“Most of my treasured memories of travel are recollections of sitting.” ~Robert Thomas Allen

Sometimes you have to get away from all the pitchforks, the torch carrying mobs, that nutjob scientist who keeps trying to jump start his car off your electrodes.

A trip to New England was just the ticket for our pal Frankenstein this past September. Except for the insane (and I mean completely lunatic) drivers and the unusually hot weather, Frank had a lovely vacation.

Click here for Frankenstein’s complete Boston travelogue with pictures and commentary

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After the frenzy that was Halloween, SpookyBlue.com feels like a carnival after everyone has gone home, nothing left but a few scraps of paper and the faint aroma of stale popcorn. You look to see what that something sticky is on the bottom of your shoe and listen to the last echos of dying laughter fade into the growing night.

Kirk once described the Enterprise in Star Trek III as a “house with all the children gone”. There is definitely that feeling in the air around here. But a nice bowl of chili and a couple of hotdog mummies help to chase away that depressing “Spock’s dead” feeling.

And don’t forget that in a few short weeks we’ll begin to see a new and miraculous transformation across the countryside. A festival of lights, red, gold, and green, will push back the dark veil. A new excitement flavoring an icy wind with a hint of cinnamon and peppermint. We’ll gather again to sing and play and say thanks. Faw who for-aze, dah who dor-aze!

And, come January, if we’re lucky and the wooly worms have any say in the matter, we’ll get buried in a huge snow storm. Sounds like a great way to kick off 2008. There’s always hope, whenever and wherever you are, don’t you agree?

SpookyBlue’s 2007 Halloween photo gallery
Halloween at Snug Harbor
Grave Robbers Ball
Spooky Hollow – Dark & Scary
Snug Harbor becomes Spooky Hollow

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Snug Harbor is crisp this October, but not the type of crisp you normally associate with a frosty mid-October evening. After an insanely hot Summer, we’re glad to see Autumn finally come strolling down the road. Except that it seems to have stopped to look at something lying in the ditch along the way. And now it’s chatting with crazy old Mr. Richardson who likes to sit on an old milk crate on his front porch and chew on ginseng roots.

Oh, great. Autumn just pulled up a crate and chomped down on a root of its own. Nevermind that it’s late for work and Summer is starting to get ticked off. There were a couple of tornado touchdowns just a few miles away from Snug Harbor last week. That’s what happens when Summer has to stick around late (four weeks now) because the guy who’s scheduled to close hasn’t shown up for work yet. Somebody needs to say something to the Boss.

Anyway, the undead don’t care if it’s 93 degrees. They’re just glad to be out terrorizing again.

Click here for the Spooky Hollow 2007 Gallery

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The following is a list of survival tips that should be helpful during the next outbreak of t-virus, rage, radioactive mutant plague, whatever.

You’ve been watching the news and the inexorable advance of the undead as the outbreak approaches your location. At first it was just an unusual diversion on TV – something frightening, but safe because it was happening far away from you and the authorities were doing something about it.

But then things get more serious as the talking heads begin to look scared. The national guard is called out, but they’re overwhelmed. One by one, checkpoints are overrun as infection spreads. What was once a small quarantine zone on the news has suddenly grown much larger. Whole towns are abandoned as the rate of infection grows exponentially and the undead spread at a terrifying rate.

At about the same time that news feeds start to disappear, leaving anchors staring blankly at their monitors, you begin to realize that roadblocks and national guardsmen aren’t going to be enough.

Your local TV station preempts national coverage of the epidemic to announce that the undead have appeared in the streets of your own city. Somebody cranks up the tornado siren over by the fire station and the TV goes to static. Now you’re sitting in your living room staring at a screen full of snow listening to that mournful wail of the sirens in the distance, and it feels like the end of the world.

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— Yes, this is a reprint of a SpookyBlue feature I wrote a long time ago. But it’s still important information to keep handy in case the deaders start to get a little bitey.

Category: Stuff