Snowman Shivers: Scary Snowman Tales

Dusting off the Snow: Behind the Shivers

If you don’t like getting the story behind the story or to “see the strings” behind the play and absolutely never watch the special features on a DVD where you can listen to commentary by the director, actors, writers, etc., then I suggest that you stop here.  I doubt you’d enjoy what is about to come.  But I do want to thank you for coming this far with me.  I hope that you enjoyed your experience and didn’t mind the fun chilly shivers of these two snowman tales and are curious to check out more of my work. I have several other short stories and a few books available in ebook format. ONE HAND SCREAMING, for example, is a collection of short fiction which also includes these two tales.

However, if you’re one who is willing to walk along with the author and listen to some of the details behind the stories and poems that appear in this collection, then come on with me for a brief jaunt.  There’s a beautiful blanket of freshly fallen snow on the ground, and the full moon’s light is casting a beautiful magical glow. Grab your coat, hat and mitts. Let me bend your ear for a few minutes more.

Just do me a favour and keep your eyes out for any of those silent snowy sentinels we might pass, would you?

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That Old Silk Hat They Found

First published in Strange Wonderland #1, March 1997

Ides of March

First published in ONE HAND SCREAMING, October 2004

“THAT OLD Silk Hat They Found” is one of those tales that had been inspired entirely by a previously written story of mine:  “Ides of March”.  It was in the early 1990’s when I was living in Ottawa and I heard a radio news blurb about a man somewhere in the southern U.S. who’d been shot by someone who proceeded to steal his snowman. 

It was a quick, short news update, but it fascinated me.

I wondered what kind of a person would shoot another person to steal a snowman.

And then it came to me:  a person who thought perhaps, that by stealing the snowman and bringing them north to a colder climate, he could help them escape spring and what would be certain death. 

It would kind of be like an environmentalist or animal lover risking his life to save a helpless baby seal from needless slaughter.

But that still wasn’t enough, I felt, to make it really interesting. So the idea continued to stay warm on a back burner.

A few days later, another idea occurred to me. 

What if the “man” who stole the snowman was actually a snowman himself – on a mission to save as many of his kind as possible? 

I wrote the story and called it “Ides of March” (March 15th being a date not only thought of as a type of literary D-Day thanks to the warning given to Julius Caesar, but also a time when spring-type weather is likely to intensify – particularly back in the 1990’s in Ottawa, which also experienced the type of real winters that I enjoyed in the Sudbury region).

This story was told from the point of view of a middle-aged man doing his taxes.  The tale starts as he witnesses, through the window, two burly men in long jackets shoving at the neighbour’s kid and stealing his snowman.  I liked the tale, but not enough.  I wrote it and only half heartedly sent it out to a few markets, then relegated it to my own personal slush pile (yes, in this case the pun is completely intended).

After a short period of time I considered re-telling one of the premises of the tale.

The thought of associating spring with The Apocalypse was still intriguing to me; this time, however, I did it from the snowman’s point of view.