ghoulnextdoor
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Everything posted by ghoulnextdoor
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This is not the avocado toast I was expecting - but rather a delicate, floral violet-tinged lavender jam mingling with thick, cultured salted butter of such distinct creamy richness, all melting into warm, crusty golden toast that's been dusted with what might be flower-infused sugar, might be fairy dust. This is what happens when your trendy café is secretly run by flower fairies who've decided to put their own enchanting spin on the brunch menu.
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"The weird the Spirit brings," as mentioned in the lyrics of this perfume's inspiration is jaunty and bright, and indeed spirited. This could be the signature scent of the most gleeful parlor ghost, whose enthusiasm for the spectral life is utterly contagious. The first manifestation brings bursts of rosy spice and diaphanous flower petals before settling into its true form: a tatted lace doily holding the memory of creamed toffees and sugared meringues, all grounded in something as smooth and refined as the cream in a proper lady's tea. The spirits probably attend her séances just to watch her elaborate table-floating mechanisms with fond amusement - they're happy to play along with a hostess who goes to such lengths to entertain them.
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Imagine if lavender went sepulchral, if coumarin turned to ash, if oakmoss grew on graves - this is the shadow-self of a classic fougère. Though we don't know this one's building blocks, we know its intentions: the familiar herbal notes have been submerged in something black and viscous, like catching your reflection in a darkened window at midnight and watching it linger after you've walked away. Doppelgangers embody pure existential horror - they violate our most fundamental sense of uniqueness through their unheimlich theft of selfhood. This is what happens when your double claims your signature scent as its own, and worse, wears it with more authority than you ever did.
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This is the scent of buttery, crumbly, melty cookies with a base of bitter, oily walnuts and a rich, caramelized shortbread bottom. Baked in the steam and sap of an enchanted pine's resinous heart, they've taken on the deep forest's secrets - as if being born in the heart of an ancient conifer has imbued them with its balsamic soul. Wear this scent and imagine this treat while Chelsea Wolfe's haunting voice carries you far over misty mountains cold, where dark things sleep in hollow halls beneath the fells.
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This is for the 2024 version... In the bottle, I know exactly what this is: my mother-in-law's Jólakaka, all rum-soaked candied lemon peel and winter warmth. But on skin, it transforms into something far more mysterious - like a lemon icicle in one of those classic locked room mysteries where the detective finds nothing but an inexplicable puddle of water beside the body. Sharp and crystalline yet impossible to grasp, bright citrus frozen into a vanishing elegance, leaving you to question whether you really understood what you experienced at all.
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A soft swirl of fried dough, a scant sifting of powdered sugar, and a filling that melts all its elements - white chocolate, pistachio, and coconut - into one creamy, nutty reverie. Pair this with Lavender Kitchen Mouse for the perfect snack box curation at an all-night Wes Anderson movie marathon, where every treat is just slightly offbeat and endearingly peculiar.
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For a popcorn devotee - nay, a popcorn zealot who would happily survive on nothing but perfectly popped kernels for the rest of time, dental floss bills be damned - there is nothing quite like that first hit of toasty corn. Whether it's movie theater butter pooling in the ridges, nutritional yeast giving it that umami funk, or simply sea salt bringing out corn's inherent sweetness (and let's be clear: adding caramel, or indeed any form of sweetness to popcorn, is an unforgivable crime against both nature and the pure pleasure of popped corn). But here's something entirely unexpected: that perfect salty-corny base sprinkled with lavender's crisp, herbaceous brightness. Like finding fresh sprigs tucked between kernels, adding an aromatic sharpness that cuts through the savory warmth. It's a weird combination and probably shouldn't work - much like how finding a beady-eyed little mouse nibbling in your popcorn bowl as you reach for another handful would be pretty jarring - but somehow, this odd little creature has charmed its way into my heart.
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This is for the 2024 version... Sometimes, we run across a perfume that bears little resemblance to our expectations when it comes to its blueprint of notes. You wonder if maybe Such is the case with this atmosphere of bracing winter mint and bitter forest berries, scattered across a recently vacated featherbed. The fog from the hearth is dusky and strange, like herb-steeped milk in an abandoned bowl.
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The morning after a midnight revel, musty clove smoke and primordial resins mingling in the morning's murk and morass. When witches trade their broomsticks for bar stools - all that wild green magic gone deliciously seedy, forest herbs trampled underfoot in an alley behind a dive bar, sacred incense mingling with spilled spirits. Like knocking thrice on heaven's door and getting an answer from somewhere decidedly south.
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When I smelled this extremely robust coffee scent, I thought, "woweee, this smells like spicy Krampus coffee shop romantasy #booktok drama!" KRAMPUS'S FORBIDDEN GRIND #1 in Demon Romance (CW: coffee addiction, consensual soul bargaining) When artisanal coffee roaster Peppers McGee* accidentally summons Krampus with her darkest, most potent brew yet, she doesn't expect him to become her most demanding regular. The way he salaciously savors her honey-kissed foam and black pepper sprinkle makes her wonder if he's hunting for more than just the perfect cup. Between the scorching intensity of fresh-ground beans and the sweet heat of their growing attraction, Peppers must decide: keep playing it safe with her usual roasts, or risk it all on a blend that could consume her completely. "The coffee shop demon romance I never knew I needed" - BookTok "People are mad about the foam art scene but whatever" - GoodReads "Finally, a Krampus who knows his way around an espresso machine" - Literal Demons Book Club *Peppers McGee has a lot of adventures and shows up in a lot of perfume reviews!
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Through mist and gloaming, phantom hooves prowl and roam - a nutty-woody-resinous haunting that refuses to settle into silence. The wood whispers like morning fog, barely there; a subtle saltiness clings to the chestnut's echo, while grey amber broods beneath it all, murky as twilight in forgotten hollows. Like those ghostly horses that never quite reach their destination, these notes circle and hover, their spectral stampede more whisper than thunder, more shadow than storm.
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A single bloom emerges from craggy castle walls like a long-lost, long-gone friend impossibly appearing in morning light - its petals glowing rosy with the same translucent warmth as sunbeams through stained glass. The stone beneath holds secrets in its tea-stained shadows, cool and tannic as bitter centuries of words unsaid, feelings unreturned. Memory blooms here, unbearably delicate yet persistent and softly strangling as ivy, reaching through time toward a cup that was never filled.
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A possum-riding gnome rolls up in a car made of twigs and acorns. "Get in, loser," they grin, "we're having cider with the Green Man." What they pour is fresh-pressed and unsweetened, with something unexpectedly verdant lurking in its depths - like drinking autumn sunshine filtered through new spring leaves. The old magics are simple ones: apples and leaves, earth and air, each sip tasting of secrets whispered between the roots of ancient trees.
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She sits pristine in tissue paper, this porcelain child with cool milky skin and frost-pale curls, radiating a sweetness both powder-pure and glazed smooth - like marshmallows dissolving in winter air, like sugared pears turned to frost on the windowsill. Though she glows with innocence, you know better. That's why her tiny severed hand lives in your pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief, small and impossibly perfect, still trailing that haunting whisper of confectioner's sugar and cold cream. You tell yourself it's for safe-keeping, and perhaps that's true in a sense, but really, you're keeping yourself safe --from her gaze in the dark each night, as she watches you from high on her shelf, with a smile that's patient and sweet, and ever-so-slightly wrong.
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The red sun races through winter-stained snow like Dracula's eyes in that final chase - all grenadine turned lurid and glowing with the day's dying light. Why does this perfume also remind me of Japanese candy discovered in the back of an import shop, that distinctive musty-sweet chalkiness? Perhaps it's the way time and context reshape sweetness into something stranger - in sunset's crimson hour or years on a forgotten shelf, what was once simple pleasure takes on an elegant decay.
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I braced myself for the marzipan in this one; I didn't even realize I did it, but when I finally smelled what was actually happening in the scent, I realized I had been holding my breath. Though I love marzipan --adore it!-- both in scent and taste, it can overwhelm with the high-pitched peal of sugary sweetness. What I got instead was the deep, full, resonant, sonorous richness of barely sweet, dark, dark chocolate. The marzipan was a soft, trilling frill, fluttering at the edges. A duet between Darth Vader and Megan Mullally, where the Dark Side of the Force becomes velvet cocoa-dusted truffles and somehow makes Karen Walker's signature giggle feel like sugared almond stardust on snow.
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This is for the 2024 version... Like opening a forgotten storybook, where the forest's scent rises between pages tinged with the echo of vanilla - not the sharp bite of pine or wet earth, but something once growing but softly bespelled, slumbering and subdued. The musks feel antique rather than wild, a soft sepia tone rather than vivid green. It's what you might smell if you pressed your nose to an illustration of dark woods in a Victorian fairy tale, where the ink itself carries old magic and time-worn pages hold the memory of primordial forest and ancient greenwoods.
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This is for the 2024 version... Like preserves made from petals gathered too early for dew - a tender, translucent jelly that holds summer's sweetness suspended in light, the way an altar holds its morning offerings. Fresh figs split open like pale stars, lotus petals floating in milk-white bowls, and unburnt sticks of sandalwood waiting patiently - sweetness as a promise, like tomorrow's devotions already taking shape in the quiet hours before sunrise
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The Season of Ghosts opens with the candies that lived in grandmother's crystal dishes - the confectionary citrus sweetness of pillowy circus peanuts and tangy jellied oranges glowing like stained glass. But it's the turn it takes, the transformation that haunts: a slow bloom of golden musty glamour that hints at powder puffs and hat veils, of the musky, mossy, bronze grandeur of those perfumes that filled rooms with their presence and lingered for days in fur coats. It's finding faded sepia-tinted photos in an ornate old candy tin of your grandmother from that unmistakable era, each image radiating the warmth of a moment when time moved slower and youth seems older than our own age now, more weighted with substance and shadow.
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Found your local bog witch at the gallery fundraiser, trailing damp, earthy autumn leaves in her wake, each step releasing whispers of sweet autumnal decay and sour, earthy fungi. The wild things clean up nice but never quite lose their feral heart - you smell it in the manky, softly rotting vegetation that lingers beneath her gallery-appropriate veneer. This is autumn's sophisticated glow up, where decaying harvest and sweet-tempered spice mingle in the air. As the night deepens, something softer emerges: traces of leather and posh vanilla shampoo, like a well-worn jacket catching the scent of damp, moss-tendriled hair, adding an unexpected intimacy to all that earthen wisdom.
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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.
