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.