Spooky Shit Round Up
October 2020
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I know, I know. “Jodi…you just did a round up last week. What gives?” Well, here’s the thing….at this point, ya’ll know I love all things creepy, scary, and macabre. Since October has literally just begun, I wanted to share some of the best* that the Halloween season has to offer right up front so you can enjoy the most unsettling, spine-chilling, and eerie fun all month long!
Creepy Artists To Follow
- Mizna Wada is a Japan based artist who specializes in creepy girl art. Half of her stuff I want tattooed on me and the other half I want hanging on my walls. She creates characters that are scary, strong, cute, and a little bit sexy which is really all I want in my creepy gals. Mizna Wada has a DIY blog site where she shares monthly wallpapers for your phone and a bunch of crafts that you can print out for free! There’s Valentine’s Day gift tags, birthday cards, Christmas ornaments, and these cool ass bat and witch dance banners that I printed out myself to hang in the office. Check her out!
- I only recently came across Laurie A. Conley’s art in the last couple of months and I’m honestly kicking myself for not knowing about her sooner. Conley is a professional artist who has been doing book illustrations for the last 30 years so there’s a good chance you’ve seen her stuff before. She works in pen and ink for her drawings and they’re beautiful. There’s so much detail in them, but they’re so simple and I actually just bought a couple prints from her Etsy shop last week! I’d consider her work “classy scary” if there is such a thing.
-I. Love. Jellykoe. This husband and wife team used to have a table set up at the Pittsburgh Comic Con (Steel City Con) pretty regularly and I always made it a point to stop and pick something up from them, the entry wall to our office is covered in Jellykoe pop culture prints! All of their work is very colorful and cheerful looking which I love as a contrast to the general horror theme most of their work has. They’re currently doing a Mystery Shock Box deal where you’ll get 6-7 horror themed items for $30. I bought mine the other day and I’ve got my fingers crossed for this cute Jason Voorhees pin. You can pick yours up, or check out their other prints/pins/stickers and more at Jellykoe.com.
Short Stories To Give You The Chills
Links to all of these stories can be found by clicking on their title. Happy Hallow-reading!
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
- In 1948, Shirley Jackson wrote a short story that would cause cancellations of the New Yorker and countless hate mail after it’s publication. That story was The Lottery. Personally, I think The Lottery is a perfect story. It’s a quick read, it’s a simple concept, it’s easy to follow, and it leaves the reader wondering how they would react in the same situation. The Lottery, and actually most of the short stories on this list, doesn’t rely on gore or a lot of violence for its scares but rather the primal instinct to survive. It’s easy to go along with an outdated and tragic ritual…until it’s your turn to be at the center of that ritual.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
- A Classic, amirite? My first introduction to this story was watching the 1949 Disney cartoon The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and I always really liked it. Washington Irving’s story itself makes Ichabod seem a lot less fun and likable than Disney did but this is still a story worth visiting for the Halloween season. Flaming pumpkins. Headless hessians. Wild horse chases. All the makings of a good creepy tale.
- It took me years to get a hold of this short story because for some reason the book was like a million dollars on Amazon, I couldn’t find it in local bookstores, and the library never had it. But, finally, it showed up on the Libby app for my library so I got to read it last year. If you’ve seen Alfred Hitchcock’s interpretation of this story, (Hitchcock also made a movie out of du Maurier’s suspense novel, Rebecca, that has a remake coming to Netflix on the 21st,) you’ll know the basic premise of the story, a town is being taken over and attacked by birds. That’s it. There’s no known motivation and no known way to make it stop. The story follows one man and his family as they combat those who don’t feel the birds are a serious threat on top of the danger the birds bring. It’s an unsettling story and leaves you to decide how it turns out for the family.
The Langoliers by Stephen King
- Okay, this one is more of a novella than a short story but 1. I love this story, 2. I’m sure someone could probably finish it in a single sitting if they tried hard enough and 3. I couldn't do a Spooky Shit Round Up without including my main dude. The Langoliers is about a group of strangers who fall asleep on their flight only to wake up and find that all of the other passengers are gone. In fact, everyone at the airport they manage to land at is gone too. Now it’s up to the 10 folks left to figure out how to get back to normal life before the distant static sound gets too close. If you’ve seen the 90s miniseries version of The Langoliers just…give me a break, okay? Effects weren’t as fleshed out as they are today! Maybe meatballs with teeth were a scary thing then! No matter, this story is perfect if you prefer your scares as a feeling of general unease over outright horror.
Shows and Movies To Make You Sleep With The Lights On
-Ya’ll. This is not only one of the best horror shows to come out in the recent past, but one of the best shows period. Loosely based off of Shirley Jackson’s novel of the same name, The Haunting of Hill House show is beautiful in every way. The acting is wonderful, the story is captivating, and the scenes have secrets in the background that will take you several watches to find. Plus, Hill House is also responsible for one of the biggest jump scares I’ve ever seen, like for real. Jonathan fell off the couch it took him so off guard. With Netflix putting out what I’m calling their sister season, The Haunting of Bly Manor (loosely based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw) on October 9th, you’ve still got a whole week to catch up with Hill House or to binge it all over again. And you should. It’s just as good as the first time.
- This movie makes the list cause it’s one of the few I actually saw in theaters more than once. I know that some people really don’t like The Blair Witch Project but I am not one of those people. When I saw it at the theater with my dad when I was 10 I became OBSESSED. They had marketed the whole thing as real and I couldn’t get enough of the mystery behind it. If blood, guts, and gore aren’t your thing, this movie could be perfect for you. It’s all about the basic fear of being hunted and the fear of the woods and the dark. The camera work could definitely be vomit inducing if you’re prone to motion sickness but I personally feel like it adds to the raw footage, unscripted vibe they’re going for. And if you’re too scared to watch it, just call me over…I can 100% perform my own one woman version of it. Oh! And don’t waste your time on the sequels…they’re trash.
- British TV. You know I love it. So I had to add the BBC “documentary,” Ghostwatch to my Spooky Shit Round Up. Jonathan showed me this movie the first year we were dating and it scared me enough that when I had to go to the bathroom after it ended, I made him walk downstairs with me. Ghostwatch aired in the UK on Halloween night, 1992. Using real BBC personalities and presented as a live broadcast, Ghostwatch centers on a mother and her two daughters who have been experiencing hauntings around their house. While a reporter and camera man go live in the house, a host and a paranormal expert watch from the studio and take phone calls from viewers. Now, Jonathan tried to play up the idea that this had been filmed live and I spent the first 45 minutes not quite believing him but also not sure so I think that added to the terror I felt during this movie. Ghostwatch freaked out a nation a la War of the Worlds and you can find it on Shudder tonight!
- Channel Zero is so weird. Weird for weirdness sake isn’t usually something I’m into but the first season of Channel Zero subtitled Candle Cove was one I really liked. The Candle Cove season follows a man who returns to his hometown to figure out if his brother’s disappearance and the murder of several other local kids at the time, is connected to a bizarre children’s show they watched: Candle Cove. The show only aired during the time of the crimes and has suddenly returned to screens in the present day. I think this show is the right amount of creepy. The puppet characters and music found in Candle Cove give the creepy crawlies and the mystery surrounding the whole strange situation is interesting to get wrapped up in. There’s also this weirdo dude made up entirely of teeth that will surely give you those terrible teeth falling out nightmares. Channel Zero has three more seasons beyond Candle Cove and you can find them all on Shudder. There’s only 6 episodes in each season so you could probably buzz through the whole series before the month is up!
Fun Frights
- Where do I start with Bad Ben? First of all, this one no budget movie spawned at least six sequels so far, so allow that to give hope to aspiring filmmakers everywhere. In 2016, Nigel Bach produced/wrote/directed/and starred in the first film, Bad Ben, which follows a man named Tom Riley as he prepares to renovate and flip a house he just bought. Shot almost exclusively as if through security cameras around the property, Tom runs into trouble when his big project is thwarted by apparent evil taking over the home. Okay. The story itself is fine. The production value could honestly be worse for a film that was a one man show. But it’s Nigel Bach as Tom Riley that makes this thing worth the watch. I don’t know if the comedy was on purpose but I heartily laughed several times through out based solely on Tom’s dialogue and reactions to the spooky occurrences in his home. Take 90 minutes tonight and watch it on Amazon Prime (when I posted the link it said not available in my area but I DEFINITELY watched them there so give it a look.) P.S. I hate the layout of the house so bad…why would anyone build a wall to block seeing their driveway from the front door? Literally anything could be lurking there. I’ve watched like 3 or 4 of these movies now and I hate it every time.
- I don’t know why I always thought this was a kids movie….but it is so very not a kids movie. Fool Williams and his family are about to be evicted by their landlords, the Robesons who like to be called Mommy and Daddy. Fool and some other dudes decide to break into Mommy and Daddy’s house but all hell breaks loose with murder, cannibal kids, and Daddy in an insane BDSM outfit. I promise I can’t do this movie justice so just go check it out on Shudder.
- Taika Waititi is a gift. He creates such interesting and fun characters that you just have to love. Together with Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords, the duo wrote, co-directed, and starred in this 2014 mockumentary style film about a group of vampire roommates dealing with the usual roommate trials and tribulations….plus all that other supernatural stuff. The silliness of watching these creatures that are supposed to be violent, blood thirsty beings deal with the monotony of day to day life, like chores and rent, is brilliant and the whole movie is so damn quotable. The franchise also released a series of the same name last year which is now two seasons in and just as charming as the movie. You can watch the series on Hulu and the movie can be rented on Amazon.
*This is in no way a comprehensive list of everything I’d want to share…but otherwise this post would be 30,000 words. If you’d like more spooky recommendations leave a comment, send me an email, or message me on Instagram!
Guess our inspiration
If there’s one thing I know, it’s spooky shit. Movies, stories, games, podcasts. If it’s scary I’m interested. Since 2020 is limited on the haunted houses, haunted hayrides, and general scary adventures, hopefully you can find something just as haunting to fill these 31 nights with fright!
What are some of your favorite scary things you like to indulge in for October? Share them with us in the comments below!