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It was a normal October day. I looked out the window of a 2nd grade classroom in Spokane, Washington, watching the kids out a recess. It was like a blizzard came out of nowhere. I was a student teacher and driving in the snow still made me nervous, even though I had gotten used to it in Iowa where I went to college. I asked my cooperating teacher if school was going to be let off early because of the snow. She said no, the snow probably won’t stick. But it did.

By the end of the school day, the parking lot was covered with inches of snow. I had a 30-minute drive back to my apartment, that include a long highway, rural roads, and the real possibility of deer running into the road. Somehow, I made it to my apartment safely.

By the time I got to my apartment, I was cold, tired, stressed and very hungry. As the blizzard continued outside, I preheated my oven to prepare to cook a homemade pizza. As the pizza was cooking, I put on my PJs and selected a cozy movie to watch. By the time the pizza was done the blizzard was still going outside.

This picture by Christine Wisnieski shows the comfort of being safe at home with good food, while the sound from daveincamas represents the chaos of nature outside. When driving back home from student teaching in the increasing snow, the thought of being safe in my apartment was my goal. Pizza and movie were the much-deserved reward.

I didn’t have any particular idea in mind when I began this assignment, but I guess the holidays were still on my mind. I saw a different Christmas-related photo originally, and it got me thinking—what if I could flip the cheery, warm feeling of the holidays around and invoke something ominous? So I set out to find the perfect image that I felt could play both sides of that coin. (I will say, I had a very hard time finding a nice aesthetic Christmas photo under an appropriate Creative Commons license. A lot of them were kind of weird, honestly.)

I was thrilled when I found this photo/audio combination. For one thing, despite how beautiful the the photo is, its title read sort of ominous to me already: The Living Room. The contrast of bright white against the windows also adds a layer of spook, with the reflected lights almost looking like glowing eyes in the deep darkness. Then I came across the audio clip—simply using the search term “ominous”—and knew this had to be the one. I love that it still has some whimsy and even channels Christmas a bit with the inclusion of the pipe organ.

I hope I was able to highlight the spooky stillness of Christmas Eve night for you!

“I am my own ghost, haunting the memories I love the most.”

Author Unknown

For this entry, I didn’t want to just choose a random photo simply because it was pretty… Thus, I ended up searching for hours to find the “perfect” image. In the beginning, nothing was screaming “THIS IS IT,” even after I searched a combination of items and terms, trying to use my hobbies and interests to find a photo that I connected with. Then I stumbled upon this one.

At first, my mind went to “How creepy would this be at night?” which morphed into “What if in the middle of nowhere you started hearing the clang of church bells?” I thought the two together would create a perfectly sinister setting. I even ran with the idea of For Whom the Bell Tolls for an undisclosed amount of time before the realization hit…

In January 2021, my father unexpectedly passed away; a hole was created, and it lingered. However, I was a new mom and never allowed myself to fully grieve… I felt I had to stay strong for my infant daughter, my mother, and my siblings – even as the “baby” of the family. We are now in 2024, three years later, and I still don’t think I’ve properly grieved.

…What originally drew me to the picture and the audio clip was mere intrigue and curiosity, and a knack for storytelling…

I see now that the two elements have combined to create the place I know I must face eventually. I know it’s a journey I must complete, but that doesn’t make it any less frightening. This is the place of grief – where I must process it as it comes and survive the night to find the day.

Rainbow Island by CEBImagery is a licensed under
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0 DEED)

Thunder Strikes, Lightning Storm, Claps_1 by PNMCarrieRailfan is licensed under
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0 DEED)

When times are rough it cam be difficult to focus on the the light at the end of the tunnel. 2021 and 2022 were extremely tough years for me and my family. We were faced with a tremendous amount of loss and sadness that took time to heal. Flash forward two years and I am now starting to heal and understand that the universe had a plans for us. Although I was unable to understand why things were occurring in my life at that time, I had no idea there was something so beautiful wanting for me on the other side.

Reflecting back I like to think of it as a rainbow after a very heavy thunderstorm.

The sound above Thunder Strikes, Lightning Storm, Claps_1 by PNMCarrieRailfan showcases the pain and rough time I had to make it through to get to the other side with all the blessings. On the contrary Rainbow Island by CEBImagery is a great of example of the abundance of blessings that the past two years have brought me. Its the beautiful sight and after a heavy storm that was endured.

“Night rain” by “#Sacho#” is licensed under
Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

“There is Romance” by “Kevin MacLeod” is licensed under
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

What’s the most romantic moment you’ve ever experienced? For me, it’s not that sunny afternoon embracing with my boyfriend, or that winter day with snowflakes enjoying the snow. It is the night when it is raining heavily, but there is still someone waiting in the rain for you to go home together.

This music There is Romance by Kevin MacLeod and the image Night rain by #Sacho# takes me back to that night. I was tired after work, but it was surprising to see my boyfriend waiting for me to go home in the rain at the station without an umbrella. After getting off the bus, we held hands and walked home in the pouring rain. The rain was no longer just a sign of gloom, but a rhythm to which love moved.

The gloomy picture appears to be of a man standing alone and melancholy by the railroad station on a rainy day. However, this gentle and elegant music expressing the lasting love, transforms the rain from a dreary setting into a stage for a heartfelt rendezvous. The man in the rain, once just a solitary figure, now stands as a testament to commitment and care. As the notes flow, they weave the rain, the waiting, and the eventual companionship into a tapestry of romantic devotion. This is the true romance!

_{Volatile Reaction by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/}

_{person holding baseball bat waiting for pitch was taken by rigo erives, and is free to use under the Unsplash licensing agreement.}

In baseball, every batter gets to choose what piece of music is played over the ballpark’s loudspeakers as he walks out from the dug out up to home plate to begin his at-bats, aka his ‘walk-up song’. Sometimes, this music is deeply personal and inspiring; other times, it’s just a fun song to get him hyped up. Preseason games (Spring Training) will start about a month from now, and that made me think of a young rookie who’s worked really hard through the minors (triple A and double A, and a few leagues even smaller than that), and is finally, finally getting to work on his at-bats in actual batting cages before stepping out in front of the roaring crowds for his first game in the big leagues. Would this be something he would listen to, during that anxiety-inducing but ultimately dream-fulfilling time? Yes, there are 161 games after that, plus the post season, but he probably knows more than most people how crucial first impressions can be.

For as long as I can remember I have loved being surrounded by trees. The forest has always been a magical place to me and a place to let my imagination roam free. My steady diet of fantasy books fed this fascination. As kid I could find fairies and dragons anywhere. I chose Forest Pond by Zoë Bijl, because it brings me into the woods.

The audio adds a bit of wonder to this forest photo to bring in the magic, transforming it into an enchanted forest with the light piano and the bird sounds. The sound of the synth about 30 seconds in makes me think of 80s fantasy movies like The NeverEnding Story.

I can also picture myself, toes in the water, just thinking and dreaming of far off places with this music playing in the background.

For my image, I wanted to use some sort of scenery or environment that I love. I’ve always enjoyed the denseness of forests and the sound of dirt crunching beneath one’s feet, so I went searching for a forest picture that called out to me. Lars-Henrik Snow’s picture of a winter forest has a beautiful contrast of darkness and lightness. I’m especially enamored by the darkness being in the forefront, making the light in the background all that more mystical. I knew my goal going into the assignment was to discover an image and audio that will pair together to completely alter its meaning, which I want to complement with a short narrative. This image was the perfect first step.

Then, it was audio hunting time. I wanted an audio that would change the ambience into something eerie and unsettling. At first I looked into audios where people were murmuring, expecting to use it as an auditory experience for my character’s unsound mind, but none of the audios I found this way felt quiet or isolated enough. Instead, I searched under the keyword ‘ominous’ and found interesting clips, but xtrgamr’s reverbed version of Rock-A-Bye Baby gave me what I didn’t even know I was looking for. Hit with inspiration, I scraped off the rust on my creative writing skills and came up with this:

Two nights, three frigid days now. Matthew’s fingers felt numb even beneath his multi-layered wool gloves. The avalanche swallowing Timmy and Gloria beneath mountains of undiscerning white had been cataclysmic, but the following blizzard even more so. He’d holed up in a cave where the walls had accumulated thin sheets of ice and spent the passing two nights blowing warmth into his unresponsive hands and eating measly rations of jerky and sunflower seeds. The storm had only cleared this morning. He hadn’t realized that wherever he had fallen in the aftermath left him with nowhere to go but through the dense, frozen foliage of an ever-expansive forest. He’s been sludging through 3 feet of snow aimlessly for 4 hours. His joints ached or throbbed – he was unable to discern – and he heard the crooning of his mother’s favorite lullaby. No… that wasn’t a voice, but the mesmerizing trill of the music box he’d unearthed when he was six. Where had it come from? It sounds… distant, back towards the cave. But it was familiar and familiarity is all Matthew has yearned for in the past 72 hours. His feet turned back around and he could not say if it was of his own volition. He followed his sunken boot prints back to the cave, to the warm embrace he was convinced he’d receive. When he was finally back, he entered the belly of the cavern that had not been there. The music stopped.

Apologies for the length of this post! I always get wordy when I don’t mean to… Eerie/creepy/horror writing is not one of my strengths and I was starting to rush it, but I hope it was still atmospheric. Thank you for taking the time to read it all.