I like vintage advertisements. They are a window into the past, curiosities that depict a world that is completely alien to anyone born after 1975.

Where “more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette”, and we drank the “slenderizing, lithiated lemon soda” called 7-Up, it was a place that I find fascinating.

Here are some fun, over-saturated Halloween ads I’ve been saving for a dreary Friday afternoon.

Category: Halloween   Tags: vintage ads

Wouldn’t you love to see the kids’ faces as they try to edge past this guy on their way up the driveway on Halloween night?

“I won’t look, I won’t look, I won’t look. If I don’t look at him he won’t look at me.”

Grim is the most terrible creation of the very terrible artist at Grim Hollow Haunt.

There’s something really attractive about the flow of motion here that suggests he’d happily swipe your head clean off your shoulders if you got too close. In fact, I bet that’s what we’re seeing here. He sweeps through the night collecting heads and turns them into Jack-o-lanterns to take back to his lair.

Brr…can you imagine what his place must look like? Shelves and book cases filled with burning Jack-o-lanterns stacked to the ceiling. Halls and caverns filled with them, whispering, smoldering, sputtering.

If that isn’t a great idea for a new story to add to the Halloween book I need to write someday, then I’m a pumpkin.

Visit Grim Hollow Haunt

Category: Halloween   Tags: grim, paper mache, pumpkin monster

For 11 months out of the year, they’re just normal folks. Retired from the cabinet factory, he still plows 10 acres of corn and soy beans. She likes to volunteer a couple of days each week, sometimes at church, sometimes at the elementary school. Her apple dumplings are legendary.

There are always flowers in hanging baskets on their tidy front porch, and ranks of sunflowers along the garden and around the old hand pump in the side yard. They have a barn stuffed with hay that they sell to the neighbors, but if you’re in a bind, they’ll trade for eggs or milk. Or nothing. “God bless ye’ all the same,” he’ll say, and smile as he helps load your truck.

But something tells me that these two throw a killer Halloween party. You just know that the annual “All Hallows Eve Coffin Social and Limbo Contest” is a real scream of which Gomez Addams himself would approve.

With Labor Day weekend behind us, we’re now officially into the Halloween home stretch when basement, back-room, and garage shops all kick into high gear and anything that strays too close to the workbench/card/coffe table is in danger of getting paper mache’d in the frenzy. We look at the calendar and shake our collective head. September 2!? Already!? Pass me the duct tape, and hurry!

In celebration of this period of wild freneticism, and to possibly add a little pumpkiny spice to the excitement, here is what’s soon to be framed and hanging in our living room.

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Oh yeah, and the home page got a fresh re-design. Figured it was about time. I like it. Sort of reminds me of a comic book. Or a bowl of Froot Loops.

Category: Halloween   Tags: halloween gothic, painting

A long time ago, your old pal Spooky did some spooking at the Culbertson Mansion haunted house in New Albany. I still have my long-sleeved “Staff” T-shirt that I unpack every Fall and proudly wear. Of course, since marriage obviously agrees with me, that shirt is getting a little stretched out. (That’s why we joined the Y last week)

Anyway, I’ve done my time in a 90-degree fog-filled room under the unremitting, brain-frying flash of a strobe light, throat raw, waiting for the next group of sheep to come shuffling through. Waiting. Sitting. Makeup stinging my eyes. Booming soundtrack looping over and over. Drone … drone … drone … hiss … buzz …

Peppered throughout the long stretches of intense boredom, however, came those short instances of unadulterated fun when the marks came along and we made them jump out of their skins. That makes up for a lot of sore throats and stiff joints. And besides, getting to go behind the scenes of any haunted house is just joy.

It’s been a long time, and I’ve missed the feeling of involvement if not the smell of burning fog juice. Funny how these things work out. Completely separate events have led to my happy entanglement in two different haunts this year. God’s idea for getting me out to meet new and interesting people, I guess.

In case you’re wondering, click any of the “gallery” pictures for a larger version and more info. Like, “what the heck is that skeleton soda-jerk guy all about?”

Category: Halloween   Tags: halloween, retro artwork