The Legend of the Scarecrow - A ShellHawk's Nest Halloween Tradition

 

A heartwarming tale of a sweet little scarecrow. Click on the pic for video.

My Scary Bookshelf

Click on the pic for the collection of spooky stories!

The Grandson: A book?

The Grandfather: That's right. When I was your age, television was called books.

I'm sure The Grandfather didn't mean a collection of horror stories, but, well, it seemed like a good quote for reminding you of all the good Hallowe'en and horror books out there!

I share My Scary Bookshelf yearly, so folks have a chance to get something they may have forgotten about since the previous Hallowe'en month. After all, this is the season to curl up with a nice cuppa and read a spooky book!

Unpleasant reading, my fiends!

Classic Halloween Sounds

In the event you're getting nostalgic about Halloween vinyl, click on the pic for a Pinterest collection of some delightful treats!

As an aside, the cover art on the above album was done by Leo and Diane Dillon, award-winning children's illustrators. As a kid, I spent hours gazing at this cover and its fantastical creatures!

If you're interested in the stories on this album, click here for the entire LP. Happy listening!

Vanishing Lessons

It's kind of funny how I became a Hallowe'en/Monster kid. Part of the story is that I spent Saturday afternoons with Tom Hatten and the Family Film Festival, which allowed me to see classic monster films and absorb their history.

Another part were the endless hours spent sitting next to my little record player, listening to spooky stories. Among them was a collection of ghost stories and urban legends under the Alfred Hitchcock name, interspersed with vignettes of  Hitchcock setting up the next track and giving the listener an ongoing account of a simple faucet drip growing and growing until he drowns at the end.

Click on the pic for one of my favorite, light-hearted spooky stories.

Antler Guy

Please let me know who to credit for the inspirational photo of Antler Guy!

It seems to be my curse to find cool things long after many others have already gone through the cycle of discovery/enthusiasm/boredom/move-on-to-next-cool-thing-before-ShellHawk-finds-it. Such is the case with Antler Guy.

As far as I know (and those in the upper echelons of in the know can feel free to correct me), the Antler Guy Saga started back in 2017 as a fiction written on Archive of Our Own, a site dedicated almost entirely to fanfiction of every damn fandom, ever. It was inspired by the Halloween prop pictured above, which is a thing of beauty all on its own, TBH.

I'm not sure how he ended up there, honestly, but again, if you have any 'fo, let me know!

Antler Guy seems to be just an ordinary, extraordinary, neighbor, to neighbor Steve's neighbors. Steve, of course, seems to be the only guy hung up on the fact that his new neighbor, Antler Guy (along with his wife - Hell Wife, actually - and kids, and plants), shows all the signs of being an Abomination.

A man needs to have standards, you know:

One time Steve tries throwing holy water but all Antler Guy does is thank him, saying that no, Antler Guy isn’t Catholic but it’s the thought that counts, he is so kind to water his creeping deathshade vines regardless.

How could anyone who adores Hallowe'en not love the Antler Guy Saga?

I mean, it has certain of the best elements of both The Addams Family and The Munsters, both of which lampooned the "normal American family," and promoted the family we all really wanted, in our heart of hearts. It was the family in which husband and wife loved each other deeply (madly, in the case of Gomez and Morticia) and treated each other with respect and devotion, no matter what. Antler Guy and Hell Wife definitely fill these shoes.

The funny thing is, Neighbor Steve privately calls them, "The Abominations," and when it's time for Son (yes, Antler Guy's son is named, "Son") to tell the school his last name, he, like any innocent child, just goes for it. So Antler Guy paints their new surname on their mailbox "with only a few glyphs of soul-rending terror added to keep up to snuff."

It's a fun read, with some solid life lessons thrown in for good measure.

Some brilliant person made a nifty video of Antler Guy's vocalizations on YouTube, someone else included the "legend" on Fanlore, and of course, The Ultimate Blog of Antler Guy is to be found on Tumblr...

I really wish someone in The Industry would make this a screenplay and get it into the development pipeline!

Listen! Did You Hear That?

Face it, you need some wonderful aural candy, from music to stories, for your Hallowe'en.

Click here for some great tunes and stories by the masters, and click on any pic to see if you can purchase for yourself!

Dark Reading for a Sunday Afternoon

Click on the pic to go to My Scary Bookshelf...

The Autumn Equinox has come and gone, and I know that the beginnings of the Hallowe'en tourists will be traveling through my blog, soon, if a few haven't shown up, already, so I'll keep the life reports to a minimum from here until after The Big Dance (a.k.a., Hallowe'en).

In between doctors' visits, attorney phone calls and divorce mediation calls, I managed to commit to having a little ray of happiness shine in my life; I wrote a new segment for Hauntcast: Post Mortem's next episode.

It's an original story, and I think it actually turned out well! It's the longest one I've done to date, but I don't think it's so long as to be boring to listeners (at least I hope not!).

Add in the intro from Dick Terhune, the Voice From Hell, and it's absolutely wicked! (Oh, man! I love that guy's voice!)

After I got done recording, mixing down and producing my segment (with the foul luck of airplanes, lawn mowers and carbon monoxide beeping to contend with), I got it sent off to Chris Baker, our G-Host, so he could get it dropped in to the rest of the show. 

Then it was time to take a break. Voicing this particular segment felt very intense and emotionally draining, if you can believe it (or maybe it was the emotional hangover from this week's mediation call, bringing up all kinds of pain), and I was exhausted afterwards. I forced myself to take some time for myself to unwind and decompress for a while. I took a long walk in the neighborhood, and when I got back, I poured a glass of wine and brought out a book to get me in the mood for the season: Dead Harvest.

It's a collection of creepy short stories, and I've had it hanging around awhile, but haven't made the time to get to it. Yesterday seemed a good day to pour a glass of wine and enjoy the warm Sunday afternoon on the back patio, and dive into this. And so far, I like it!

As some of you may know, I have a Pinterest board of stories, prop-making books and other Hallowe'en eye candy, which I'll feature again in one of my October posts.

I also wanted to remind you my ShellHawk's Creations shop is open, so you can pick up a Hallowe'en thing or two! I have a few more jack-o'-lanterns to put in there, but there are some really cool ones available now!

Ah, I absolutely love this time of year!

The Smoker

"The Smoker," one of my favorite spooky stories from childhood. Click on the pic to hear it read by the master, Vincent Price.

Image found here, but I'm not sure who the artist is.

I will have pics and stories from Midsummer Scream very soon! I'm still recovering and getting the house put back in order; it looks like a bomb went off in my office! 

Dark Harvest

I was searching for books to download onto my Kindle for my trip to Ireland, when I ran across this wonderful gem. 

Written by Norman Partridge, Dark Harvest tells the story of a town embroiled in a Hallowe'en-themed "The Running Man"-type of race. From the Amazon description:

Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol’ Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death. 

Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He’s willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror--and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy . . .

I couldn't put it down. Seriously, couldn't put it down. And it made me want to build Stewie another brother to play with! I had also purchased Johnny Halloween before I left, which is a collection of short stories by Partridge. It includes another story about the October Boy, with a different slant to it, and we are introduced to a younger villain...

Now Partridge revisits Halloween with a collection featuring a half-dozen stories celebrating frights both past and present. In “The Jack o' Lantern,” a brand new Dark Harvest novelette, the October Boy races against a remorseless döppelganger bent on carving a deadly path through the town's annual ritual of death and rebirth. “Johnny Halloween” features a sheriff battling both a walking ghost and his own haunted conscience. In “Three Doors,” a scarred war hero hunts his past with the help of a magic prosthetic hand, while “Satan's Army” is a real Partridge rarity previously available only in a long sold-out lettered edition from another press.

But there's more to this holiday celebration besides fiction. “The Man Who Killed Halloween” is an extensive essay about growing up during the late sixties in the town where the Zodiac Killer began his murderous spree. In an introduction that explores monsters both fictional and real, Partridge recalls what it was like to live in a community menaced by a serial killer and examines how the Zodiac's reign of terror shaped him as a writer.

Halloween night awaits. Join a master storyteller as he explores the layers of darkness that separate all-too-human evil from the supernatural. Let Norman Partridge lead you on seven journeys through the most dangerous night of the year, where no one is safe…and everyone is suspect.

The cover art, as you can see, is inspirational. I'm already going nuts with trying to get everything made for my upcoming shows, but these covers really make me want to abandon all responsibility and make some new props for Halloween, since I haven't had the time to make them for a while. And the stories, themselves are engaging and wonderful grist for the horror and Hallowe'en mill.

But maybe, just maybe, I can stop sleeping for a few days--? ;)

Tales of the Frightened

Who in the Halloween community doesn't love Boris Karloff? His career as a horror movie icon continues to inspire many haunters in their prop building, and his voice inspires us to shivers!

Take his radio series, "Tales of the Frightened." These were little five-minute stories of horror, eventually made into compilations on LP. Some of you may have been lucky enough to have these as kids, although I, myself, missed them. (I was able to pick up an album at a vintage record store, however!) Yes, the stories are simple and cheesy by today's standards, but his voice enveloped you and made you part of the fright!

You can listen to one via YouTube here, or you can listen to a bunch of them and get some more interesting history at the Internet Archive, under audio Boris Karloff Tales of the Frightened.

In case you haven't noticed, I absolutely love these old albums that allow us to sit and listen to a story, to imagine the settings and characters. It allows us, in this frenetic age, to be still for a little bit, and to focus on one thing.

And, of course, to be frightened!