Today most of America seems to have forgotten that the venerable jack-o'-lantern is not only an important symbol of Halloween, but also of Thanksgiving. As a kid this icon of Thanksgiving was a decoration you would see in people's yards throughout October and November; through most of autumn. Today you don't see it as much, with folks settling for simple uncarved pumpkins on the steps on the porch, or on bales of hay. I bring this up only because I'd like to see a return to the pumpkin-headed scarecrows staying around for more than one holiday. I'm keeping my jack-o'-lanterns out in the yard and on the porch until the day after Thanksgiving. It's time we keep the pumpkin-head scarecrow around all fall. This is a perfect way to repurpose your jacks into November, instead of letting them get tossed by some teenagers post-All Hollows Eve! However, there is something to be said for rotting jack-o'-lanterns after Halloween that just screams cool. Aging jacks ...

Diagnosis Murder is one of my favorite snuggle beside the fire nostalgia trips to enjoy once in a while, like Murder, She Wrote or Matlock . It has that cozy mystery vibe and it's set at the perfect era - i.e., late 1980s through the 1990s. Actually I think DM ended in the early 2000s... But, anyway. The episode (S2 E13) The Bela Lugosi Blues (1995) was one of the first episodes I watched that turned me on to the show, and that's purely for the vampire story. Plus, Julie Carmen plays the vampire antagonist! Yes, Jerry Dandridge's sister, Regina! Julie plays the undead Moriah Thomas, who is killing most of LA's eligible bachelor's, and Jack could be next! Usually Diagnosis Murder plays things fair and straight, dispelling any notions of fantasy before the shows climax, but with this episode the show leans into the supernatural and doesn't fix it with a bend towards reality. Is Mark hallucinating, high with fever, or dreaming?? None of the above! Th...

  Happy Halloween everybody! I hope it's spooky and fun for all of you! Enjoy this last great day of Halloweentober! Personally, I'm carving one final jack-o-lantern tonight, watching Hocus Pocus, eating pumpkin pie and making some Barmbrack bread! I'll be counting down to next Halloweentober as of tomorrow... I read The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury. The first time I read this book, I didn't know what to make of it. But now, I get it. I think it's a beautiful book about life and death, and Halloween. I think I'd read it again one day. It's amazing how, with each Halloween, we add another day - another month - of celebrations to remember and hold near and dear. This holiday gets more special with each passing year, I suppose, because I'm older and wiser and take something from this celebration each time, even as I rewatch the same movies or TV shows or decorate with the same decorations. But it's in the air of autumn itself, and the leaves as they c...

 T and I spent the day off together watching Hysteria on Peacock and carving pumpkins. I do not like to brag, because I do not have a single skill to speak of, but I carved a big boy of a jolly pumpkin yesterday, and I'm proud of this guy. He is awesome. He weighed, sans gutting, about 40 pounds! This is the largest pumpkin I have ever picked up. I love him heartily.

Freaky. Or dark Freaky Friday. I just watched this on Peacock tonight for the first time. This is a cool little gem to find for Halloween viewing. Vince Vaughn was really good in this role too, as were most of the characters. I was surprised at how despicable the one gay character was. Isaac was outed as a bigot and quite rapey in the first five minutes the character was on screen. And I think Vince Vaughn's Blissfield Butcher was actually a vampire. Or maybe in another draft this serial killer was supposed to be a vampire? There is a lot of vampire lore going on in the plot of the film. First clue: when Booker, Millie's crush and football star, cuts his finger in shop class, the killer in Millie's body sucks the blood from his finger. Clue two: the killer, now back in his Vince Vaughn body, takes five gunshots to the chest during the film's climax. He supposedly dies in the ambulance but the camera pans to his heart monitor fallen off his finger. But, we see that... Cl...

Murder, She Wrote I could go over the more Halloween-adjacent episodes, such as The Witch's Curse (S8 E12), or Night of the Headless Horseman (S3 E11), or one of my favorites, the obligatory vampire episode The Legacy of the Borbey House (S10 E3), but I thought it more appropriate to discuss the overarching plot of the show in its entirety, and that is that Jessica Fletcher is in Hell!!! She has to be in her own private hell. How else do you explain that nearly every single person or acquaintance Jessica knows, every family member or movie star or who the hell ever she knows gets involved in a murder or is murdered? Every place Jess visits whether for vacation or to help a friend in need invariably turns into a whodunit. I get it, the show wouldn't be very entertaining without the murder in Murder, She Wrote. But, if one human must entertain all that death, then surely you would be in hell, either mental or literal. She is either A., killing people and ingeniously setting up ot...

The 3rd annual Dolan Family pumpkin carving contest. This year a bunch of new family jumped into the carving fun.

My extended reading for this Halloweentober starts with this pile right here: Halloween anthologies are some of my favorite books to read during Halloween. Dozens of short stories to enjoy from just a couple of books.  The End of Summer: 13 Tales of Halloween  has one particular story that has quickly become my favorite. It revolves around a niece spending Halloween with her aunt and uncle who live on a farm, and all seems quaint and cozy, until shit gets dark! Which it does rather quickly and unexpectedly. Highly recommend this book for autumn reading. And last Halloween I read Cameron Chaney's Autumncrow, one of my favorite Halloween anthologies I've ever read. It was an absolute pleasure, and Fresh Hell is Cameron's first full story in the town of Autumncrow, and something I am very happy to get into. These are books I will read all autumn season long and not just until Halloween. As long as there are pumpkins on porches and co...

Nosferatu The Vampire. Warner Herzog's reimagining of Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula. This movie is incredibly unsettling. This very well may be the most intriguing, yet scary, vampire film I've ever watched. I added this movie to my collection thanks to Scream Factory. This is certainly a movie to revisit on dark and dreary weather. The entire film, the setting to the characters, makes me feel icky for lack of a better word. The movie opens with enchanting, haunting music over horrifying corpses and dramatic slow-motion cinematography that is so unsettling. The character of Renfield may be one of the most, again to use this word for lack of a better one, unsettling of the character I have ever seen in a film. In all the hundreds of movies I have watched over 40 years, this one character makes my skin crawl and my soul want to leap from my body and hide in the shadows. He's a horrific laughing little man and I'd prefer never to see him ever again to be honest w...

Vampires, the immortal creatures of the night, are the first monsters I can remember being afraid of but also endlessly infatuated with. And what's Halloweentober without the undead?! After all, if it wasn't for vampires I probably never would have developed such a fondness for Halloween in the first place... The 1980s especially hosted a smorgasbord of the undead for me to, uh, sink my teeth into. From the hilarious to the horrific, the vampire films of my childhood were the things that kept me up at night. I was blessed with having my own television in my bedroom at an early age, with parents who were kind enough to respect my privacy and leave me alone when the door was shut. So staying up to watch vampire flicks until dawn was quite normal for me in adolescence. Once Bitten was one the first I can remember staying up late for and was Jim Carrey's movie introduction to me years before In Living Color debuted on Fox in 1990. Jim's affable virgin Mark Kendall, hounded...