Friday, December 19, 2025

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Now Playing: Two Eyes Made Out Of Coal

The annual Christmas track from the always-incredible 400 Lonely Things.  This one is SOOO delightfully strange and slightly unnerving, but absolutely soothing (I swear).


Click below...



Sunday, December 14, 2025

Now Playing: Through The Mouth Of Eternity

By Snakes of Russia.


Click below...

Ghost House

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

- Robert Frost




Image source.

Monday, December 8, 2025

Dodging, Disappearing,...

Goblins on the doorstep,
     Phantoms in the air,
Owls on witches’ gate posts,
     Giving stare for stare.
 
Cats on flying broomsticks,
     Bats against the moon,
Stirring round of fate-cakes,
     With a solemn spoon.
 
Whirling apple parings,
     Figures draped in sheets,
Dodging, disappearing,
     Up and down the streets.
 
Jack-o’-lanterns grinning,
     Shadows on a screen,
Shrieks and starts and laughter -
     This is Halloween!
 
- Dorothy Brown Thompson




Thursday, December 4, 2025

Haunt Retrospective

Re-post of the old Retrospective Gallery post to bump it up (just added a photo from the 2025 display).

Had fun posting these to Instagram and wanted to have them all in one place on the blog.  Prior to the first display photo below from 1986, we did random things like stuffed dummies or rubber masks hanging in the tree.  1986 was an important year as it established that the lawn would always be some kind of cemetery.  And it featured a prop centerpiece (a focal point), which would become a general theme in the coming decades.  The Ghost standing in the cemetery had a flashing strobe light in its head, and even now after all these years I love the vibe in that photo.  It really captures what I love about Halloween.  The macabre absurdity of it all.  Creating some strange little world on a small lawn of a brick house in a strip of rowhomes in suburbia.  Trying to make the ordinary (and life) spooky... and making it a little mysterious too.