T and I waited for autumn to drop before watching this sequel. The first film is a cute, lovable Halloween monster movie. The characters are sweet and likable. The monster - Crom - looks like a hanging Halloween decoration, and that's a big part of its appeal. So when the Kickstarter for the sequel popped up I wasted no time in securing my part in the film. My copy arrived with a poster, and a small floating skull-spirit from the film in his own little Wings Chinese carton! Rob York, the director and producer, even included a time-stamped card when "your" ghost pops up. We ordered sweet and sour chicken w/white rice, watched the film and waited for the credits to roll and for my name to appear. It was a lot of fun, and I am stoked to play some (very) small part in bringing it to life. The movie itself... The movie is interesting. In a good way. The sequel has a much more serious tone than the first. It's missing that charm and earne...

I found a local creator on Instagram who makes these amazing figures, box an all. He has a host of other figures in his catalog, but the ones I am most excited for are the Trimper's figures, based creatively on the OC dark ride. The first one I've picked up is the Ghoul. He is a gorgeous fella, all 12" inches of him! From what I've learned so far from chatting with the Toy Fiend online is that he makes these figures with pre-existing parts and then customizes them and puts them in their own packaging (which I must say is every bit as gorgeous as the figures themselves). He also has these "Boogie Monsters" versions of the Trimper guys, the Vampire, the Werewolf, and the Ghoul in their garish 1970s style feather boa and Jim Morrison pants. There is also the Dark Ride Skeleton, whom I was most excited for, but was sold before the characters even made it online. So as of now I have a standing order for the rest of t...

My girlfriend just took me for a nice day trip to the ocean. Or oceans, would be more specific. Well beaches, same ocean. Lol anyway... We headed down to Ocean City, Maryland first, to visit Trimper's Haunted House. This dark ride has been here on the boardwalk for a long time, since 1964! I think the first time I rode it was in 1991. Throughout the years I kinda laughed at the Haunted House, thinking it was something strange and old, a relic of the '70s or '80s! But today, that is precisely what makes these two rides so special! They are lovingly maintained for generations and remain a testament to how much fun these family-friendly dark rides are! Inside the House one of the props turned out to be a human who scared the crap out of both of us. After that, T was done, eyes pulled down behind her baseball cap. One thing I loved about this place was that it had it's own gift shop, called Ghoulish Things. This place was crammed with cool stuff.  ...

Jake Kelly is launching what is perhaps the most wonderful Halloween book I have ever seen. This pre-order is called Haunted House: American Haunted House Advertisements of the 1970s and 1980s . I found his book on Instagram and I thank God I did. I would have been heartbroken if I had missed it. This is so right up my alley that it's a wonder I didn't produce it myself. Seriously, this is the stuff that keeps me up on the internet well past the midnight hour, just looking for cool local Halloween stuff from across this great nation... As a kid in the '80s, when we would eat at McDonald's in October they would have these tray sheets, and I would just stare at all of the black and white Halloween ads there. I was captivated. One of my favorites was the Gray Charles Haunted House directly across the street from our McDs. It was such a cool ad with just a skeleton on it. But it kept my attention. Preordered! And it should arrive before Halloween 2026! Get your copy here . ...

Witches. They are one of my favorite icons of Halloween culture. Jack-o'-lanterns, vampires, ghosts, they are all a part of this wonderful holiday filled with myth and legend that's been around for hundreds of years. Witches are old! Their lore goes back to around the time Rome ruled the world. As for the broomstick-riding witch, well that's still quite old, but not that old. Le Bafana, also Italian, is not a witch, though you'd be forgiven for thinking her one. I think she's even dubbed the Christmas witch, but she is more of a folklore legend. Bafana is not evil; in fact, she was invited by the Magi, who were lost, to walk with them to see the baby Jesus. She is an old crone with a broom, and she sweeps the house as an allegory for sweeping away the old problems and troubles of the past year. Italy has no Santa Clause for Christmas, and so Bafana is there Christmas herald. And while she looks like a textbook witch, she is far from the evil witch we know in America...

In the late 1980s Eastpoint Mall had these large, square brick water fountains that anchored each corner. I remember sitting on the edge, the air-conditioned bricks cool on my bare legs, and staring into the glittering pool of wasted pocket change and dreams. I would ask my mom for a penny to toss in, after making a secret wish. And then another. It was addictive, once I learned all you had to do to get whatever my heart desired was to toss a penny into the fountain! This has been a memory that has stayed with me since that first wish. It was just announced, and confirmed, that at the end of August 2026 Eastpoint Mall would shut down forever. The mall is already a shadow of its former self. All the good stores have long ago left--most went out of business--but now it will permanently close and become razed soon. A piece of Dundalk history and legend will be erased from time and space like so much of the town lately...

That word, Nostalgia. It used to signal comfort food of the soul for me personally. Today, that word, Nostalgia, ensures depression, and longing for a home I can never return to. The word, nostalgia , has become a neurosis, triggered by things I love and used for escape from the world. My brain's inability to comprehend time on such a large scale, such as decades that have passed in what felt like years, has provided me with an unwelcome loneliness. We used to have warm, yellow street lamps, and now we have these cold, lifeless, sterile white LED street lamps on every corner. The differences are stark, and we have lost something with the "upgrade" to cost-effective LEDs. I am having difficulties describing how awful the change has been. The feeling of home, once again, was in the warmth of those old sodium vapor lamps and now our neighborhoods are lit with hospital lights. These bright lights cut straight through to my soul while on my evening summer walks. The Dundalk I ...

In 1988 or 1989 I walked into a comic book shop for the first time with my parttime friend and parttime nemesis Mike Shupe. Mindbridge was a tight and narrow LCS, with a counter on the right as you walked inside. On the left were racks of new issues, and there I picked up my first comic book, Detective Comics #587 August 1998. Norm Breyfogle's art caught my eye and wouldn't give it back. Batman, standing in the rain in the middle of an alley, cape billowing with lightning streaking through the sky, became my favorite superhero in the instant I picked the issue up. Also on the wall also sat back issues of The Dark Knight Returns , Batman Year One , and Batman Arkham Asylum, A Serious House on Serious Earth . I could tell immediately all of these books were above my pay grade. I hated Frank Miller's art on the Dark Knight. It would take decades for me to fall in love with that book. At this point in my 10 or 11 years on Earth I preferred the comic book-y style of art of Norm...

They say you can't go home again. I've become haunted by this proverb. In my case I can go home again. Dundalk, MD is home, it's where I grew up. But it no longer feels like home. I don't live in Dundalk anymore, but I live close enough that I can visit when I get the itch to return to something familiar. Most of the food joints I ate at while growing up are long gone. The first McDonald's I worked at on Wise Avenue--just across the street from my house--before my senior year in high school (summer 1995) was razed and rebuilt. Now, it's a box, an ugly box with no soul or character that is utterly unwelcoming. In the '80s and '90s the mansard-roof McDonald's restaurant wanted families to stay in and eat; but today, they practically demand you get your food and promptly leave. They don't want you there. In fact, they'd appreciate if you use the drive-thru, or better yet, get it delivered for another 5 bucks and just stay home altogether. Wise A...

Times are rough the world over. Here in the States, they (MSM, YouTubers, politicians) tell us that times are really bad today. That may be true for certain families, certain folks. I don't see it like they show it, thank God, but then I'm just a dude making less than the national average annually, so I tend to keep a low profile. I try to remain optimistic, and I don't spend a lot. But if you open your ears, you can hear the plight all around you. People all over this great nation of ours are discussing the world falling apart daily. You know what can help us all? Christmas! Christmas can and will help us get through it, and together. This wonderful holiday brings us together with family and friends and strangers alike and instills in us all that ubiquitously American trait of giving. Through the act of giving we can find joy in sacrifice and altruism, looking out for our neighbors and one another. And a lot of us do not give to get brownie points with the big man in the c...

I finally found, in the wild no less, the vinyl I've once and future owned, the Halloween sounds album from my childhood. I listened to Sounds to Make You Shiver (1974) quite a bit in Octobers of yore. Yore being the equivalent of approximately 36, 37 Octobers. Yeah, 10-year-old me would sit beside the stereo late at night when my parents were asleep and I would spin this up, fantasizing I was a vampire. These were the nights of the Gray Charles Haunted House at the old North Point Police Precinct 12. The police had the north side of the building while the Recreation Center had the south side. I looked forward to that Haunted House every year. And before and after going to the Haunted House I would play this record on our Kenwood turntable to get psyched! I also had to grab this all-Halloween episodes Roseanne DVD. I have the complete show on DVD from Mill Creek, but to have all of the Halloween eps on one disc was just too good to pass up! This was something I've ...