My good pal, occasional collaborator, and Destiny brother Daniel Butler was doing quick sketch card commissions a while back, so I threw some cash his way for a quartet of favorite horror flick characters. Mythic Helen (Virginia Madsen) from Candyman and Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) from Halloween were for Maura, and Verden Fell (Vincent Price) […]

…but their special relationship preceded their death and, quite frankly, is none of your business. (The redundant captions which accompany the illustrations in the third edition D&D core rulebooks are strangely endearing, like a fantasy RPG homage to old comics where Batman would say “Here’s a punch!” while punching someone and the caption box would […]

Casper: “I’m the spirit of a dead child, forced to walk this earth forever!” Bozo: “I’m the grinning, grease-painted inspiration for countless childhood nightmares!” Matty: “slip the flensing knife close to the bone and pull firmly but be sure to trap the juices in a pail for later don’t let the screams and moans bother […]

The Seventies were a time of terror, and I’m not just talking about the fashion styles. The upheavals of the late Sixties ushered in a Strange New Decade of heightened anxiety and an loosening of cultural mores. The face of the looming unknown took a multitude of shapes, with a significant number reflecting those subcurrents […]

A twitter pal recently reminded me of The Devil Bat, a 1940 PRC thriller in which a vengeful scientist (played by Bela Lugosi) uses radioactive aftershave and trained giant bats (played by comically unconvincing puppets) to dispatch folks he believes wronged him. The film is standard “poverty row” fare, a mediocre murder mystery given a […]

As far as teleporter accidents went, it could’ve been worse. That didn’t stop Bigelow from cursing his carelessness. Why did he accept the crate of vegetables from his co-worker’s garden? Why didn’t put them on a table instead of place where he could accidentally bump the box with his foot and send a stray onion […]

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d In one self place; but where we are is hell, And where hell is, there must we ever be. – The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe Recommended listening: More “Down South” diabolism. (panels from “What’s So Hot About a Ghost?” […]

I’ve learned over the years that childhood ownership of the Remco monster toys — either the Mego-scale dolls or Star Wars scale figures — conveys membership in a secret cult of Spooky Kids whose interests and practices transcend both space and time. Maura still has hers in our attic somewhere. Also, my maternal grandfather bought […]

Chuckle away, Paul. Someday you’ll be the one returning to work after a long weekend during a busy cycle and we’ll see who’s making stupid puns then, huh? (“Buried Alive” in Web of Evil #11, February 1954; by Writer Unknown and possibly illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff) Recommended listening: Close to home…in more ways than one.

In the fall of 1984, my family moved out of our cramped North Woburn apartment and into the other side of my grandparents’ duplex just north of Woburn Center. Lil Bro and I got our own room with bunkbeds and a door and everything. That may not sound like a radical development, but it was […]