A decaying relic, kept in a mockery of life by foul alchemy and a perpetual state of rage born of ancient esoteric grudges? Oh, he’ll do just fine in these parts. Recommended listening: More regional ghosts.

It’s not as if things could get any worse out there, so why not? Recommended listening:

Vampires and werewolves may be frightful, but they lack the gnawing existential elan of the terrors of parenthood. Besides all the anxieties about perils which might afflict your offspring, there are more subtle chills — namely the recurring fits of angst over whether the example you’ve tried to set or lessons you’ve tried to impart […]

The unconvincing gorilla suit was a staple of stage and screen dating back to at least the late 19th Century. Need an exotic menace for an old dark house? Someone to send a slapstick ensemble into a state of comedic terror? A zany bit of zest for a struggling sitcom? Just throw someone with the […]

During the pandemic years, I took a very holistic and intensive approach to Spooky Month. Having a surfeit of time to kill, I filled with with a robust roster of appropriately themed movies, TV shows, videogames, comics, prose, and old time radio shows. It was a glorious time to discover, re-discover, revisit, and generally wallow […]

As I mentioned in my last post before settling back into hiatus, one of my joys of the pandemic era experience was discovering the Model 2 emulator, coded to run games made for Sega’s (surprise, surprise) Model 2 hardware. While I game had originally wanted to play — Virtual On — was tangled up in […]

(excerpts from Van Nielsen’s Field Notes on Prime-Time Draculas) Rollin Handula: Master of disguise, strong affinity towards the moon. Daughter also a vampire of minor reknown. Won an Oscar for his poignant portrayal of another elderly ailing Dracula. Swanula: Do not be fooled by the diminutive stature!!! Has made multiple demonic pacts with terrifying entities […]

“The Nice Price” was a late 1970s branding initiative by CBS Records, where perennial backcatalog faves got badged and repriced as midbudget offerings. Nearly all of my old Clash tapes and CDs sported the sticker when I bought them. The copy of Combat Rock that Maura scored for me somewhere still has its one on […]

This is the season when dead things spring back to a horrid semblance of life, right? Recommended listening: The heavy, heavy monster sound.

…and so we reach the final movement of this year’s danse macabre. It was a bit skeletal as far as content went, but my real purpose was to see if I still had it in me to stick to a daily schedule, even if only for a month. I apparently do, though I have no […]