Musing and Grumbling.

Happy Halloween! (2017)

Cover Image for Happy Halloween! (2017)
Laura Wiebe
Laura Wiebe
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This is the first year in I don’t know how long where I’ve had time not just to think about Halloween but to really prepare. I’m sure things don’t look too different to the outside world – except that I got more decorations up earlier in October. But for me the difference is that I’ve been celebrating for pretty much the whole month.

What this means is that I’ve had a pretty horror-filled autumn. And now that Halloween has actually arrived, it’s time to share some of that horror here, in one place.

Heavy Metal Halloween

Every year on Kill Eat Exploit the Weak we put a little extra love into our Halloween show. I can’t take credit for this year’s playlist – it was almost all my co-host’s creativity at work – but I approve of his choices.

cfmu.ca/episodes/5447-kill-eat-exploit-the-weak-the-halloween-episode

My extra time for All Hallows Eve planning made a more obvious different over at Hellbound.ca, where we posted our first Halloween-themed staff playlist in several years.

Hellbound’s Halloween Playlist 2017: another spooky + heavy soundtrack

Horrific Audio

While crocheting bats, ghosts and spiders, fashioning tree-branch crosses and putting up caution tape, you might expect that I’d be blasting heavy metal. Of course, that was happening some of the time, but I’ve also relied heavily on spoken word horror.

Halloween Podcasts

Special mention in this category has to go out to the No Sleep podcast. The No Sleep folks are quite prolific and have been at this spoken word horror business for more than six years, which means I’ve had plenty of material to dip into. Even more exciting, though, was the No Sleep live performance scheduled for Toronto this past weekend. Four chilling tales voiced on stage before us in The Great Hall. If you get a chance to see No Sleep on tour, don’t hesitate!

Here are some of the other eerie podcasts keeping me company and, occasionally, disturbing my sleep recently:

Classic Haunting Tales

In the last couple of years I have become acquainted with a “spoken arts” label called Cadabra Records. This year’s Halloween release is a collaboration from Slasher Film Festival Strategy and Anthony D. P. Mann called The Hearse Song, featuring the title track plus three other short tales with some beautifully eerie audio accompaniment. You can also dip into the label’s back catalogue, which features readings of stories by H. P. Lovecraft among others.

Uneasy Viewing – Film & TV

Halloween season viewing may be the area where I’ve been lagging a bit. Besides basketball, these are some of the things haunting my TV recently:

Grimm is new to me, X-Files is not, but both feel appropriate for this time of year. Lore is new in general – just released on Friday the 13th. If you’re familiar with the podcast, you’ll know that a good part of what makes these stories so unsettling is the connection to what might be fragments of historical truth. Frenzy wasn’t really the best Hitchcock to choose, but it was an impulse decision. (And the police inspector’s wife is a hoot.)

On my screen tonight:

Extraordinary Tales is an Edgar Allan Poe anthology and a recommendation from a friend. Bride of Frankenstein and The Walking Dead both feature Boris Karloff and are choices inspired by the latest episode of the “Bela and Boris” series from You Must Remember This. I haven’t seen any of these, so we’ll see how it goes.

Alright, back to putting the final touches on my plans for this October 31.

Happy Halloween!