Drought, fires, storms, hail, floods, tornados, explosive diarrhea, the World Cup. Welcome back to the Sunday Scaries. Things have been a mite apocalyptic these past few days. I hope you’ve all been staying cool, dry and sheltered, and cooking your fruits and vegetables to an internal temperature of 158 degrees F (70 degrees C) or higher.

My friend Mikey has been in town for the last few weeks, and on Friday spirited me out of the city to see his family and his childhood home in Placentia, and then to visit the Cape St. Mary Ecological Reserve, about which I knew nothing. That was probably just as well, for if you told me I’d be hiking up a pebbly path shrouded in fog to a height of 400 feet about sea level to perch among cliffs surrounded by thousands of sea birds, I probably would have opted for a mug of hot chocolate with my feet beside a space heater. As I’ve said many times, I have a veritable catalogue of fears, and well up the list are heights, water, and birds. That said, I did eventually figure out what was happening, and I am proud to say that I did not stop and I did not turn back. The experience was extraordinary, a truly breathtaking communion with the forces of nature. Days later I am still overwhelmed, still struggling to hold in my mind and comprehend all of the sensory impressions from those few minutes. When I have the opportunity I will return, and will try to take in even more. It was a vivid reminder that the world is so much larger than us and in many ways we are the least of it.

This week was also my debut appearance on Matthew Jackson’s podcast The Scares That Shaped Us, where I discussed the new edition of my novel RED X, and the lasting scars from my childhood encounter with the legendary TV gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. The series was a cultural juggernaut in its time, particularly among teenagers, and one image in particular haunted my nightmares for many years.

Currently watching: Much to my surprise, I am playing what promises to be a lengthy Vampire: the Masquerade tabletop roleplaying game campaign with friends old and new, from across the continent, via the magic of Discord. You may be aware that various play groups record their sessions for a wider audience (‘Actual Play’); it’s a great way to learn how these games work, and also a lively entertainment in its own right. We…are not doing that, because we value our in-game and real-life sanity, but I recommend you check out the Project Ghostlight campaign Private Nightmares. It begins essentially mise-en-scene, with a suspenseful sequence inside a storage warehouse, and things escalate from there.

If that’s not to your taste, you may be pleased to know that the National Theatre has filmed the remarkable verbatim musical London Road, and has made it available for rent or as part of a subscription on National Theatre at Home.

Currently listening: The raucous Sleep is for the Weak by The Dreadnoughts, the unsettling Bone Infection by Kathryn Mohr, the buoyant higher! higher! by nowhere else to be, the ebullient Amazing Grace by friends&, the plaintive Lost Boys by Phoebe Bridgers (CW: Jimmy Fallon), and the pulsating afterhours edition of Bizarre by Madonna.

Cool story, bro: An embarrassment of riches: Tour the remains of a phantom amusement park in J.F. Gleeson’s Rolliecoaster Meadow; commiserate with an aging disco light at a gay bar in Jason A. Bartles’s The Night the Light Went Out at Georgia’s; or visit a somewhat mysterious secondhand bookshop run by Old Litkinov, in this story by Tom Cox.

This week in horror: This week we said a fond farewell to Sam Neill, an actor of immense charm and skill and a wonderful human being in his everyday life, who neither shied away from the horror genre outright (a slew of absolute bangers, such as Possession, In the Mouth of Madness, Event Horizon, Dead Calm and the weirdly wonky but eerily prescient Omen III: The Final Conflict) nor held back from adding glimmers of horror to his characters in other works (the Jurassic Park series, Peaky Blinders, The Piano, Perfect Strangers and The Triangle, among others). He was a great friend to animals, the environment, to queer and trans people, and to the Indigenous people across Australia and his native Aotearoa. He was by all accounts lived his life fully and well. We mourn his loss. In his memory, take a few minutes to watch Sam and Hugo Weaving have a bath.

That’s it for this edition. Until next time, remember: “It is mankind, rather, who insists upon making it difficult for life to exist upon this planet.”