ghoulnextdoor
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Everything posted by ghoulnextdoor
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The Pearl opens with an unexpected fruity-tarty-sweetness as if someone had sliced a perfectly ripe persimmon atop a bed of dried apricots. This initial surprise fades as the scent settles into something truer to its nature. It becomes the olfactory embodiment of iridescence - if the pearlescent interior of an abalone shell could release its shimmer as fragrance. There's something mineral and organic happening simultaneously here, like salt crystals forming on driftwood at low tide. From there, the scent unfolds in luminous ripples, revealing the strange not-quite-colors that exist inside shells - those blues that aren't blue, the pinks that aren't quite pink, the greens that seem to flicker in and out of existence depending on how the light hits. It smells exactly how that color-shifting, mysterious inner world of abalone looks - ethereal, ancient, and somehow both oceanic and otherworldly at once.
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Pink Fuzzy Handcuffs transforms what could be a cloying rose soliflore into something unexpectedly compelling - like stumbling across a street vendor in some fantastical night market who specializes in tanghulu made not from strawberries or cherries but from enormous, dewy rose petals. Each crystallized bloom catches the neon lights, creating jewel-toned fragments that shatter between your teeth with a satisfying crack. The sugar shell is a hyper-concentrated, almost electric pink that buzzes on your tongue and makes your fillings ache in a kaleidoscopic way. This is a gleeful, rosy, sugar-spun audacity.
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The Fourth Veil conjures a very specific, very private sanctuary of nostalgia for me. When I was very young, there was a moon-shaped waxen knick-knack... I think it was meant to be a room freshener of some sort, but it hung from a cord, and my mother was using it as a curtain pull. I used to hide behind the dusty, pleated fabric and drag my nails over it, scoring the smooth surface, collecting the sweet, powdery floral wax on my fingertips, which I would then run through my hair so that I could smell it all day. This scent echoes that pleasant waxiness and builds on it with something that smells like a wildflower and algae shampoo, sweet and brackish and slightly herbal, and a note that channels the olfactory version of arsenical wallpaper, verdant trompe-l'œil tendrils climbing over a musky base of translucent, chalky minerals that seem to trap light and transform it into something vaguely bioluminescent.
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The Dregs of a Bottle of Vanilla Extract (Discovered in the Mud)
ghoulnextdoor replied to doomsday_disco's topic in The Edward Gorey House
The Dregs of a Bottle of Vanilla Extract is what happens when you abandon your witchcraft supplies in the garden during a thunderstorm and return to find something unexpected has birthed itself. The remnants of Snake Oil's characteristic molasses-thick vanilla incense (this is not meant to be a Snake Oil spin-off as far as I know, but that's what I smell!) are here, but they've been washed with rain and submerged in soil until they've gone feral. That first breath is unmistakable petrichor - that post-storm mineral tang with its peculiar astringency that normally makes my nose wrinkle in distaste - but here it doesn't outstay its welcome. Instead, it transforms, pulling the sweetness of vanilla back from the brink of excess and anchoring it to something more elemental. What begins as two opposing forces—decadent vanilla luxury versus earthy, rain-soaked austerity—eventually melds into something that feels like sweet, damp secrets buried under fallen leaves, waiting patiently to be unearthed. -
Oftentimes, I get an idea in my head that one scent from these collections is DEFINITELY going to be my favorite, but I am often wrong because I'll get surprised by something else along the way. I think this time, my prediction was correct. I had a feeling I would love this slithery scent, and I do–it smells exactly like being mesmerized by an art nouveau femme fatale sorceress, just like the gal in Karl Alexander Wilke's artwork we see here on the label art. The eerie mortuary spice of carnations alongside Snake Oil's thick, heavily sugared incense makes for the most wicked avant-garde bohemian ghoulishness; I want to bathe in it, poison admirers with it, all the things. This is the fragrance equivalent of a Symbolist painting where a woman with serpentine hair reclines on crushed crimson velvet, her fingers stained with mysterious tinctures, the air around her heavy with exotic resins burning in ornate censers. It's a scent that would be at home in the boudoir of Salome after she's finished her dance of the seven veils, or wafting from the alabaster skin of Klimt's Judith as she cradles the severed head of Holofernes. Deep, rich, luxurious - an intoxicating carnation that's been corrupted by forbidden knowledge and loves every minute of it.
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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.