Planchette
31 October 2007

Walkers

“While I was sitting on the porch in the pre-dawn, listening to the hot Miami winds blow through the fronds, Evil Tom joined me for a snack.”

29 October 2007

Mothballs

Illness is keeping me sidelined, but for those of you new to Hidden City, I still know what I did last autumn. Perhaps you’ll find something worthwhile in it. Share/Bookmark

28 October 2007

Ghost town

According to the WHOIS records, I first registered hiddencity.net on October 28, 1999. I can’t recall with certainty what I thought I would do with it, beyond a basic personal publishing shtick, combining all my various sites under one umbrella. I remember quite vividly, though, sitting in my home office on a Saturday, poring over [...]

25 October 2007

Planchette

Talking boards are best known under the popularized name Ouija boards, but are a tradition going back at least to the mid-1800s, and possibly thousands of years before that. Spiritualists used them to contact the dearly departed, but since the 1960s their primary use has been by wise-ass high school boys trying to scare the knickers off high school girls, or by writers using a popular culture shortcut to getting their evil phantasms on stage.

24 October 2007

Secret ingredients

Have you ever been plagued by nosy visitors snooping though your medicine cabinet? Wouldn’t it serve them right to find something disturbing among the Band-Aids and Tylenol? Consider, if you will, the delightful Witch Kitchen Jars of aranamuerta.com. Follow the site’s clearly illustrated and easy to read instructions and you will soon have your own [...]

23 October 2007

Vincent

Tim Burton’s directorial debut is an animated gem called Vincent, about a boy who wants to be like Vincent Price. It’s a charming little film, narrated by Price himself, and — for the moment at least — is available on YouTube. If you like it, it is also available on the special edition DVD of [...]

22 October 2007

All Creatures Great and Small

The Incredible Shrinking Man could have kicked that spider’s ass. King Kong‘s feet hurt. Raquel Welch couldn’t operate a remote control in Fantastic Voyage. Them have diamond knees. Read the (frighteningly detailed) scientific explanations in The Biology of B-Movie Monsters! Share/Bookmark

16 October 2007

Horrors!

While staying in Orlando for a conference I had the opportunity to visit Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights. Having a well-known reputation as an aficionado of the holiday, many people had told me about how much I would like it. I wish they had been right. The premise is fairly simple. After dark some of [...]

7 October 2007

Proper preparations

Back in the ’60s getting ready for Hallowe’en involved deciding what you were going to be, and trying to not to go mad with anticipation of the day itself. In later, less halcyon days, preparations included watching a safety film in school. Jason, of the marvelous Hallowe’en recording Scar Stuff, actually acted in one of [...]