ghoulnextdoor
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Everything posted by ghoulnextdoor
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Through the tiny gabled window of a dollhouse attic, a secret scene unfolds: a miniature lace shawl lies draped across a trunk, its delicate stitches dusted with what could be petit four crumbs, could be breakfast cereal marshmallows - fairy-sized sweets scattered by some forgotten child's hand. Beside it, pearly mothballs like strange sugar drops rest among cobwebby linens that exhale their milky-musky-powderiness. From a diminutive crystal perfume bottle in the corner, phantom florals and delicate vanilla mingle with dust motes in the afternoon sunlight, the whole tiny world held in perfect, timeless suspension.
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Nevertheless, She Persisted is all warmth and edge, a richness cut with a chipped blade, a silver that's earned its patina, illuminated by a cresting shard of dawn. The scent blooms like resin warmed by just enough light to see by, bittersweet, gentle as prayer, steady as stone. It moves like metallic honey, like quicksilver caught in amber - inexorable and incandescent, a sliver of sunshine given weight and anointed with purpose. Beneath its surface lies something unflinching and resolute, like steel threaded through silk, like granite veined with gold, like a sword of thunder wrapped in a ballgown.
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(2024 version) I don’t know how I’ve been reviewing these Halloween scents for so long, and yet I have never talked about this one. Perhaps it’s because it’s been lurking in the shadows, biding its time, waiting for the perfect moment to reveal its true nature. And that nature? It’s not what you’d expect. The coffee is strong and smoky, a dark roast rebellion against the expected sweetness. This is not the sticky-sweet pumpkin syrup bomb of your coffee-chain drive-thru order with your name spelled ridiculously wrong (ugh, poor “Keighleigh”). Instead, imagine a barista witch concocting a potion of bitter mysteries and autumnal secrets in a cauldron of burnished copper. Vanilla bean smoke curls around the edges, more felt than tasted, while cinnamon and nutmeg whisper spicy nothings from the shadows. A ribbon of milk weaves through it all, not to soften but to complicate – binding the realms of wake and sleep, summer’s fading warmth, and winter’s approaching chill. Raw sugar lingers as an afterthought, crunching softly like leaves underfoot or the last grains of sand in October’s hourglass. This is a PSL for those who find comfort in decay and seek beauty in the turn of seasons – a not-too-sweet (ultimate compliment) toast to endings that taste like new beginnings, the best, most perfect, most WEENDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR.
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My smeller’s notes are somewhat different than the listed perfumer's notes: honeydew, rhubarb, & honeysuckle preserves, a translucent shiver of ginger leaf, a rosebud preening, its reflection glassy and cool in a pool of still rainwater. Fresh, clear nectar, lush and swirling in a prismatic jelly jar, balancing on a small tray carved of young, green wood.
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Did I hear a blackberry giggle? And why did it sound so chilling, soulless, and evil? A chorus of tiny, wicked voices rises from the brambles, their sweet menace carried on a gentle breeze. The scent drifts lightly, deceptively airy, its delicate touch belying the weight of ancient malice it carries.
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The pores of the earth yawn open, exuding an inky miasma perfumed with earthy autumnal spices and sweet brown sugar musk. This glazed, glistening cascade of aromatic sap gleams under a harvest moon, a glossy pool of honeyed incense golden and thick, an aromatic oil slick of resinous warmth and syrupy darkness. From the viscous depths, a pumpkin-headed silhouette emerges, its hollow eyes glowing with ancient malice—an old god awakening to reclaim its hallowed home.
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This impression of chlorinated florals, aquatic honey, and a slight mineral effervescence is not at all what I expected... although I think this is going to be a summertime favorite! This is a midsummer fever dream, foamed with flowers, pearled with light. Narcotic petals lounging poolside: honey-sweet poisonous blooms take a dip in cerulean waters at high noon in mid-July, and they’re floating on neon pool noodles and drinking slightly flat but icy-cold Topo Chico. For those who appreciate such things, this one reminds me a bit of the long-discontinued Danube.
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A farmers market fruit basket tumbles into the washing machine, emerges an olfactory apparition. High-thread-count luxury cotton sheets, spin cycle séance, rustling with tales of anemic fruits transfused with linen-fresh detergent. Bedclothes drift through air heavy with warm humidity and the powdery tang of fabric softener, an olfactory bedtime story of fruits gently haunting your freshly laundered linens. The faintest ghosts of apples and oranges, their essence diluted yet persistent, phantom orchard memories woven into fabric and suffused with the comforting musk of clean laundry.
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This is a very creamy blend, but also very ...earthy? Velvety ribbons of milky jam weave through wobbling mounds of coconut custard. Lumpy dollops of an almost figgy milk jelly jostle jiggingly aside pillowy palm sugar flan. But there is also the starchy nectar of sweet rice, beans boiled in fruit syrup, and the subterranean, geosmic sweetness of mashed tubers. This fragrance has all of those things...plus a tiny spoonful of salty, nutty, browned butter.
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Monstrous vegetation breathes a verdant miasma, its exhalations heavy with the weight of countless eons. In the same space, the same breath, the other eye observes a study in boreal archaeology: a drift of dead branches, ancient pine cones, desiccated moss. Tendrils of primordial green intertwine with crumbling stone, suspended in time. Undergrowth, thicket, and canopy exude a vast murky viridescence, revealing a mirror world where forest and ruin reflect endlessly, an unsettling symmetry of growth and decay.
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An unexpected autumnal breeze; crisp leaves carry secrets of golden fields. Honey-tinged sunlight clings to weathered bark, earthy roots anchor fleeting warmth. Tattered pumpkin rind scrapings compost with the sweet decay of fallen foliage. Deceptively fresh, almost cheerful, yet a ghostly chorus lingers in wind-stirred branches - a chill, whistling echo of summer's fading warmth.
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A spectral chill in frosted glass; anise and verbena spark with eerie luminescence. Icy tendrils spill over the rim, a fog that bites at curious fingers. The elixir shimmers, a cold vapor suspended between tipple and mist - green herbal whispers and sharp, aromatic secrets swirling in misty limbo.
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Pureed gourd flesh and nutty, toasted grains steep in dusky, caramelized sweetness. A slice of pumpkin bread devoured at a forsaken crossroads, where a witching-hour deal is yet to be struck.
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Velvety pigments and wine-darkened lips, inky midnight fruits, rich, jammy, plummy, plush malaise-as-a-lifestyle-choice kisses.
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The earthy, euphoric scent of autumn rises from a carpet of fallen leaves, their colors a blanket of umber and gold spread beneath rusted wrought-iron gates. Wisps of aromatic steam curl from an abandoned mug on a weathered stone bench, mingling with the garden's fading sighs. At twilight, a crisp breeze rattles the trees, carrying a jolly, vegetal brightness that disperses the melancholy haze like a peal of laughter at an unexpectedly inappropriate joke! A moment, a reflective pause between seasons, rich with the comforting warmth of autumn and the lingering mischief of the departing summer, the last chirp of a cricket giving way to the first croak of an autumn toad.
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What is it about the human heart that loves a place forsaken? In a forgotten corner of an abandoned homestead, weathered tools rest against crumbling walls, their once-gleaming surfaces now a canvas of rust and patina. Shadows pool in the pitted surface of an old axe head while a fallen hammer's handle smooths under an invisible touch. From between warped floorboards, gnarled tendrils reach upward, seekers in a realm of twilight. Their twisted forms, pale and insistent, push through layers of debris. A murky, green scent rises with them, vegetal and searching. It mingles with the musty air, a complex perfume of damp wood, old leather, and the faint memory of smoke. Dust hangs suspended in slanted beams of light; each mote a silent witness to creeping decay and desolation.
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Imagine you are Mazzy Star circa 1993, but you are also slowly being consumed by the trees. Damp, earthy autumn leaves whisper songs of decay, a slow plume of incense smoke hangs low on the breeze, and the sun drops below the bloody, burning horizon. Rich woody darkness, a tree's shadowy heart, and you, a pile of dust, an endlessly fading chord.
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Darling, Darling opens with a creamy, candied tartness that swoons into a misty moody, melancholic violet - a fevered vision nestled in the heart of a midnight reverie.This is a sugar-frosted bloom with a nocturnal appetite - powdery yet sharp, a strange, romantic sweetness on which one feeds exclusively and voraciously. A velvety richness mingles with a subtle lactonic note, providing a silky backdrop that amplifies the scent's confectionery nature. A diaphanous veil of clean musk intertwines with gossamer-light vanilla, forming an ethereal shroud of tender menance, clinging to trembling skin.
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Immensely slatherable, an oozing study in autumnal comfort, heavy and sweet on the skin. The pumpkin note is rich and velvety, with a buttery smoothness that goes beyond coating the back of a spoon...I think the spoon would stand straight up in this if it were an actual edible thing! Spices add depth and complexity - warm cinnamon and golden, resinous amber - their heat tempered by the syrupy sweetness of brown sugar crystals seemingly dissolving into the blend. There's a thickness to this scent, almost tactile in its presence, like the last spoonful of preserves clinging to the jar. It's a scent that embodies the season's most indulgent desserts - think slices of custardy pumpkin pie topped with dollops of whipped cream, warm cinnamon rolls dripping with gooey icing, and sticky toffee pudding saturated with a rich maple butterscotch sauce.
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To my nose, this is a wistful, romantic reverie of introspective painter Charles Burchfield's mystical naturalism viewed through Beatrix Potter's whimsical lens. Ultramarine is a scent for gathering wild berries as twilight fog swirls underfoot, to be savored later with billowing clouds of softly sweetened, vanilla-scented cream. The faded cotton of ruffled floral aprons cradle dusky harvests, the tart sweetness tempered by evening's cool breath. Mist-shrouded meadows drowse in the gloaming, where weathered fences stand sentinel to deepening indigo shadows. Nightbirds trill a tender lullaby as tendrils of aromatic steam curl through dampened air. Petals pearled with dew unfurl in the blue hour, their fragrance mingling with the earthy whisper of leaf litter and loam. A first-quarter moon's reflection shivers in a porcelain cup, its slanted light filtering through lace-curtained windows to illuminate lilac petals steeping in its wake.
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A chiaroscuro of earthy depth and hallucinatory sweetness, Bat Moth is the ecstatic fever dream intricacies of a Victorian fairy painter's tiny fae revelers, filtered through Silky Bat's sugar-spun patchouli charms. Or perhaps replace all the fairies in this frenzied vision with a wondrous delirium of bats: a warm-woody-fuzzy-fleecy chiropteran cloud of musk, beady black-jellied eyes, leathery-resinous flitterings in a dizzying expanse of sweetly dewy night air. For all the frenetic moonrise mania as the scent begins its evening's flight, its midnight repose is a softly patchoulified haze, a velvet brown sugar nocturne, a drowsy incantation, a dissolving reverie.
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Lethe is a still, subterranean lake, a study in chilled, mineralic, mossy notes. It's the languid escape endlessly downward, deep into the cool, indifferent embrace of shadows, past the mists, the driftwood, the cypress knees. A dream of the sovereign of a rain-soaked realm, their heart a stony tomb where green waters slowly pulse, instead of blood. An eerie, emerald luminescence, the quietude of forgotten things, and the mordant astringency of embittered ghosts clutching pale flowers of the dead.
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In Pythia, jeweled walls weep with myrrh, their tears an opulent, balsamic wash of whispers. Dusky plums, swollen with strange knowledge and light caught in limbo, stain the tongue a starless sigh. Honeyed and dripping, dreams incubate as thick syrupy glimmers, opaque with the remembrance of things you never knew you’d forgotten, only to be forgotten again and again and again. A narcotic lullaby, a lavish cosmic jest, this ambrosial abundance of oblivion.
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Wherein loamy lavender blooms, sweetly earthy and aromatic, an amethystine herbaceousness intertwining with the bittersweet floral tang of sour plums. These notes swirl and eddy, pulling you deeper into murky waters of consciousness. From these violet-hazed depths, a citrusy brightness pierces through, guiding the dreamer upward. But as dreams are wont to do, the scene shifts abruptly. The light turns sharp and piercing, transforming into a pair of eyes - emerald as new leaves, stinging and keen. They cut through the dreamy haze, a surreal beacon in the depths. And just as reality seems within grasp, the scent dissolves into phantom wisps of frankincense smoke, curling impossibly through the watery realm.
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Treasure glows with bright, gorgeous, golden sweetness, like citrus caramelized by a fiery sunset, beneath which something burnished and floriferous swirls, rootless blooms born in twilight skies, seafoam and honey, dissolving at dusk. Salt-weathered driftwood marbled ablaze with amber's lambent translucence, etched and grooved with a ghostly tidal language that speaks to liminal spaces between sea and shore, day and night, memory and dream.
