Werewolf Die Cut

Halloween draws near, just 2 more days, and this will be the last die cut of this season.

This one is from Hallmark and dates from 1981.  His fur is flocked.

"I'm Weird But I'm Loveable".  Pretty much sums me up.

White Owl Cigar Box

Today's post may stretch the Halloween category, but it's been one of those years and I use it in one of my displays, so hey, give me a break.

I picked up this White Owl cigar box this past year at a garage sale. The box was a little worse for wear, but I liked the imagery and had a Halloween display in mind.  I've situated it on top of my Æolian-Vocalion along with a vintage owl decoy and a more modern candle (plus a mini Jack O' Lantern and crow thrown in for good measure. Maybe I can do an Old Crow display some day).

Witch's Brew

The sale at Lemp Brewery provided one more Halloween-related item.  I found this ceramic witch for $1.

Lemp Brewery Autumn Painting

I had my own garage sale on Saturday this past weekend, so I couldn't go out saling as usual, however, I saw that there was a continued estate sale on Sunday at the Lemp Brewery in St. Louis and I made my way there the next day.

Halloween Revisited -- You're So Vain, You Probably Think This Blog is About You

 I'm a little late with today's "Halloween Revisited", but here it is with a few hours to spare.  This one is from October 4th, 2019.

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I found this print at an estate sale a couple weeks ago for $1.  I've seen the image before, but never knew much about it. The title is "All is Vanity" and it's by Charles Allan Gilbert.

Halloween Revisited -- ESPecially Yours

It's the weekend, so time for more reruns. This post originally appeared on October 29th, 2018.

I've enhanced this post a little as finally tracked down the Real People episode where Gordon Hoener appears.

 I'm a sucker for paranormal shows. Ghosts, UFO's, Bigfoot, Chupacabras, you name it, I'm in, especially this time of year.  I'm sure it dates back to my childhood spent watching Leonard Nimoy's "In Search Of...", Jack Palance's "Believe It or Not!" and Robert Stack's "Unsolved Mysteries". Back then, I fell for everything hook, line and Gellar. I like to believe I'm a little more skeptical these days, but reality aside, it's just fun to believe something undiscovered still exists.

Gordon Hoener did too. So much so that he started St. Louis' first "Ghost Busters" group "Haunt Hunters" in 1965.  This brochure I found oddly blends his two passions: Investments and the paranormal; in this case ESP. 

Jack O' Lanterns Aglow

You may have seen some of these, maybe even all of these, over the years, but I decided to display a selection of my Jack O' Lantern pails I've collected over the years all together.  Every one of these came from a garage or an estate sale.  They're harder to find these days, particularly anything pre-1980.  These all date from the 1960's through the 1980's.

I tried to chose one of each with differing expressions which is one of my favorite things about hunting for them; finding a new expression.

Children's Play Mate October 1949

 It's been 10 years since I last posted a Children's Play Mate magazine, so I guess it's due.  This one dates from October of 1949.  I didn't scan it completely, but hit the highlights. The cover features an illustration by Fern Bisel Peat whom I profiled in the 2016 post.

I Want My Mummy (Mask)

 This 1995 Mummy mask by Cesar was a find from over the summer. It dates from 1995 which doesn't sound that long ago, but is 31 years old now.  The rubber has held up well, despite somebody cutting up the back to make the opening wider.

Spooky Portraits

There's something about old portraits, particularly in period frames, that gives me spooky vibes.  It's probably related to old movies and television shows where human eyes peered through the portraits:

The Andy Griffith Show "The Haunted House", season 4, episode 2

Or portraits of ladies that had gardening sheers stuck in their throat. IN THE THROAT!:

"The Ghost and Mr. Chicken"

AI is On to Me

 Last week, I made a post as an experiment to demonstrate AI's tendency to propagate inaccurate or completely false information by indiscriminately scraping whatever is posted on the internet.  Like the "Hog Waller Hollerer", it took the bait, but called me out.

This morning, I decided to follow up on my post by Googling: "The Hog Waller Hollerer Cryptid" and was presented with this:

Uncanny Finds -- Beich Brittle Brilliants

This is a fresh find from this past weekend. It's not exactly Halloween, but it's orange and black and it once contained candy, so fair game.

Halloween Revisited -- Don't Lose Your Head

Today we revisit 2016 again and this heady find.

When I saw this shrunken head hanging from a bar at an estate sale, I immediately grabbed it.  Well, first I made sure it wasn't real.

Halloween Revisited -- Wacky Memories

It's the weekend and you know what that means? That's right! Repeats!  It's time for another Halloween Revisited post.  This one is from 2017.

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These days for Halloween treats, people favor handing out pre-packaged candies; the treat you receive from one house indistinguishable from the next.  When I Trick or Treated as a kid, I might receive a candy bar at one house, a comic book at another, and wax Wowe-e Whistles, money, popcorn balls or apples at others. One of my earliest Trick or Treating memories when I was around 7 involved what I thought was an odd treat at the time, but in hindsight was pretty cool and appropriate. I received this Wacky Packages sticker.

Cat Nap(kin)

Today we have a napkin to go with our paper plate.  Another purchase from the same sale, this napkin predates the plate by at least 20 years.  While the witch interpretation is cuter than scary, the style of art dates it to no later than the 1950's.  I love the Jack O' Lantern and demonic cat. It leaps into the scene seemingly bowling our little witch over.

AI -- Now that's Scary

 One of my posts this season set off a flurry (okay a few comments) about the use of AI.

As I said, I have a love/hate relationship with it.  I mostly hate AI imagery and I don't like AI being used as a competent substitute for skilled workers because in its current state, it's not.  It does have its place and I've used it for humorous purposes as well as a lead when researching things.  But I don't stop at the AI overview like many people do.

Where I work, our managers actually encourage us to use AI and when I'm shown some "answer" to a complex question by a person who simply Googled it and relied on AI, I push back and explain how AI works, how anything on the internet can influence the answers and that you have to check sources.

One of my blog posts has proven my point.  A friend of mine, after reading that blog post about my memories of Bigfoot mania in 1977, Googled, looking for why there may have been an increase in attention in Bigfoot in the St. Louis area in 1977.  He found this:

Peck Ghost Die cut

This Ghost die cut from Peck raises the question, do ghosts have teeth?

Well, this ghost didn't have many.  Did the ghost not brush and floss when it was alive? Is this the ghost of a Meth user? How does the ghost eat caramel apples?  So many questions.

House Monster Mask

I love coming across vintage latex masks at sales (or anywhere).  They remind me of my childhood, looking through bins of them at our local Ben Franklin dimestore.  Plus, any that have survived this long are fairly rare as the latex tends to degenerate quickly over time (see my Creepy Crispy Critter post from 2019).

I found this one at a sale this summer.

I didn't recognize it and had to reach out to a Facebook group I belong to.  It was identified as the "Demon Sandy" character from the 1985 movie "House".  I've never seen the movie (I plan on rectifying that this season), but apparently it is a doppelganger for the main character's (played by William Katt, believe it or not) ex-wife.

The mask itself is in fairly supple condition with only a few hard edges.

Dammit, Jim, I'm a Cryptid, Not a Flotation Device!

I found these "Monster Feet" at an estate sale this summer.  It reminded me of the Bigfoot scare/mania of the 1970's when Bigfoot seemingly waited around every tree in every forest around me.

Boos on Booze

 I was scanning this season's decorations around my home and came across this tray. Surely, I thought, surely I've posted this tray before.  I hadn't.

I found this tray several years ago at an estate sale for $5.  I loved the design and artwork.  Two martini-drinking ghosts? Why not?  Those owls have seen things.

Halloween Revisited -- Halloween Hang Up

I never did find a definitive date on this.  I ended up selling it on eBay years ago.

I found this Halloween door hanger in a box lot I bought at an estate sale about a month ago.  

Halloween Revisited -- Beistle Halloween Pirate Die Cuts

As with last year, I'll be reposting some past favorites (of mine) throughout the month on the weekends.  These diecuts are still a favorite of mine and at the time I thought I overspent on them (they were $10 each), but I'm glad I picked them up because I haven't seen them since.  Here they are in this year's display.

***Originally posted October 3, 2016

 These early Beistle die cuts are probably my favorite ones found this year.

Tiny Blow Molded Witch

My content seems to be very witch-centric this year.  Here's another one.

I don't recall where I found this little blow-molded and flocked witch, but it reminds me of the Christmas ornaments from Hong Kong in the 1970s.

I've placed it here among my blow-molded Jack O' Lanterns (more on those in a later post).

I'm not sure if she originally had some kind of broom tuft sticking out the back of her broomstick. There's a hole there, but because it acts as a stand, anything stuck in there might cause it to teeter over.

The addition of the wart at the end of her chin is a nice touch and we can see she's painted her nails for the occasion, or possibly that's blood from some unfortunate victim.

Witch Paper Plate

Another piece of ephemera today is this Halloween paper plate featuring another witch and her familiar along with bats for good measure.  It probably dates from the 1970's when Halloween was softening from the prior scarier images.  I do like the bright neon orange colors which don't show up as well in this photo as in person. I bought this in a stack of 6 identical plates from the same estate sale as yesterday's nut cup.

Nutty Jack O' Lantern

I found this Halloween nut cup at an estate sale for $4 which might sound like a lot for such a small piece, but you have to remember how ephemeral something like this is.

Child Life October 1978

 I never read Child Life magazine as a kid. In fact, I never even saw it until I began finding them at estate sales. But anytime I find an October issue of anything, I'll pick it up.  For your perusal, here are the better parts of the October 1978 issue of Child Life.  The cover features a witch and her familiar being terrorized by jet-pack wielding Elves.  Kind of a metaphor for how stores push Christmas during Halloween these days.

Peck Witch and Petrified Cat

Sorry for the lapse in posting this weekend.  We've been having some house renovations done, a result of a tornado in March of 2025.  Our house had minor damage, but we decided to redo the whole house exterior as a result.  It's coming along very nicely, thanks for asking.

My first die cut of the season is this Peck (I believe) Witch and Black Cat.  The artwork looks very much like Peck, but I couldn't find an example on the internet and apparently neither could Google.  It likely dates from the 1970's based on the style.

 Clearly, this is this cat's first journey as a familiar.  Or maybe not, and he knows what's coming.

Ichabod Framed

I came upon this framed print of Ichabod Crane at an estate sale this past summer. The person whose estate sale it was had a house filled throughout with shelves of books.

Halloween -- It's My Bag and Welcome to It

"First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys." 

    -- Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes.

A rare month indeed.  One I await the whole year.

I begin this season as per usual by sharing a Trick or Treat bag I've found in the past year.  This one was found at the same sale as the "Sprint" magazine I posted recently. 

The Golden Age

For years I joked about finding a box of Golden Age comics at a garage or estate sale; like those people that find the first Superman or Batman comic inside the wall or mixed among a bunch of papers in Grandma's attic.

The "Golden Age" of comics, for those unfamiliar with comic books, dates from essentially 1938 with the appearance of Superman in "Action Comics" #1 to 1956 with the appearance of the "Silver Age" Flash in Showcase #4 which heralded, of course, the "Silver Age" of comics. When the terms were coined, they were basically 50 year-old and 25 year-old comics (hence Gold and Silver). It was my fantasy that I'd come upon a box of superhero comic books dating from the 1940's some day.

Last weekend, my fantasy became reality, although not with superheroes.

I was at an estate sale for a 95-year-old woman who'd recently passed away.  She was an Italian war bride whom neighbors described as sweet, but stern.  From the pictures of the estate sale, the house was packed with vintage items.

I had gone to this sale in the hopes of snagging a vintage Frankenstein character glass I'd see in a box on the estate sale's website.  When I got there, I was 40th in line and they were letting people in 10 at a time.  By the time I got inside, the character glasses were picked over and the Frankenstein glass was gone. Oh well.  I looked around the rest of the house, focusing on the basement as I typically do before moving on to the kitchen and then the bedrooms, which are typically my last stop. We were an easy 45 minutes into the sale at this point.

In one bedroom, my wife pointed to a box and said, "Did you see the comics?" I hadn't.  I pulled the box out and my eyes bugged when I saw 10 cent cover price issues.  The box was marked $1 each.

 

"Sherry the Showgirl #3" Dec. 1956

Sprint Magazine

I thought I'd make an appearance before the upcoming "Countdown to Halloween" begins (if it still begins this year).  I assure you, despite my absence, the garage saling force is still strong in this one.  I'm still out there every weekend, rain, shine or snow, attending garage and estate sales, though the volume of product I'm buying has decreased significantly. I quit selling on eBay over a year ago, so I don't have a good outlet to offload excess product or a reason to buy something simply to flip it.  But I still pick up things that interest me, including this Scholastic Magazine from September of 1977, Sprint. I found it among the rubble of a basement at an estate sale home which I can only describe as an explosion of the 1970's.

Lucy's a Real @#$%&!, Charlie Brown

Originally posted in 2014. I thought it was time to revisit some oldies but goodies.

For several years, I’ve followed Chris Sims and his Funkywatch blog which details the endless cycle of misery endured by the cast of Tom Batiuk’s “Funky Winkerbean” comic strip.  What began as a lighthearted strip featuring high school students in humorous and sometimes improbable fantasy situations devolved into a spectacle of death, misfortune and schadenfreude firmly grounded in hell on earth.  While many believe Batiuk invented this comic form, Charles Schulz mastered the art of morale-crushing criticism and shaming with Lucy Van Pelt.  Existing solely for the purpose of antagonism, Lucy’s constant berating and belittling left an indelible and incurable swath of emotional duress, angst and disempowerment.

Let’s take a look at the atmosphere of menace and hostility imposed by Lucy and its effects on the well-being of her family and “friends” through the pages of these coloring books from the 1970's I recently purchased. And I swear I didn't modify the captions on any of these.

Lucy begins her devious mission.  Who will she choose to pick on?