Horror and perfumes.

Do you like horror movies? Or maybe horror novels? I prefer to read horror, before watching horror movies I have to admit. The master is offcourse Stephen King, but the swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist isn´t bad at all. The advantage of reading horror is that you can put the book aside when it get´s to frightening and maybe read something else before going to sleep. When it comes to horror movies I can be so scared that I think about certain scenes for years. I am a confirmed coward, or become, after having children. Wich means that I have been a coward for more than half my life now!

A Christmas vaccation, more than twenty years ago, I was in Kittelfjäll. My husband to be, was at home working and I was there with the kids (two of them a seven year old and a baby). We stayed at a former mountain hotel, an old creaking and very big wooden house just under the alp. I was reading Stephen King`s The Shining when the kids was spleeping and the mountain wind blwe around the corners of the house. Strange, how many different noices wind can produce. Sometimes it sounds like wolfs where howling just outside the house and other times it was some loose spout that knocked steadily. I enjoyed reading and become more and more terrified, when I was enough terrifed I put The Shining aside and read some easy love novell instead. Because I had allready watch the movie The Shining it was Jack Nicholson´s insane grin that I saw in front of me, but the house wasn´t the house in the movie, no, offcourse it was the house we where staying at.

When I tried Parfumerie General´s L'Ombre Fauve I get very uncomfortable. It wasn´t that it dosn´t smelled good, because it does! It was something else, something creapy, sneaky that made me think about ghost´s and long, winding corridors with menacing shadows. A smell, both of moist bricks and concrete, and also something animalic. A crazy Jack Nicholson, a lonely hotell and a cold wind. Sometimes perfumes travels along strange paths. L'Ombre Fauve is the smell of my fear at that old mountain hotell. L'Ombre Fauve is the smell of The Shining, for me. It would be so cool to wear L'Ombre Fauve and watch Tha Shining. But there is a risque it would be to much, for a coward like me. I have read, that others find L'Ombre Fauve warm and comforting, I smile and marvel, do we smell the same fragrance? For me L'Ombre Fauve is a cold, horror fragrance. And it´s sure good! The twins are waiting for me behind the bend and Jack Nicholson grins madly in my head.

Besides The Shing, The Blair Witch Project is a horror movie that make a strong impression on me. The tought of never ending, moist forrests isn´t so hard when one come from northern Sweden. The closing scene is as burned to my retina, oh mum, how scared I was when I saw it! Others may find The Blair Witch Project, not scaring at all, but are about to break down by The Ring, The Exorcist or Terror on Elm Street, I am of different opinion. I think we all have different trigger points, and Blair Withch happened to trig a lots of mine. I own a small sample of Wode by Boudicca (I prefer it the other way around, but). Wode is my horror fragrance number two, it smell of cold, unfriendly, awful, terrifying and never ending forrest. A forrest that anything can hide in, stumbling on wet stones, getting lost and look over the shoulder the whole time, without being able to actually see anything in the darkness. Wode is, just like L'Ombre Fauve, not at all a bad fragrance. It is terrible interesting and all I can think of when wearing it, is The Blair Witch project and the final scene. I reaaly don´t want to go through watching Blair Witch agian, and never while wearing Wode, just the tought of it make me uncomfy! Thanks, but no thanks! Do you dare?

Another fragrance with clear horror connection is the recent tested Serge Noire by Serge Lutens, it is absolutly gorgeus put together, but make me itch inside. But I don´t have any book or movie to connect it with. For certain there must be a big, stone castle with crows around the towers and yes, something with Dracula would work. Serge Lutens himself, would probably be a brilliant Dracula, don´t you think?

I am very aware, that these associations are individual, the perfumes I mentioned above is maybe the most cherful and light you can think of. But is there any perfume that make you think of horror? And why? Do you like wearing it or do you wear it with horror mixed delight?