THE COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN ROLLS ALONG AGAIN . . .

 . . . . LIKE A RIPE PUMPKIN ROLLING DOWN A LEAF-COVERED STREET. 

Art by Ed McGuinness

Every year I swear I won't be up to participating and every year I manage to gather together my meager energies (assisted by my Strickfaden arcing whoosis) and once again participate.  Why?  Because I love Halloween so frikkin' much.  I've been doing this since 2007 when I first saw John Rozum's blog and found out that the Countdown to Halloween was indeed a thing. 

Yes, I am INDEED a Thing!

Somewhere in there, I think I missed a year and I was saddened by that.  An October can't go by without celebrating and the Countdown to Halloween is the place I love to shake my skeletons and scatter my cobwebs like confetti!  I thought I'd start this year's Countdown to Halloween with some horror reminiscences which, I hope, will give a little of the flavour of what this genre means to me.  My love for Halloween and horror goes back as long as I've been alive; I've talked about it here and the feelings that I get from everything spooky are comforting and cozy, not scary at all.  From my mother reading me Edgar Allan Poe before I could read to watching DR  ACULA for the first time down in my grandparents' basement where the cool darkness banished the summer heat and sun outside. 

The flickering images on that old black and white TV down there still flutter through my mind's eye like bat wings.  Another favourite story I asked my mother to read to me time and again before I had even gone to kindergarten was August Derleth's "The Lonesome Place" which still remains one of my absolute favourite horror short stories. 

This story appeared first in the horror anthology hardcover 'Hauntings' edited by Henry Matteo with beautiful artwork by Edward Gorey!  Or how about that time my cousin Loran and I sat on the floor of my bedroom and listened to that classic LP of Disney's 'The Haunted Mansion';

the long-playing record that starred a post-Opie, pre-Richie Ron Howard.  I listened to that record so many times I can still recall the 'Ghost Host's' speech:  "Where hinges creak in doorless chambers and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls.  Wherever candlelights flicker and the air is deathly still.  That is the time when ghosts are present; practicing their terror with ghoulish delight!" 

from HAUNTED LOVE #4 (1973)

Loran and I also read horror comics; she was particularly fond of HAUNTED LOVE from Charlton or THE DARK MANSION OF FORBIDDEN LOVE and THE WITCHING HOUR from DC. 

from THE WITCHING HOUR #1 (1969)

All those early-70's 'gothic' horror comics spawned by the popularity of gothic horror paperbacks as well as TV's soap DARK SHADOWS.  My childhood was filled with monsters -- in a GOOD way -- since the early to mid-1970's was still the waning heyday of the horror boom which started around 1958 when the 'Shock Theater' package of Universal (and others) horror films were first released to television and the dawn of the horror hosts was upon us

-- spearheaded by John Zacherley as Roland on Philadelphia's WCAU-TV which my teenaged mother used to watch all the time.  

This love of all things spooky of course followed me like a leg-dragging mummy to my older teenage years when I recall a particularly moody summer afternoon that still stands out in my mind from the time when VCR's and cable television were both still fairly new things.  Being off from school during summer break, I had the entire house to myself.  My father, who worked night shift, was asleep upstairs and my mother was working.  Quiet reigned in the house and the curtains on the windows could be drawn to block out that pesky bright sunlight and I could walk around as if I was in a haunted castle and make a bowl of bacon cheddar wagon wheels in the kitchen for lunch.  I had my top-loader VCR which I bought in 1982 (which cost over $800 in those days and I earned money by doing chores like painting the fence etc.).  I of course had been taping things offa the telly for several years by this point but I had never actually bought a VHS tape in a store.  This was also the days when a single VHS tape could cost over $100 but by this time the prices had come down considerably.  So I had recently purchased my very first 'store-bought' VHS tape from some store in the mall (probably Suncoast) and that videotape was NOSFERATU.  And this is the very tape I bought.

  

I think I had seen NOSFERATU before this but I can't be certain.  Either way, I sat down to watch it and when it was through, I switched to the telly and ended up on USA Network which was just about to air HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS. 

Now, the store-bought VHS of NOSFERATU has a lot of blank tape after the movie finished.  In fact, enough to record two movies on slow speed (SLP for you know-nothing-tots) and this is what I proceeded to do.  I put a piece of scotch tape over the empty tab on the videocassette and recorded HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS on the tape.  I know I had never seen THIS movie before and it was spectacular.  All the dull, draggy spots of the TV show were cut out so only vampire mayhem was left in the film.  It's a great watch!  Then, after this ended, USA Network was going to show IN SEARCH OF DRACULA; a documentary starring Christopher Lee. 

Are you kidding me?!?!?!  I had never seen THIS one either and there was just enough room on the videotape so I recorded this movie as well.  I had by this point never read the famous Raymond McNally & Radu Florescu IN SEARCH OF DRACULA book but I had for years repeatedly checked out of the library A NIGHT IN TRANSYLVANIA by Kurt Brokaw which covered the same territory

i.e. the story of Vlad Tepes aka Vlad the Impaler; his whole life story and the legends attached to him.  Subtitled "The Dracula Scrapbook", this book had tons of photographs and illustrations and I absolutely LOVED this book.  I would soon by myself my own hardcover copy.  But here was this documentary airing on USA Network during my atmospheric afternoon of horror that covered all the topics I had read over and over again in A NIGHT IN TRANSYLVANIA ("To Be Read Only At Night" as the cover blurb demands) as well as folklore of vampires in the Balkans and worldwide plus the cinematic depictions of Dracula and his vampire kith and kin. 

Of course, I loved NOSFERATU and the silence of the movie paired with the spooky atmosphere dripping from every frame made it an instant favorite.  Thus also for HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS which to this day is a fave horror movie for me; not only because it was so good, action packed and gothically gory but also because I cannot think about the movie without thinking of this very special afternoon.  The same goes for IN SEARCH OF DRACULA; I get this certain feeling (which I guess only lovers of horror can understand) which is like a soft, warm blanket wrapped around me on a cold, winter's night every time I push play on IN SEARCH OF DRACULA.  The melifluous tones of Christopher Lee don't hurt either!  I'm sure all horror fans have similar stories of when the bony finger of horror touched our hearts and made us who we are for a lifetime:  creatures of the night!

And as a side note, I'd like to dedicate this year's Countdown to Halloween to my mother Sandy who is currently battling cancer.  We have high hopes that she will make a full recovery but it's been rough since the beginning of August.  Before I even began kindergarten, it was my mother who taught me how to read -- not with "See Spot Run" but with Edgar Allan Poe poems and the August Derleth short story "The Lonesome Place".  A favourite of lil me was Poe's "The Bells" -- all that tintinabullation and all!  Sure, there was also Dr. Seuss' "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" but even the Grover/Sesame Street book she read to me was "THE MONSTER AT THE END OF THIS BOOK".  My love of horror and all things spooky first and foremost originate with her.  I love you, Mom!