexican bride with intricate lace and flowers on her crown and Diego Ribiera on her mind.

But it brought me back to those Day of the Dead Brides. In Mexico, the orange marigold or Flor de Muerto is thought to summon the dead. People make altars with sugar skulls and other offerings to their dead family members.

This bride seems to have been waiting a while.

And this one's even called the Waiting Bride.

 People make masks and there is a carnival atmosphere, I've read.

 You can dress up like this Corpse Bride by following the link below.

By Crafty Chica

But with all those masks and disguises, how can you know who - or what - is behind them?

"What a comfort it is to possess the image of those who are removed from our sight..."

People like to remember those who have died. Before the invention of photography, only the wealthy could afford a portrait. 

The Dead Bride 1804

When daguerreotypes and other early forms of photograph became popular, the dead were not left out.

Corpse bride posed with dead flowers.

Note how the gloves cover up her hands - the fingers would be discoloured due to post-mortem decay.

This girl has been held up by a jig and some clever wiring. This is probably a confirmation dress rather than a wedding dress. Look at her blackened fingers.

These memento mori can be eerily beautiful. Some modern photographers imitate them to create art like Eveline Felice here:

and Mikimatto here:

Of course,  many times the bride wasn't dead at the time of the photograph, but there can still be something unsettling to us about these images.

Cards like this would handed out at funerals.

This porcelain image is on a grave in Chicago.

Certainly they remind us that we too will die.

Considering the Lily

Brides have often carried lilies in their bouquets.

The bouquet itself may well come from the bunch of flowers and herbs that richer people carried in the Middle Ages. Different kinds were known as posies, tussie-mussies or nosegays. (The Queen still  carries one on Maundy Thursday). These were meant to keep away noxious smells and poisonous miasmas that caused disease.

The pure white Madonna lily is heavily scented. It is associated with the Virgin Mary as a symbol of innocence. 

Even so, many people won't have it indoors because it reminds them of funerals; before embalming, mortuary chapels and refrigeration, its powerful perfume was used to mask the smell of decay.

Similarly, the Calla or Arum lily can have a strong scent. In frost-free parts of America, it is grown on graves as a sign of resurrection. 

It was popular in the '20s and '30s in bridal sprays - very glamorous and Hollywood together with dropwaist satin dresses and headbands.

Finally, the name always makes me think of Lily Munster. I thought Yvonne de Carlo in the popular comedy of the 60s The Munsters was very beautiful in an eerie way.

Drawing a veil...

Brides in many cultures wear veils.

They represent modesty often - but there is also something mysterious about the half-covered face.

What is going on behind that gauze?

What is the bride truly feeling?

We might well wonder if anything is being concealed.

Perhaps lifting the veil might lead to something we would rather not see.