Advertisements in the final 1960s issue of "Horror Monsters" magazine

Horror Monsters was published by Charlton Publications for 10 quarterly issues in the mid 1960s. This is a very ragged copy of the 10th and final issue, which is listed as Winter 1964-65.

The magazine was a competitor to Famous Monsters of Filmland and, ultimately, didn't seem to succeed in that endeavor. The monster market wasn't big enough for both of them.

Horror Monsters gave it the good college try, though. This final issue includes an extensive feature story about Vincent Price, photo-filled looks at Mario Bava's Black Sabbath (of my favorites) and Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein, and a feature article about alleged true-life cases of vampirism throughout history. 

It also has cool advertisements aimed at an audience that was composed primarily of teenage boys. There are a decent number of ads, but they are from just a handful of companies — Cult of Horror, Victor Specialties and World Wide Specialties — which was likely another sign of the magazine's flagging viability. 

As you'll see, there is both a Do-It-Yourself Vampire Kit and a Do-It-Yourself Werewolf Kit. They cost $1 apiece and, while that's $10 in today's dollars, I can't imagine the package kids got back in the mail were too exciting. But maybe someone has happy memories of getting their kit.

Finally, this small advertisement, nestled among chattering teeth, a shark-tooth necklace and a plastic snake, made me smile. The Worry Bird was a minor phenomenon in the 1960s, though no one seems to know much about the official origins of the big-beaked, sad-eyed creature.

Chilling prediction tucked away inside 1968's "Dwellers in Darkness"

I don't get to experience the pure delight of Tucked Away Inside items much anymore. It used to be one of my favorite things about sorting through boxes of used books to assess their viability for possible sale on Amazon.

But I recently picked up a used copy of the 1968 paperback Dwellers in the Darkness: The Enigma of the Supernatural, by John Macklin, and found an intriguing — and somewhat ominous — piece of paper folded up and tucked away inside. Weirdly, this is my second Macklin book this year that had something inside. Challenge to Reality, which I wrote about in January, still had its original receipt inside.

It's a long note, written in flowing, left-leaning cursive. As I worked my way through the whole message, I'll admit I started to get a feeling of minor dread in the pit of my stomach. I think we can guess this was written in 1968 or the early 1970s, at the latest. The book is pristine and clearly hasn't been handled much over the decades. 

Here's what the note states:

Brad

In his town where he will live, he will be hailed as a genius. Soon he would be found to be terribly conceited and they'll pay no attention to him. He will get poorer and poorer. Then a lady will come into his life, someone of nobility or royalty, and he will become rich. He will become powerful and somewhat evil or have a less extent of will applied to good ends. Nevertheless, he will have something to do with advances in education. Will grow more evil and when faced with charge of being too cruel or not doing much for something or another he will cancel it with a legal hearing, freeing him. Will receive more power, but will make mistakes and have disconnect with something important. Ill fortune — wife will die — but he will remarry and grow richer. He will lose position in gov. and go bankrupt. Will still have wife, but will be surrounded by false friends. Will live happily with wife.

Adding to the weirdness of this, the bottom-right portion of the sheet of paper has been torn off. Was something else written there?

I'll let you draw your own conclusions, as I'm sure some interesting ones formed in your mind while reading this — fortune? Prediction? Harmless outline for a character in an acting class or a writer's group? 

I ran it through a plagiarism checker and it came out as 100% unique, for whatever that's worth. And the text doesn't come up in any Google searches. 

There's also the added context that this was tucked away inside a book that states on the back cover: "These are the Dwellers in the Darkness — the people who seem to be just like you and me — but who are in reality, like nothing you have ever encountered."

And who is Brad?

Brochure for the Boris Karloff Wax Museum in Niagara Falls

Every October needs a little Boris Karloff. This is an undated brochure for the Boris Karloff Wax Museum, which was located at the corner of Oakes Drive and Buchanan Avenue in Niagara Falls, Canada. It was a longtime fixture of the entertainment district known as Clifton Hill, a touristy spot near the falls filled with museums (usually hokey rather than prestigious), arcades and similar attractions.

I can't find an official history of the museum, so much of what I've assembled here is via two sources:

• Reddit: History of Clifton Hill Part 3: "Wax Monsters and Mini Golf" (which is excellent)
• Universal Monster Army: A three-page message board thread about the Boris Karloff Wax Museum

The museum opened around 1968, and I found evidence on Newspapers.com that it still existed as late as 1992. It was built and managed by Robert Dunham, an entrepreneur behind numerous popular attractions in Niagara Falls. The Dunham family had a company named Waxattract that constructed wax figures and other components. Waxattract had a subdivision named Enter-Tech.

The brochure notes: "Once you step inside the Boris Karloff Wax Museum be prepared to enter an entirely different world. A world of the supernatural ... a chilling, eerie world ... a world that will eliminate common everyday thoughts and feelings. Thirty-three different scenes will boggle your mind and thrill your senses." It goes on to specifically mention Jack the Ripper, the Phantom of the Opera, the Mummy, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Medusa, zombies and the Devil himself.

But the museum wasn't entirely horror, it seems. You should read the entirely of the long and well-researched Reddit thread on the museum, but here's an excerpt: 

"The structure the museum was housed in had formerly housed the motel restaurant and gift shop on the lower floor and suites on the top floor. The bottom floor became the museum and gift shop, and looking at old photos it appears the rooms were kept above, but cleverly integrated into a castle-like facade. ... It was the first horror themed wax museum, but was by no means a total haunted attraction. What limited photos exist in the brochures show it being fairly well-lit, and describe many non-horror scenes like Charlie Brown, MLK, Santa, Lincoln and Snow White. It's heavy animation, lighting effects, sound design, and unique theme made it a massive success."

The thread on the Universal Monster Army message board includes images of some different brochures for the wax museum. Plus images of some nifty pennants from the gift shop. Several people also share their memories of touring the museum as children. This anecdote made me laugh: "My parents took me to Niagara Falls around 1970.  After a lot of begging, my parents dropped me off at the Wax Museum. As I recall, it was attached to a hotel. I bought my ticket in the lobby and looked at entry to the museum. It was all blinged out in cobwebs, skeletons, and other scary s**t. Well, I was too afraid to enter. I stood in the lobby for an hour and waited for my ride. When my parents showed up, I made up a complete description of the museum."

Writing for The Junior Reporter Club in the July 12, 1968, edition of The Evening Standard of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, young Judy Zajac shared her story about a family trip to Niagara Falls: "Both falls were very beautiful and I had a very enjoyable time. When we were leaving, we stopped at a wax museum. The name of the museum was Boris Karloff's Wax Museum of Horrors. When one enters, there is a statue of Boris Karloff. Some of the things in the museum are: The Living Heart, The Electric Chair, The Creatures, The Mummy and many more. They also had such things as Santa Claus, Little Red Riding Hood, and Snow White for younger children."

In July 1973, someone stole Dracula's red-and-black cape, valued at $300, from the museum, according to police reports. (That sounds like a good opening hook for a horror movie.)

Finally, here's a groovy advertisement from the August 30, 1969, edition of the Niagara Falls Review that describes a "ghost party" movie marathon at Hollywood Drive-In that was done in conjunction with the Boris Karloff Wax Museum.

The Sunbonnet Women of America and their 1925 Halloween seance

Witches! A seance! And a dance!

Oh my. It's a History Mystery. I want to know everything that can be known about the Sunbonnet Women of America. There are only a handful of clippings, all from 1925, about this group on Newspapers.com, and there's zilch on Google.

It's the above clipping that first caught my eye. Headlined "Wicked Witches Listed At Pre-Halloween Seance," it's from the October 18, 1925, edition of The Sunday Star of Washington, D.C. — exactly 99 years ago today. The Sunday Star was the Sunday edition of the Washington Evening Star.

The first paragraph states: "The Sunbonnet Women of America wish to solve the problems of their business brothers and sisters, so they invite them to come and help invoke the wiles of the 'wickedest witches' in a pre-Halloween seance and dance Thursday evening, October 29, at the Central Armory, Eleventh and Clifton streets northwestern."

The invitation itself is in verse:

So the ancient near-witch, Sunbonnet Sue,

Extends a summons to all of you

Who'd dance and laugh and brew and plot

To try the luck of the witches pot.

Disguise yourselves in Halloween hues,

If you'd be favored in the pot that brews,

And present your card at the door of Fate

For the fun begins at half-past eight.

There are favors that may be got,

So be on time to brew in the pot;

You may not know, but it sure is true,

Sunbonnet girls are among the few

Descended from the Salem witches

And work their wiles for Halloween wishers.

"Now, come you all, so eager to learn

If Fate for you her wheel will turn.

The business men do recognize

The worth of Sunbonnets wary and wise,

So they have placed in the witches's pot

Some lovely things which they will plot

That may be won by only those

Who please the witches by their clothes.

Now, brothers and sisters, eager and true,

Dress up quite well, it may be you."

Yes, the 1920s were certainly roaring. This was not an event to be missed. Keep in mind, though, that it was held in the midst of the Prohibition. Given the very public nature of the event, it's unlikely that there would have been any alcohol openly served. But perhaps some was smuggled in or, ahem, conjured. Maybe some historians who are most astute than I am about the skirting of Prohibition laws see some hints within the witches' invitation regarding what would be available at the dance.

The last paragraph lists some of the newest members of the Sunbonnet Women of America, "all prominent in Government, professional and business circles." I'm going to list them here, because maybe this post will help someone track down something new about one of their ancestors:

Mrs. Susie Moore

Miss Helen E. Burnett

Miss Helen C. Clark

Miss Nita S. Hinman

Mrs. Amelia E. Byrne

Mrs. Elsie C. Gulli

Miss Elizabeth M. Wall

Mrs. Mabel Driver

Miss Elizabeth K. Prender

Miss Mabel J. Carter

Miss Bertha V. Zeller

Miss Alice M. Blandforth

Miss Margaret R. Shedd

Miss Annie Louis Carroll

Miss Edith L. Tate

Miss Madeline Diers

And just imagine, all of them descended from the Salem witches (wink).

Sifting through some of the other Newspaper.com clippings from 1925 sheds little light on the Sunbonnet Women of America. They are first mentioned in early May and seem to be associated with the National Club of the Younger Business Women. That month, they were organizing "the first annual organdy dance of the Sunbonnet Women of America."

An October 9 article specifically mentions the "Washington branch of the Sunbonnet Women of America" and its meeting to discuss the upcoming Halloween dance. 

And that's pretty much it. How long did the organization last? Did it actually have branches in multiple cities? Were they really witches? Did they all vanish after the October 29 seance and summoning? 

Maybe we should do a new seance and try to contact "Sunbonnet Sue" for an eyewitness recap. Stuff like that always ends well in movies. 

The terror of AI image generation

Deep into the spooky season of Mild Fear 2024 seems like a good time to check in with one of this year's most existential horrors: artificial intelligence. It's fairly certain at this point that AI will lead directly to the the doom of civilization, if not the entire Earth. But while we passively wait for the apocalypse — whether it's from economic collapse spurred by AI, autonomous AI warfare or simply the AI servers swallowing up every available joule of energy on the planet — we can also just sit back and do stupid things with AI.

I asked AI, for example, to generate images of me writing a Papergreat post. So here they are:

My cats and I have no further comment. 

1978 Halloween movie marathon at MacArthur Drive-In in Orange, Texas

This newspaper advertisement (via Newspapers.com) was in the October 27, 1978, edition of The Orange Leader of Orange, Texas. It showcases a five-film Halloween movie lineup that was slated for the next night, Saturday, at the MacArthur Drive-In. It's an interesting slate that would have ended just a few hours before dawn, for those who stuck it out (or fell asleep in their cars).

Based upon movie lengths and allowing for about five-minute intermissions between movies, this is roughly when the movies would have started:

7:30 p.m. — The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972, PG)

9:05 p.m. — Return to Boggy Creek (1977, G)

10:35 p.m. — Nurse Sherri (1977, R)

12:10 a.m. — House of Psychotic Women (1976, R)

1:45 a.m. — The Mysterious Monsters (1975, G)

3:15 a.m. — It's over! Go home!

Children under age 12 were allowed to attend. I reckon the idea was that they'd have fallen asleep in the back seat by the time the R-rated films started, lest they see something that scars them for life.

The Legend of Boggy Creek is a super-low-budget, documentary-style horror film about an Arkansas cryptid that was fairly popular on the 1970s drive-in circuit. Parts of it served as an inspiration for The Blair Witch Project, decades later.

Its unauthorized sequel, Return to Boggy Creek, has nothing to do with the original and can barely be termed a horror movie. It's definitely the clunker of this MacArthur Drive-In lineup and was probably included because the licensing rights were dirt cheap. Of note, it features Gilligan's Island's Dawn Wells and Diff'rent Strokes' Dana Plato. One reviewer on IMDb called it "a movie that would make some Walt Disney movies look dark. Really, this movie was just a bunch of light fluff with virtually no boggy creek creature to be seen."

Nurse Sherri has a rating of 3.8 out of 10 on IMDb, so it was no prize either. But, in attempting to follow in the footsteps of The Exorcist, it probably had enough shocks, blood and titillation to keep the adults awake and eating popcorn from the snack bar. It also features the horror of this sofa; imagine that on a huge drive-in screen.

At first I was confused in attempting to research House of Psychotic Women, because that's also the title of a 2012 memoir/film studies book written by Kier-La Janisse. It's also the title of a themed collection of movies that Severin and Janisse teamed up to release a few years ago. Then I figured out that House of Psychotic Women is the title of the edited American release of the 1974 Spanish horror film Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, starring Paul Naschy. The American title served as the inspiration for Janisse's book title. Anyway ... Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll is definitely not a film you'd want your kids in the backseat to wake up during. They might catch an eyeful of eyeballs in a bowl of water, for one thing. 

Last up was The Mysterious Monsters. Its rating is incorrect in the advertisement. It's a G-rated documentary hosted by Peter Graves that discusses Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and other popular 1970s cryptids. It's fairly well-regarded, as that genre goes, but I can't imagine it was keeping many people awake that deep into the witching hour. Maybe it should have replaced Return to Boggy Creek as the second movie! 

I'd love to program a Halloween movie marathon for a group of horror fans. I think it would be more fun at an indoor theater, with quality picture, quality sound and no worries about weather or bugs. Maybe, after some ruminating, I'll do a post later this month about what movies I would include in such a marathon. And I'd love to hear in the comments what your dream Halloween movie marathon would be!

But drive-in theaters represented a wonderful time in the history of movies, too. And they definitely helped to further the horror genre through the 1970s. There's a Facebook page devoted to memories of the MacArthur Drive-In in Orange, Texas. According to that page, the drive-in opened in 1950 and, in January 1983, "slipped into history like most drive-ins."

Intellivision's "Night Stalker," my first survival horror video game

Thanks to Dad's business connections, we were among the very early owners of an Intellivision home video game system. Sometime in 1979, we hooked it up to the hefty television set in our living room in Clayton, New Jersey, and played Major League Baseball, The Electric Company: Math Fun, and Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack.

(Interestingly, our next-door neighbor was an early adopter of a different sort — upstairs, he had a massive personal computer that, from my memory anyway, took up a third of a room with its CPU, monitor, and disk — or cassette — drive. He wowed my friend Mike and I with a computer baseball game, a game that involved exploring underground passages and avoiding a troll and, as I very hazily recall, a detective game that was mostly text. It seemed, in retrospect, to be something that he put together himself, not one of the smaller commercial computers that would have been available at the time, such as an Apple II or TRS-80. But I'm trusting my memory as an 8-year-old here.)

Over the new few years, we acquired many more Intellivision cartridges through Dad's ongoing business relationship with Mattel. It was an awesome perk, and it made us bit of an outlier in a world where the more-popular Atari home video game system was outselling Intellivision about 6 to 1. 

One Intellivision game we eventually had was Night Stalker, which was released in 1982 and became a family favorite, although perhaps not quite as addictive or popular within the household as Astrosmash. (Other family favorites included Snafu, B-17 Bomber, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin, and Utopia, which was a bit ahead of its time as a sim game.)

Looking back, I view Intellivision's Night Stalker as forerunner of the gaming genre that would eventually be called Survival Horror. That term came into popular usage around 1996 with Resident Evil, and, generally speaking, it describes games in which the player has limited resources and other obstacles to overcome while facing overwhelming supernatural enemies. The website Retro Refurbs agreed in this 2021 post that Night Stalker fits the bill as early survival horror.

I haven't played a ton of survival horror over the years, because I'm fairly mediocre at videogaming. But some that I've played are Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Resident Evil – Code: Veronica and Realms of the Haunting (a PC game). I dabbled with Silent Hill and Dino Crisis, but didn't get very far. I think Infocom's The Lurking Horror also counts, even though it's a text-based game. The Lovecraftian writing by Dave Lebling is terrifying at times. The most recent survival horror I've played, probably, was a Slender Man game on my iPhone. That creepypasta creep is too creepy for me.

Anyway, Night Stalker is a great game that's still deeply embedded in my memory. All you can do is try to survive to until the next level. There is no winning. It's just mounting panic and stress until your lives run out and you die. Fun times! The gist is that you're stuck in a maze with bats, spiders and an endlessly spawning battalion of killer robots that are increasingly deadly. Your ammo is limited and it's a constant scramble to acquire more. So, half the time you're totally defenseless, unless you choose to hide in your centrally located bunker, a strategy that merely delays the inevitable. The killer robots start out stupid and escalate to Terminator level, even gaining the ability to destroy your only sanctuary. The most advanced killer robot is invisible. Death is inevitable, and there is no catharsis beyond shutting off the gaming console and going outside for some fresh air. Maybe I'm taking the analogy too far, but it was perhaps a fitting game for the 1980s, in which we lived with the constant fear of nuclear armageddon.

Retro Refurbs wrote: "There’s no way to win. But in many ways, this means that it is survival horror in the purest sense: the entire point of the game is simply to survive for as long as you can. And that’s it."

Night Stalker's sound effects are limited mostly to bullets being fired and explosions. But behind them on the soundtrack, there's an unwavering electronic pulse that fits perfectly with the game's existential dread. As one YouTube commenter noted: "I remember the sheer terror and excitement of this game. That deep, twanging bass noise in the background haunts me to this day."

As a final note, I wonder now if the title of this 1982 game is a tip of the hat to the 1972 TV movie The Night Stalker, which featured the debut of Carl Kolchak, the journalist who investigates supernatural phenomena. Killer robots would have been right up his alley, though he would have found a way to actually defeat them.

Here are some of the pages from the Night Stalker manual...
 

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Spooky frontispiece in an Edward Bulwer-Lytton omnibus

This is a perfect-for-October frontispiece from an omnibus edition of Edward Bulwer-Lytton supernatural fiction published by Hooper, Clarke & Co. of Chicago (year unknown, probably circa 1880-1890). The hardcover book is falling apart, with a fully detached spine. I picked it up super cheap in order to read the 1859 short story "The Haunted and the Haunters: Or, The House and the Brain," which H.P. Lovecraft praised as "one of the best short haunted-house tales ever written." There are modern collections that include "The Haunted and the Haunters," but if you'd rather just read a critical summary, here's one from Dark Worlds Quarterly.

The frontispiece, meanwhile, is from the novel A Strange Story, which leads off the omnibus. That novel, which was first published as a serial, deals with a physician who is staunchly on the side of science and rationalism, yet finds his worldview shaken as he confronts dark magic and supernatural forces. Some reviewers say it's a bit on the bloated side and filled with lengthy tangents in the footnotes, which is both par for the course for Bulwer-Lytton and makes sense if you're getting paid by the word for a serial novel. The woman standing beside the tree in the frontispiece is likely meant to be Lillian, the doctor's love interest in A Strange Story. Perhaps she's been mesmerized — not by the doctor, but by Evil Forces^TM.

The final Bulwer-Lytton offering in the omnibus is his 1842 novel Zanoni. It is also occult-themed, centered around Rosicrucians and the secret of eternal life. But, as one Goodreads reviewer notes, "This is most emphatically not a novel that treats the occult as something evil. The occult in this novel is rather a seeking for wisdom. On the very rare occasions on which Mejnour does interfere in the affairs of humanity it is always on the side of good. Zanoni frequently intervenes in human affairs, and again always on the side of good."

Here's LP, aka Licorice Pizza, aka Lady Samantha Penguin.

Scholastic book: "Chilling Ghost Stories"

We must have at least one spooky Scholastic book from the olden days each October!

• Title: Chilling Ghost Stories
• Author: Bernhardt J. Hurwood (1926-1987). Another of his books was featured in this 2021 post.
• Awesome cover illustration: Don Dyen. There's also one uncredited interior illustration of a skeleton standing at a child's bedside.
• Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
• Year: First published in 1973. This is a Scholastic reprint from the late 1980s or early 1990s, though there's no confirmation on the copyright page. The front cover is missing the TK 2167 that appears on the original editions.
• Pages: 110
• Format: Paperback. 
• Dedication: "To Laura"
• Some of the story titles: The House That Didn't Want Anyone to Live in It; What the Gravedigger Saw; The Pirate Ghost of Gombi Island; The Woman in Green Velvet; The Headless Princess; The Banshee Whose Feelings Were Hurt; and The Poltergeist with the Heart of a Genie.
• Random excerpt from the middle #1: He was mean to his family and to his hired hands alike, so when he died no one was particularly sorry to see him go.
• Random excerpt from the middle #2: Of course, everyone in the village tried to guess what it was that the ghost had told Tom, but he never would say anything more about it. 
• Random excerpt from the middle #3: Moya loved to tell wild and hair-raising tales about ghosts and goblins and wolf-men and fairies.
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.32 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review: In 2020, Gary Sites wrote: "This is one of the first books I owned. I was 10 years old when I selected it from the Scholastic reader at school. What wonderful memories of going through that thing, choosing a few books. (They averaged about .75 cents) Then, in two or three weeks, we'd walk into the classroom one morning, and find stacks of new paperbacks that our teacher would pass out at lunch time. Do they still do this in schools? I hope so. This book of little ghost stories isn't very remarkable, but I loved it as a ten year old." (Yes! I remember walking into my classrooms and seeing the new books on the teacher's desk and/or along the long shelf under the window.)
• Rating on Amazon: 3.8 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2013, Mark Geary wrote: "I was about eight years old when I bought this book from a Scholastic Book Fair, and it was probably my favorite book for the longest time. ... While there were other collections and anthologies put together over the years from Scholastic, 'Chilling Ghost Stories' still stands out as the best, at least, the best to me. I recently was able to get a copy and after 35+ years, I went back and read it. The book still holds up fairly well, and I look forward to sharing it with my Grandchildren."
• Another view: Kristi Petersen Schoonover raved about this book on her blog in 2011, concluding "Even if you’re an adult, you’ll want to own this. I can guarantee a scare in under three minutes. And if you’re as busy as I am — well, then there’s a certain beauty in that, too." [Her blog is still going strong, too.]

What vintage Scholastic books most say

"October" or "Halloween" to you? 

Share your memories in the comments section.

I believe this is Socks' first photo appearance on Papergreat 

Postcard: The haunted hotel that spooks Bryce Harper

This vintage Micro-Color postcard features the "friendly lobby" of The Pfister Hotel Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It opened in 1893, has the largest hotel collection of Victorian art in the world and has AAA Four Diamond standing.

And it's haunted.

According to HauntedUS.com, the list of paranormal occurrences at the Pfister include electronic devices, such as TVs and radios, turning on and off without warning; sounds of mysterious footsteps; apparition sightings in hallways; knockings that cannot be accounted for; and even objects moving around.

The hotel also spooks a lot of visiting Major League Baseball players when they stay in Milwaukee for games against the Brewers. Some players even refuse to stay there again.

In a Halloween 2021 article on MLB.com, Michael Clair details some of the stories that baseball players (by definition a superstitious lot) say they have experienced at the Pfister. You should go read the whole article. But, for an appetizer, here's the story about the Philadelphia Phillies' Bryce Harper, from his days as a member of the Washington Nationals:

"While staying in the Pfister in 2012, Harper had laid out his shirt and pants on a table by the end of the bed before going to sleep for the night.

"'When I woke up in the morning — I swear on everything — the clothes were on the floor and the table was on the opposite side of the room against the wall, Harper said. "I was so flustered. I honestly thought there might be someone in my room. I had no idea what the hell just happened, so I actually looked around, and then I checked to see if the door was still latched, and it was.'

"Harper thought that perhaps it was a prank from a teammate, but no one came forward. The slugger then requested to be moved to a different room."

(Hopefully they didn't move him to 237 or 1408.)

October Postcrossings with witches and ghosts

Autumn and Christmas/New Year's are my two favorite times of year to ramp up my Postcrossing participation. Sending and receiving Halloween-themed postcards during spooky season adds to the fun, especially at a time when the daily 100+ temperatures here in Arizona are making it hard to think about pumpkins and hayrides. (Having COVID-19 isn't helping, either.)

Show above are two of the postcards that have come to our mailbox in recent days. The witchy cat is from a woman in Germany who says her postcard interests include castles, ruins, cemeteries and skulls. I wonder if I could get an outfit like that onto one of our cats. I could see Brave Sir Oliver or Spice fitting the bill, if they'd stay still.

The ghost parent with the baby carriage was sent by a longtime Postcrosser from Lithuania — she's mailed more than 10,000 cards — who is also a mother of three, harvests mushrooms and is a Pokémon Go trainer. Phew! 

Shown below is one of the postcards I've been mailing out to some Postcrosser this autumn. I love the vintage illustration. It's a reproduction of an image that was used on a Gibson pop-up Halloween greeting card in the middle of the 20th century. (Gibson, which dates to 1855, is now part of American Greetings.)

RIP, Charlie Hustle & Mount Mutombo

(This is the first Pete Rose-related item I could lay my hands on: Street and Smith's Official Yearbook 1982 for baseball. From about 1981 to 1986, this was the most anticipated annual magazine for me each spring. It was the bible for the statistics from the previous MLB season and the rosters/previews for the upcoming season. For me, USA Today's daily sports section and then USA Today Baseball Weekly gradually took its place. These days, the magazine I most look forward to is Fortean Times. Don't judge.)

SEPTEMBER 30, 2024 — On this day, as the southeastern U.S. continues search-and-rescues and picking up the shattered pieces after the depredations of Helene; as Israel widens its military operations against terrorist states throughout the tinderbox of the Middle East; as we continue a stifling streak of unseasonable 100-plus-degree days in bone-dry central Arizona; as we consider what a presidential candidate truly meant when he talked about the need for "one really violent day" to combat crime; and as we prepare to celebrate former President Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday tomorrow, two baseball teams teams played a regular-season-ending doubleheader in Atlanta's suburbs, not far from a massive plume of dark smoke smelling of chemicals emanating from an industrial plant fire that forced thousands across multiple counties to either evacuate or shelter in place. 

As the second game of the doubleheader that sent both the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves into the MLB playoffs ended, the world learned of the death at age 83 of Peter Edward Rose Sr., who is MLB's all-time hits leader but was banned from the sport in 1989 for gambling on baseball games. Rose's great hustle and talent on the baseball diamond will forever be intertwined with the shame he brought upon himself by betting on games, including his own team's games, and then denying and lying about his misdeeds for many years thereafter. 

I first became aware of Pete Rose around 1979, when I was 8 and living in southern New Jersey and he was playing in his first season with the Philadelphia Phillies, at age 38. The next year, Rose helped the Phillies win their first World Series championship and became a legend in the city, at least until the summer of 1989, when the permanent ban issued by Bart Giamatti, who himself would be dead in eight days, broke the hearts of many of his fans. Not long after, Rose served five months in federal prison for tax evasion.

* * *

Another professional athlete who played in Philadelphia died today. His full name was Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo. 

Dikembe Mutombo brought his 7-foot-2 frame to Philadelphia and played basketball for the 76ers in the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 NBA seasons. He specialty was blocking shots. Off the court, his specialty was doing humanitarian work. As The Associated Press noted: "He became a global ambassador for the NBA and served on the boards of many organizations, including Special Olympics International, the CDC Foundation and the National Board for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. While he was playing for Atlanta in 1997, he founded the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation to improve living conditions in his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo."

“He loved others with every ounce of his being. That’s what made him so accessible. That’s what made him real. Dikembe Mutombo was salt and light, and today, on the 30th of September, 2024, he has been called to rest," his son, Ryan Mutombo, said.

Mutombo was 58. He died — and doesn't everything just seem interconnected these days? — in Atlanta.

Surviving on Spaceship Earth

In this heartbreaking weekend of the Hurricane Helene aftermath, I've had this 1971 Ballantine paperback sitting at my desk for a while. I kind of just want to blog it while things are already depressing and then just shuffle it out of the way.

How to Be a Survivor: A Plan to Save Spaceship Earth, by Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich and Richard L. Harriman, isn't the cheeriest of topics, but it caught my interest a year ago when I was looking at advertisements in the back of Ray Bradbury's The October Country and other vintage paperbacks.

If it isn't clear from the cover, this is an alarmist book. In the opening pages, Ehrlich and Harriman write: "But crowded, hungry, and miserable as much of mankind is today, tomorrow seems destined to be much worse." Their primary concern was that the world's population was, in 1971, at a tipping point that would imminently cause cascading failures in global food and health systems. Or that simmering geopolitics would lead to a world war, waged with nuclear and chemical weapons, that would be too catastrophic for civilization to rebound from. 

Like I said, cheery stuff. But not too terribly unlike the news and stressors we deal with on a daily basis in 2024. Our Spaceship Earth (a phrase popularized, but not invented, by Adlai Stevenson in a 1965 speech to the United Nations) is certainly listing to the side a bit.

We could generously say that the authors' alarmism was correct but somewhat misfocused. Others of that era already knew about the ways in which we were degrading the environment and warming the Earth with fossil fuels. But Ehrlich and Harriman seemed much more concerned with the global birthrate and overcrowding.

Other critics aren't so generous, especially when it comes to Ehrlich, who also wrote 1967's The Population Bomb and who, at age 92, is still warning about doomsday. In 2023, James Woudhuysen, a journalist and professor of forecasting and innovation, wrote:

"All forecasters make mistakes. But few forecasters have been as consistently wrong as biologist Paul Ehrlich. ... It is important to understand just how consistently and absurdly wrong Ehrlich’s predictions have been. ... The reason Ehrlich always misses the mark is not just down to bad luck. He relies on a kindergarten understanding of political economy, in which multiplying human beings always run up against the limits of Spaceship Earth. What all his forecasts ignore is how human ingenuity, risk-taking ambition and technological innovation can overcome the apparent physical limits of the planet."

* * *

There are some interesting and divergent takes about How to Be a Survivor from reviewers on Goodreads. One writes: "A book with some good ideas, most of which are based in fantasyland. For example, the authors rightly spend appreciable time blasting the incompetence, inefficiency and corruption of the federal government, yet inexplicably suggest an alternative of even more bureaucracy to take its place." That's a fair point.

A recent reviewer discusses the urgent need for meaningful political action, though she's clearly discussing the climate crisis more than global overpopulation: "This [book] explains why anyone's chance of survival is directly dependent on political action forcing the governments of the world to face up to the environmental crisis. Individual efforts without political action just aren't enough."

Finally, there's this Goodreads viewpoint from 2011, which I find incredibly discouraging: "Thankfully this has proven to be total bunk with time. I regretfully read this as an impressionable freshmen in college in 1971. I keep around to remind myself to be skeptical."

"Total bunk" is taking it a bit far. Maybe the alarmism of Ehrlich and Harriman was, in part, a schtick to sell books. But I think it might also be argued that their hearts were in the right place. They want a better planet and more hope for human civilization. Consider what they're getting at in this passage:

"In the new society, education will be a subject of great importance. Children will learn early that their own well-being is dependent upon the well-being of all other human beings and upon the well-being of the world's ecological systems. They will also learn how to care for Spaceship Earth, to keep it running smoothly into the indefinite future. They will grow up to consider it their pleasant duty to spend at least part of their time serving as crewmen on Spaceship Earth. They will expect to participate on a regular basis in the governance and maintenance of the ship, and to spend part of their time in the service of the fellow passengers. They will also expect to continue their education throughout their lives so as to maximize the value of both their contribution to society and of their own existence."

To bring this to a conclusion and circle back to Hurricane Helene, I think these weekend tweets about the devastation in Appalachia may seem alarmist, but they represent the truthful urgency of the situation we find ourselves in right now on our rapidly warming and changing planet:

Anna Jane Joyner: "I’ve told my family many times that we can never sell our houses in Asheville because it’s one of the safer places in the US re: climate impacts. Never ever imagined it would get wiped out by a hurricane before our home on the Gulf Coast. Nowhere is safe. It doesn’t feel real."

Jeff McFadden: "People keep talking like collapse is some future event. Modern society cannot build towns, cities, roads, bridges, dams, and interstate electric grids as fast as they're burning up and washing away. This is a collapsing system."

Sarah Richardson: "Hardly any news about entire towns being destroyed, and hardly any national news about Phoenix reaching 114 degrees at the end of September ... the climate change denial is strong."

* * *

 

Meanwhile, Old Man Banjo just wants naps, cuddles and Temptations treats,

but, then again, he's not an elected official tasked with solving problems

The devastation of Helene

Better times: Undated Color-King Natural Color Card postcard with a view from Thousand Pines Inn 

in Tryon, North Carolina. The inn is now a private residence.

Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 26, has devastated the southeastern United States and Appalachia with its rain, wind and tidal surge. Very preliminary estimates are that there is about $100 billion in damage and economic loss. Some of the worst impacts have been in western North Carolina, in areas that I'm somewhat familiar with from my time living in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Other significant impacts occurred in Pinellas County, Florida, where I lived for a few years as a teenager.

The Washington Post reported this afternoon: 

"Even as response teams worked to reach those struggling amid the wreckage, mountain communities in Tennessee and North Carolina were bracing Saturday for more flooding as Helene continued its destructive path, pushing dams to the brink, forcing residents to flee to higher ground and leaving some towns entirely cut off from communication. Officials were still waiting to get a complete assessment of the damage in isolated areas."

In Appalachia, which includes far western North Carolina, almost all of the communities are isolated. There are also cities of 90,000-plus, such as Asheville, North Carolina, but Helene didn't discriminate in dumping about 30 inches of rain across wide swaths of the region.

Some of the heartbreak, the full extent to which may takes days or weeks to determine, has been documented in real time on Twitter (X) and Facebook. But that's only from folks who are able to pick up a cell signal sufficient to communicate with the outside world. Every voice deserves to be documented for the historical record.

Here are just a few of the Twitter posts I've seen:

Ginny Barker: "Please pray for my community of Swannanoa, NC. We have had complete devastation from Hurricane Helene. No power for several counties over. No water. Spotty cell service. This is to us what Katrina was to New Orleans."

Andrew Price: "I made it out of Asheville. The entire area has no cell service, no power, no water, no sewer. I tried several times to make it  off campus, but neighborhoods are blocked by power lines, trees, and flood waters. UNC Asheville has not been communicating well with students."

Brad Panovich (Charlotte meteorologist): "Our station received this email from Banner Elk in Avery county. 'I am hoping to open a line of communication with the "outside world".  Residents of Elk River in Banner Elk are completely stranded.  Attached is a picture of what used to be the bridge which is the only way in or out of the community.  We have no power, water, cell service....  We do have a generator and wifi at the clubhouse, which  is how we are sending this.  Most of the residents are elderly, and there is no way to get out if there is an emergency.  If nothing else, maybe you guys can help us communicate information to/from the outside. Scott'"

Ash (West Virginia resident): "National media hasn't grasped the severity of the flooding in Appalachia. Entire downtowns and highways are gone, homes washed away, many without power, cell service, or escape routes. We are one of the poorest regions in the U.S. and many won’t recover. Our region needs help."

YourQueerAuntie: "Appalachia already didn’t have much. You’ll see footage from Asheville and Boone the bigger mountain towns. Please don’t forget the smaller rural communities that are entirely decimated and were already lacking recourses. Every single road in my family’s community is gone."

Katsumi27: "Tryon is NOT FINE. I’m sitting here without power and damage. Power lines and huge tress all over the road. 9 has huge down tress and power lines."

Bill Hangley Jr.: "so much story still to come. the Appalachians are incredibly rugged, steep and thickly forested, full of creeks & small rivers; almost no flatlands. towns cluster in valleys on narrow floodplains. once a road is out, you’re stuck until they rebuild that road"

Fred McCormick (Swannanoa Valley resident, journalist and business owner): "I’m exhausted. There isn’t a lot of new information to report from Black Mountain, where power and water remain out. Local officials do not have an ETA for repairing the water service, which is out due to the electrical outage. Many roads are still impassable."

Ashley (Charleston, South Carolina, resident): "One of my best friends is the social media manager for Chimney Rock State Park in NC. I haven’t heard from her since 10:30 this morning, 9/27/24. If anyone knows Maddy or knows someone who may know Maddy, please let us know she’s okay. I’m terrified."

About 13 long hours later, Ashley posted this update:

1920s postcard from Bruges

This postcard of of Saint John's Hospital in Bruges, Belgium, was mailed to Moylan/Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, in August 1928, if I'm reading the year on the postmark correctly.

Saint John's opened as a hospital in the 12th century and was still in operation when this postcard was sent. It didn't close as a hospital until 1977 — not a bad run! — and is now a museum.

The cursive message from Louise to Alfred is a bit hard for me to fully decipher. My eyes and ability to suss out the handwriting of a century ago aren't what they were when I started this blog in 2010. (I may be getting a second cataract surgery this fall, so maybe those skills will bounce back.) The gist of the letter, however, is a rave about Bruges and its old brick buildings and beautifully decorated churches. 

It's still a destination worthy of raves. English actor James Frain described Bruges thusly in an interview with the BBC:

"Bruges is a beautiful medieval city almost untouched by time. If you like jazz you will be well catered for. If you like chocolate and beer you will be in heaven."

Related post

• 1920s postcards: A walkable street and an adventurous path

Hans Holzer's "The Witchcraft Report"

I haven't had an installment of the Hans Holzer series since February and The Psychic World of Plants, so today — the day we mark the autumnal equinox — seems like a great day to delve into this 1970s book about spookiness, weirdness and incantations.

• Title: The Witchcraft Report
• Additional cover text: "An up-to-the-minute report on Pagan groups in America by the author GHOST HUNTER, ESP AND YOU and CHARISMATICS."
• Back cover excerpt: "What makes a person of sound mind and body turn to Witchcraft and the 'Old Religion' as opposed to the traditional, orthodox forms of worship?"
• Author: Hans Holzer (1920-2009)
• Publication date: October 1973
• Publisher: Ace Books 
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 222
• Cover price: $1.25
• Epigraph: "Ye shall dance, make music, sing, feast, and make love — all in my praise." (The Gospel of Aradia)
• What's the Gospel of Aradia? Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches is an 1899 book by Pennsylvanian Charles Godfrey Leland comprising his translation of a religious text believed to be used by pagan witches in Italy. Though there are many questions about whether the religious text was genuine, Leland's book had a major influence on Wicca's development in the 20th century.
• First sentences: Ever since I wrote THE TRUTH ABOUT WITCHCRAFT and THE NEW PAGANS people from all over have been writing to me in the hope of becoming witches. Some of these are twelve and thirteen year olds whose chances of being introduced to a coven or even a solitary practitioner of "The Old Religion" are practically nil until they reach the age of reason, or what passes as the legal age.
• Last sentence: Finally, if you who seek the ways of Witchcraft find that it is a philosophy that goes deeper than surface, a religion that is more than skin deep, don't be ashamed to get involved: body, mind, and spirit are the true trinity of life.
• Random excerpt #1: Individual witches may still practice in Cincinnati but there is, to the best of my knowledge, no organized coven now in operation. 
• Random excerpt #2: A pert, dark-haired lady who goes by the craft name of Cassandra Salem, or Sandy Salem for short, rides her jolly broom around Anaheim, California. 
• What was Sandy Salem's real name: Judy Malis, according to Holzer. And she lived in Huntington Beach.
• Random excerpt #3: If anything, it proves that Pagans have the same basic problems Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans have and, for that matter, all religions all over the world: sometimes they can't get along with each other, sometimes they exaggerate things out of proportion because they are so close to their problems, they cannot see how really insignificant these problems are to someone taking a long range view of things.
• Online reviews: This specific book doesn't have any reviews of note on Goodreads, Amazon or elsewhere online. And a search of Newspapers.com also came up empty. In 2002, Holzer published Witches: True Encounters with Wicca, Wizards, Covens, Cults and Magick, a hefty tome that incorporates some witch-themed material from his 1960s and 1970s books. Of that 2002 book, Green Stone wrote this review on Amazon in 2011: "The main problem I have with this book is that it seems to have been primarily written in the 1970's, and then updated to include a LITTLE 21st century (year 2000 and later) culture and Witchcraft information. ... If you want details on some of the goings on in Witchcraft in the 1960's or 1970's, or a taste of what some of the covens were like then, this book may give you some help with that. The many highly imaginative prayers, invocations and rites by Lady Svetlana of Feraferia which are included will give a good taste of the 'loose' 1970's when if what you said was beautiful and poetic, you weren't expected to make any sense." [Feraferia is mentioned extensively in The Witchcraft Report.] 

I thought it would be appropriate for black cat Stubby to pose with today's paperback.