Ghosts as sheet-sporting shades of the dead do not exist. Ghosts as unpleasant manifestations of past trauma totally do exist. In fact, my corpus is a veritable spookhouse of such entities, and their visitations have grown more frequent in recent years. Here’s a brief rundown of some of the more malevolent ones: The Flayed Knee […]

The Seventies were a demon-haunted decade, fraught with nightmares both real and imagined. The energy crisis and socio-economic malaise competed with various paranormal phenomena for space in the anxiety cortex of the collective consciousness. Paranoia triggers lurked around every corner, and the mass media wasn’t above amplifying those fears for increased market share and profit. […]

I may not be feeling this spooky season as strongly this year, but it’s not for a lack of trying. As part of my not-quite-successful attempts to kickstart the chills and thrills, I recently purchased a pair of a seasonally appropriate soundtrack releases on glorious, overpriced vinyl. Both should be familiar to anyone who has […]

“…and?” “Sigh, fine, we’ll also sacrifice a goat in the firepit tonight, buy only if you finish your homework first.” “THANKS, MOM, YOU’RE THE GREATEST!” Recommended listening:

Creature Double Feature is one of the lowest hanging fruits on the Gen X Bostonian nostalgia tree, familiar to any child of the Seventies who lived within WLVI’s broadcast range and had access to a TV set on Saturday afternoons. Bring it up in a gathering of local forty-somethings and you’ll get a chorus of […]

I’ve recently been scanning eBay’s listings for reasonably priced copies of old Sears Wish Books. While there’s a excellent online depository of these holiday catalogs, it has a few unfortunate gaps which happen to align with areas of particular interest for me. Besides, when it comes to this type of artifact, there’s no substitute for […]

My GRAVE-est apologies for GHOST-ing on yesterday’s post, but I was being tormented by a lost set of car keys and supposedly-but-not-actually faxed important paperwork and other real life terrors more fiendish than any salivating hellbeast. In any case, here’s a cursed artifact from a 1984 Billboard insert covering the rental-driven horror flick boom… While […]

Me (internally): “Things have been too hectic to update the site more than once or twice a week. Should I even bother attempting the Halloween Countdown this year?” The Kid (via text): “hey pop check out the new doll me and mom got” (By the way, the person who crafted the doll must have filled […]

After switching my focus from 12-inch longplayers to 7-inch singles, I began assembling a shortlist of preferred vendors for my 45 RPM fix. It wasn’t an intentional process, but something that developed as I noticed some of the same seller names popping up on my purchases page. All shared a few certain qualities. They had […]

As far as masculine role models went, the lads of the early Reagan Era could’ve done worse than Indiana Jones. Rough, rugged, and capable of dealing out (or rolling with) a stiff slug to the jaw, the intrepid archaeologist was also a man of letters whose laconic demeanor masked a sharp wit. Indiana Jones was […]