This month, Halloweentober, has been fantastic, fun, wonderful and just lovely. Without doubt Halloween, and October in general, have become my favorite time/holiday. I'm a lifelong Halloween fan but as I get older my love for this ancient holiday just continues to grow. I spent nearly every evening reading Halloween-centric books or watching movies or TV shows about All Hollow's Eve. On more than one occasion I carved pumpkins into traditional jack-o'-lanterns to ward off evil spirits. I spent time fashioning a rustic witches broom from a fallen branch from the back yard tree. I spent some time writing my Halloween short stories notes. Eventually I'll have to stop writing notes and begin the stories themselves. Ideally, October would have been the perfect time, so it will probably be another 10 or 11 months before I start. I read Cameron Chaney's Autumncrow . It is such a warm and cozy ode to Halloween, and I was wishing it was longer. Autumncrow is the living embo...

I just wanted to share a commercial that came out last Halloween season from Unicef. Now the big U and Halloween have gone hand-in-hand together for over 70 years helping kids with fresh water and food. Last year they had their annual Halloween commercial that just is the coolest, most atmospheric one to date. I absolutely love it. The 30-sec film is practically the most Halloween commercial ever, at least in the days of Covid. It is this small, quick package of wonderful, and the message is a good one, too. It features a pair of really cool blow mold ghosts, some jack-o'-lanterns, a scarecrow that I think winks at me, and a TV stuck on a dead channel. It's a shame that those cute little orange milk cartons for collecting quarters are no longer a thing, but it appears that the carton has given way to a digital giving experience via the QR code above. Here's the video below from their YouTube channel. It's a favorite of mine, and I've been watching it this Halloweent...

I found WNUF Halloween Special only after it made the jump to bluray, thanks to boutique label Terror Vision. Upon my first viewing I was enthralled . I may have been hypnotized with magical nostalgia (I use that word a lot) as I sort of drifted off (but not dozed off) into this subconscious trip back in time, or so I imagined. The film is a supposed found-footage tape of fictional news station WNUF of a Halloween Special produced in 1987. It follows Frank Stewart as he visits the purportedly haunted Webber House. The brilliance of this film is the authenticity with which it appears to be a product of the '80s. 2nd slipcover option And so as I watched the film, that stupor had set in, as I was half-tired, and my brain was fooled into comfortable fantasy. The commercials felt so real, like half-forgotten moments of long lost life. Or maybe a tape ejected from one VHS dimension into an adjacent dimension here. I had begun to believe that this was indeed a tape that had been found, an...

The O's are in the playoffs, fresh off winning the AL East. They've just a season that consistently had me pinching myself. But yes, it was all real, and they play the Rangers here at home today. Halloween has taken a huge truck stop-after-chili dinner dump all over our home. Jack-o-lanterns sit on every table and mantle and sit aglow in warm candlelight every night. This time of year just makes me happy. It's rather simple: autumn, Halloween, horror movies and ghost stories, lots of candy and pie, the chill in the air, it all makes for the most wonderful time of year. I'm currently reading Autumncrow by Cameron Chaney. So far it's better than anticipated. I'm on vacation in a few days, and I plan on writing my Halloween short stories, and overdosing on Reese Cups and slasher films. I'll try to make time to walk Betty Boxer. Another new addiction is watching 1980s and 1990s Halloween commercials. I've got a playlist on YT that's into 6-hours. And I j...

  31 Days of Halloween is here. Tonight we had our 2nd annual family jack-o'-lantern cutting contest where we were all winners. Above is my offering to the Halloween spirits. I managed to carve 2 jacks this season. Next year I'm going big and bold, and attempting 31 jack-o'-lanterns, one for each day of Halloweentober! Where am I going to put them all, you ask? EVERYWHERE. I may drop them off at unsuspecting neighbors homes, lit of course. Staring at their door, I'll ring their doorbell and run off. Little adoptable jack-o'-lanterns in need of a new home. This is the lineup. It was a solid year for jack-o'-lanterns this year at the House of Dolan. Tonight we watched The Midnight Hour on DVD. The Anchor Bay DVD is long, long OOP. I settled for the Spanish DVD years ago, which used the old VHS cover art. Transfer is not too bad. I pray annually for a Blu-ray release. T fell asleep. I woke her up and told her to go upstairs to bed. She was not amused. Ad from my 1...

I have an insane amount of love for this Halloween flick. Like way more than you think I mean when I say an insane amount. Like the other day, someone asked me which fictional universe would I want to live in and without hesitation I yelled Hocus Pocus Salem! with food still in my mouth... As nostalgia is a bigger part of my life now than at any other point in my life, the 1993 setting is a banger here. The film, when compared to contemporary Halloween films, is innocence at its core. The film has no agenda other than to make you feel that Halloween is the greatest night in America one night (or month in my case) a year. Only half of my copies... sigh Halloweentober usually begins every year the same for us around here, and that's with watching The Pocus . This year was the 30th anniversary *coff! (just shot coffee out of my nose and mouth) and I don't know how that happened. Like many of fans of this film, I spent most of my time watching this on Fox's 13 Nights of Hallow...