Countdown to Halloween: Horror Around the House

As we get right up on Halloween, here's a nice chunk of the horror-related books and toys and whatnot I like to accessorize with at home.

Three old-school Draculas guard the bookshelf...

Horror fiction in various states of read- and unread-ness. You got your King hardcovers that date from when I was in high school, and countless books good and bad I've collected (I do not recommend re-reading It as an adult, however Song of Kali remains perhaps the greatest horror novel I've ever read). I am particularly fond of '70s and '80s paperbacks, mass market/drugstore rack stuff long before it was reprinted at $14 a pop for a movie tie-in. Looking for a nice I Am Legend paperback, cheap, as well as the splatterpunk stuff I used to read nearly 20 years ago that I've since sold off. Wow, very little Straub and what, no Machen or Blackwood! Gotta get on that. Anybody remember the Dell Abyss line? This guy does.



Some of my beloved Sideshow monster toys!

A stack of horror movie books. You cannot go wrong with The Overlook Horror Encyclopedia, The Book of the Dead, Nightmare Movies, or Immoral Tales! Get your Netflix queue ready.

And Clive Barker's demonic ladies guard over his works below.



I love these 11 x 14" posters; they're great if you don't have a lot of wall space. The one for Zombi 2 came with the 2-disc DVD set!


And Brundlefly and Cesare from Dr. Caligari's cabinet round things up!

Countdown to Halloween: Castle Dracula Funhouse Colorforms

Back in the mid-'90s I visited my folks up in South Jersey, who at that time still lived in the house I grew up in. For fun I dug around in the basement to see what cool old toys I could find. The only one I was surprised was still around was this Colorforms play set, Castle Dracula's Fun House. It was always a favorite. Come on, look at the cover of that box! Not to mention the castle interior and the sticky figures. Hours of play indeed. What I wouldn't give to live in this castle.

Well, I remember loading that bad boy up in my car, beneath the passenger seat, all set to take it back to Raleigh and displays its awesomeness in my new apartment. Man, it would look cool! And get me laid. Except that's not what happened. Of course it wouldn't have gotten me laid, that's not what I mean. What I mean is that I promptly forgot I'd shoved it under the passenger seat and a few months later I sold that car. I do not know how I missed cleaning it out completely, and it wasn't until a year or two later that I even remembered I'd taken it from my parents' house. Oh, I was sick when I remembered, sick.


Goes for a nice chunk of change on eBay these days (as does my other favorite, and another lost, childhood toy, the Kenner Alien). One of them that turns up on there has to be my old one, right? Damn.