MIST0226/ZII-DEDM1

 Mistigram: this spooky, Ringu-esque #ANSIart promo for #DeadModemSociety BBS was drawn by Zeus II and included in last month's unthemed new MIST0226 artpack collection.

MIST1025/LITTLEBITSPACE-ASCII-HEAD

 Mistigram: this elegant #textmode #skull, given rather more texture through use of a remapped #ASCIIart font than the ANSI bonehead it appeared alongside in last month's spooky MIST1025 artpack collection, is of course the handiwork of @littlebitspace.

MIST1024/LITTLEBITSPACE-THE_LAST_GAMBIT

 Mistigram: this #PETSCII illustration by @littlebitspace, 'The Last Gambit', presents an existential scene, all of us kings in our games of #chess, all doomed to #checkmate. This piece was included in the spooky MIST1024 artpack collection released one year ago.

MIST1022/LITTLEBITSPACE-COMPOSITION

Mistigram: one person's composition is another tribunal's evidence of war crimes.  This artfully-arranged #PETSCII pyramid of human skulls is the handiwork of @littlebitspace, resonant with his deck of skeletal Tarot cards.  It was included in the spooky MIST1022 artpack.
 

MIST0625/LITTLEBITSPACE-CASTLEHEAD

 Mistigram: you may recall our sharing of @littlebitspace's "Castle Kit" font a bit over a week ago. As it turns out, castles are not the only thing you can draw in #textmode with its collection of remapped #PETSCII glyphs, and I rather suspect that drawing a #skull is the artist's personal "Hello World" for any new creative environment. From the recent unthemed MIST0625 artpack collection, we give you: Castlehead.

ADVENT23/25_DEC23

 Mistigram: for this date in last year's ADVENT23 #AdventCalendar, @littlebitspace drew a magnificent and chilling #blockASCII portrait of the late Jolly Old St. Nick, apparently reduced to nowt but bones and beard following his magical night's impossible exertions.

ADVENT23/21_DEC23

 Mistigram: with aid of a microscope, @littlebitspace conducted some #blockASCII research investigating just why snowflakes are so cold in this screen from today's date in last year's ADVENT23 #AdventCalendar.  His report back: be very glad they are not warm.

MIST1024/LITTLEBITSPACE-INTERPLANETARY

 Mistigram: this #textmode art screen by @littlebitspace, "Interplanetary", figured prominently in last month's spooky MIST1024 artpack collection, because... wtf! So there's a cosmic conjunction of celestial spheres, fine! But what's up with the colossal, planet-sized skull? Is there an immense headless torso somewhere out there in orbit around Jupiter? Does the skull have a molten core, an atmosphere even? Every answer opens the door to weirder questions.

LITTLEBITSPACE-SKULL_MASK

 Mistigram: you can practically feel the texture of old dry bone beneath your fingertips looking at this custom #PETSCII illustration of a #skull by @littlebitspace. What's with the glyph drawn on its forehead? And why is it described as a "mask"? Some questions are better left unanswered. This piece was included in the spooky new MIST1024 artpack collection.

MIST1024/ATONALOSPREY-SKULL_IN_THE_SAND

 

Mistigram: is it #teletext? Is it #ASCIIart? Yes. I'll tell you what it is: #vanitas. This #skull (in the sand, as the screen's title helpfully reminds us) is the handiwork of @atonalosprey (what did he do with the rest of the guy? You don't wanna know!), and was included in the spooky new MIST1024 artpack collection.

MIST1024/FILE_ID.DIZ

Mistigram: just in time for #Halloween, here comes the spooky new MIST1024 artpack collection full of seasonal computer art on dark themes.  Browse it on 16colo.rs or download it for local enjoyment on your device.

Its FILE_ID.DIZ illustration pictured here, "Silent Scream", recently won its creator littlebitspace first place in the IBM PC #ASCIIART compo at the Flashparty demoparty.

MIST1022/LITTLEBITSPACE-PLANT_AND_SKULL

 Mistigram: this skullish monochrome #PETSCII exploration of the cycle of death and rebirth is unsurprisingly the handiwork of @littlebitspace and was included in the spooky MIST1022 artpack collection released two years ago this month.

MIST1023/ATONALOSPREY-HAMLET

 Mistigram: "Alas, poor #Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." You may recall this boney character from Act 5 Scene 1 of William Shakespeare's #Hamlet. His remains were illustrated in #teletext by @AtonalOsprey and included in last year's spooky MIST1023 artpack collection.

MIST1023/LITTLEBITSPACE-ʜTɒɘD.PNG

 Mistigram: this deathly #textmode #ambigram was drawn by @littlebitspace and included in last year's spooky MIST1023 artpack collection.

MIST0424/LITTLEBITSPACE-MARILYN2

 Mistigram: whatever your favorite iconic subject, it makes for an excellent fit in #AndyWarhol's serially repetitive, garishly tinted #popart style.  @littlebitspace here shares with us textmode illustrations of skulls (possibly current portraits of Marilyn Monroe!) using the #PETSCII character set.  This piece was included in the recent fine art-themed MIST0424 artpack collection.

MIST1022/DW-SKULL-DIRTY_TEETH

Mistigram: I don't know if this #pirate #skull is a colleague of the Ghost Pirate LeChuck but if not they're definitely at least collegues in the same industry! This #ANSIart screen was adapted from a perler bead pattern (the original has a bit more seaweed in the background) by DW of Dark Systems BBS and was included in the MIST1022 artpack collection released one year ago this month.

[gallery]
What do you mean Hallowe'en is over? I’m not done sharing the spooky, monstrous computer artwork from the MIST1014 artpack we just released! Admit it, you still have a Jack ‘o Lantern on your front steps, so you should still be of a mind to appreciate our final lingering hauntings. (And then there’s Whazzit’s amazing accordion-playing ANSI skeleton animation, I can’t even fit that in here – but it’s starkly chilling, in a profoundly ridiculous way!)

We open with Sara Ciantar’s “Red Sky At Morning”, the traditional omen of foreboding to oceanbound sailors. I really appreciated her pixelart aesthetic, and only moreso when it was revealed that she had merely taken a photograph through a screen door. To its right, a piece of PETSCII – the textmode of the Commodore 64 – by its rock star artist Raquel Meyers. (It has a name, but I have tentatively given it a new one: “Dead Kids of Instagram.”) Do look up Raquel, as she is curently crowdfunding to support similar work on a similar theme – textmode illustrations of the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.

Next is a mean little skull logo by Nail that you might have missed in the artpack proper, hiding out at the bottom as the footer illustration to the pack’s infofile.

On the following line is Freelance Pete’s detailed take on the nuclear family’s suburban fantasy, followed by another early-'90s Amiga pixelart piece from the portfolio of $too.

Onward, we get two paintings, the first by Mythical Man – which seems ominous but not too grim until you look a little more carefully at the running man burning in the background – the other “Heart Goes Here” by Jenn Ashton. All the skulls nonwithstanding, this painting demonstrates that there’s nothing necessarily creepy about mere bones… after all, as the pithy quote has it: “You’re a ghost driving a meat coated skeleton made from stardust, what do you have to be scared of?”

This (small-e) eerie gallery ends with the fabulous header to our memberlist, a networked PabloDraw ANSI art session jointly drawn by numerous contributors, notably the logo by the bothersomely talented enzO of Blocktronics (not just a fabulous letter M, also note the spooky skulls beneath it – sorry, Jenn, maybe the skull is just the scariest bone in the body), followed by a menacing Frankenstein’s monster sketched out by Sudden Death, with contributions from Whazzit and Sephiroth.

OK, that’s almost it for the spooky stuff – next time I’ll see if I can’t squeeze in some spooky tunes and make Tumblr sing!