It’s been 11 years since the publication of Morbid Curiosity‘s 6th issue. It’s one of my favorite issues, careening wildly from the political to the supernatural, with stops at the witchcraft shop, the HR office, and the backwoods.
Contributors included Morbid Curiosity regulars M. Parfitt, Dana Fredsti, George Neville-Neil, Jeff Dauber, Lilah Wild, and Mason Jones, along with the only essays I published by recurring artists Kimberlee Traub and Suzanne Dechnik. Guest writers ranged from femme fatale Jill Tracy to impressario Roy K. Felps, horror diva Mehitobel Wilson to Vale of RE/Search, Esoterra publisher Chad Hensley to smut peddler M. Christian.
The issue’s horrifying cover image of a mummified cat is a photograph by Chris Legato Orr of Skeletaldropkick (http://www.etsy.com/shop/skeletaldropkick). I love the extreme closeup, which makes it hard to identify the ghostly, eyeless creature. The textured paper lends the image its graininess. The absinthe-green text hints that it might be an infrared image, something emerging from the haunted darkness. I thought it really suited an issue with so many ghost stories.
The first-person nonfiction in this issue spans:
- Anarchists in Paris
- Big Brother
- Buying a gun
- California Coast Guard
- Channeling spirits
- Genoa protesters
- Getting mugged
- Ghost hunters
- Ghosts
- Hallucinating naturally
- Haunted houses
- In the nuthouse
- LSD
- Medical experiments
- Night terrors
- NYC subways
- Occult shops
- Pere Lachaise Cemetery
- Police brutality
- Prisoners in America
- Raccoon invasion
- Racism in the family
- Skinning road kill
- Slaughterhouse skulls
- Street violence
- Suicidal boyfriends
- Suicidal thoughts
- Vienna Burial Museum
You can still order copies of only $6, which includes US postage, here.