Meta; Horror

Question for Blogger users: Did any of y’all notice a bizarre influx of random referrals from other Blogspot blogs yesterday, during a certain one-hour period? (I can’t figure out from my stat provider exactly what one-hour period it really was.) You know, the type of referral you get when someone clicks on that “next blog” button on the top of the page, only dozens of them almost all at once? I’d love to know what that was all about. Blogger maintenance of some sort?

In much more interesting metablog news, I’ve occasionally wondered aloud why there isn’t a horror blogosphere along the lines of the comics blogosphere we all know and love so well. I’d hoped that Kevin Melrose, Rick Geerling, and Sam Costello’s lovely site Dark, But Shining would spur some growth in that arena. Well, it has, as it turns out–just not in the way I expected. Apparently there already is something of a horror blogosphere out there, but I just hadn’t been looking in the right place! I discovered this when Sam used DBS to plug my autobiohorror site The Outbreak, along with the why-didn’t-I-think-of-that blog of the moment, Dracula Blogged (currently up to the awesome lizard-walk “what manner of man is this?” bit!) Sniffing through the comments left by DBS’s readers in that post, I discovered a whole slew of horrorblogs–and they also discovered me, or at least The Outbreak’s version of me, much to my delight. M. Valdemar and Benjamin are just a couple of the horror-centric bloggers out there. Feast your eyes, glut your soul!

The discovery I’m possibly most excited about from all this was made through Infocult, the regular blog of Dracublogger Bryan Alexander. It’s called Laylasweetie, and despite the innocuous, extremely LJ-typical name, it’s about a haunting. I presume it’s a fictional one, of course, which makes it a blog after my own heart; what makes it particularly interesting is the way the author has allowed the haunting to infect the blog itself, placing various clues, puzzles, and other spooky things throughout the entries and comments. Man, technology and people who like scary things can be a force to be reckoned with when put together properly. I heartily advise you to check it out.