Twisted Treasuries #9: Teach Your Children Well... about Halloween

Went to Wal-Mart a week or two back. While they had very minimal goodies in the way of Halloween, the one thing that did catch my eye was a copy of In a Dark, Dark Room. I snatched that mother up so quick in the blissful throws of nostalgia you wouldn't believe. That book was my ghost story book when I was little. If you haven't read "The Green Ribbon" at least once in your life, you haven't lived! On camping trips someone would tell a version of a story from that book and it never ever got old. I think we were still rehashing them even in high school. Nothing sticks with you from your childhood like a good ghost story. Whether it was told over the glow of a campfire, the flashlight beams of a slumber party, or simply read in the middle of the public library, those stories stick with you. Most anything you read as a child, or had read to you tends to stick. I guess that's why they tell parentals they should read to their kids.

This week Twisted Treasuries goes vintage, searching the dusty annals of kiddies books and Halloweens passed, for some new treasures to satiate the need for the ghostly written word.

In my house come Halloween, you can't go without a viewing of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, so this book is a no brainer. The Brother especially loved Snoopy and all his holiday specials. I remember actually being scared watching Linus sitting in that patch waiting for The Great Pumpkin to show and when Snoopy crept through those rows.... oh my God! Can you be 4 years old and still have a heart attack? I think I came close. Pretty hilarious in hindsight.

via NostalgiaMama

HeighHo for Halloween is a collection of stories, poems and plays from 1948! That cover is enough for me though-- consider me sold! ;)

via TheLazyPeacock

MoonKittens has so many Halloween books to choose from, it boggles the mind. I think I like the monsters books the best though. I was always a monster-lovin kind of kid and always will be. Creepy Creatures is the book with the Frankenstein Creature I modeled and stitched my Monster Stitches embroidery piece after.

via MoonKittens Timeline

 

 

I'm not much of one for rhymes and riddles, but for Halloween and with the illustrations this book has I think I could learn to love 'em.

via Midwestgirl

 

 

Okay, so technically Jack and Jill isn't a book, it's a magazine, but could you imagine getting this in the mail (which may just happen if I stare at this listing long enough...)or finding it on a magazine rack at the local pharmacy, getting a burger and shake with your pals, running around on your bikes, terrorizing sidewalks in small town American come Halloween? The heart simply swoons!

via BadJuJuAntiques

 

 

 

Check out the rest of the treasury and then do a search for yourself. There are so many great titles on Etsy right now. Read that Halloween into your kids early!

Ice Cream and R.L. Stine

R.L. Stine: Making scrunchies scary.

When I was a kid I devoured R.L. Stine's Fear Street novels by the dozens. Super Chillers and sagas were my favorites. There's gotta be a couple boxes worth (at least) of paperbacks in my parents basement smoldering under five pounds of dust and cobwebs. The Brother was the same way with the Goosebumps series. His collection is still squished in with the entirety of The Boxcar Children series on the bottom of his bookshelf.

I think he'd be okay with my sharing that...

It's funny the way something can play such a huge role in your life and then years later, after they get forgot with all that crazy life stuff that tends to happen, something flips a switch and it all comes rushing back. Last month I probably wouldn't have remembered The Real Ghostbusters or Eerie Indiana any more than I had Fear Street. Mostly, I remember the crazy covers, because YES, I did judge the books by the covers, who wouldn't? They were flat out awesome.

I probably couldn't sum up a plotline if you held a machete to my throat, but I remember the books and I remember I was obsessed. I have  R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour: Don't Think About It to thank for the resurrection in my synapsis. I caught it when it came out on the Cartoon Network a few years back (ironically at the beach, where I find myself sitting today writing this) and the nostalgia magic got all kinds of crazy stirred up. Then, I caught the series on the Hub. The channel's right next door to I.D. Discovery, and while searching for the next episodes of Deadly Women and Most Evil, I noticed the television series of Goosebumps and The Haunting Hour listed on the guide.
The way the universe works, huh?

Today, I heard an ice cream truck troll passed the house. There's really nothing creepier than ice cream truck music. Well, except for maybe bunnies.
Are there bunnies? :/


Oh crap...

Now if we'd ever had an ice cream truck rolling thru our neighborhood growing up, maybe I'd feel different about it.The nostalgia of the memory would get me all smiley in the same way Fear Street, Eerie Indiana or Tales From the Darkside (or The Crypt) manage to, but we didn't have an ice cream man that pulled up to the curb come summer time with sweet treats for us kiddies. We didn't have curbs or sidewalks or even many kids in our neighborhood. Still don't-- I'm realizing more and more what an offbeat childhood I had (never deprived or depraived, just different) and the everlasting effect it's had on me. Give me ghost stories, high school murder mysteries and even evil lawn gnomes, but an ice cream truck jingling "innocently" by? I shoot under the bed to hold hands with the monsters and the dust bunnies (bunnies?!) till it passes... But that pied piper calliope sound blasting from the trucks speakers this afternoon did remind me of good old R.L. Stine and an episode I'd seen of The Haunting Hour a little while back:

"Only the bold get the Creamy Cold"



For the full episode:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Summer's almost over. I can't wait to see it go.
And the ice cream man with it.

Bustin' Makes Me Feel Good

Lurking in the dusty halls of nostalgia with The Real Ghostbusters today, I not only had the sudden memory of, but also managed to find.....

THIS!

Weren't we just talking about colorforms yesterday? I used to love playing with this set, and can't say I hated the experience messing around with it today. It was the only non-girl toy I really had all my own. I had the token Barbies, tea sets and a couple Care Bears, but The Brother (as I sort of fondly call him behind his back) had ALL the toys I wanted- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, GI Joe stuff from the cartoon. He was constantly complaining that I was taking them or he was breaking them... cause he was a boy and they like to eviscerate their stuff, which is why I stole his toys cause he didn't appreciate them. For some reason though I got the Ghostbusters colorform!

Luckily, I was a pretty fastidious kid, so as far as I know everything's still in the set. I do have a feeling however there's supposed to be a couple more slime green footprints....

(Egons proton pack seems to have misfired...)

This background is just too cool. All those little details really make it.

(this guy was always my favorite)

Saturday Morning Scares

FearNet's new Saturday morning Fun House premieres tomorrow morning at 10am. I've cheated the getting up part and I've set up to record.




I remember watching The Real Ghostbusters way back when--you know, when cartoons were good. I had a crush on Eegon, Peter, and yes, even Slimer (he was friendly then-- imaging my surprise when I saw the real movie!)
Crypt Keeper and Eerie Indiana came later, after I'd discovered the fine art of sleeping in, but I caught an episode now and then.

I know I could easily get the DVD's or track everything down on netflix, but I'm kind of jazzed for this!

126 Days

For the longest time my best friend Laurie B and I would rent "Ernest Scared Stupid" whenever we had a sleepover at each others house. For awhile there it was "Toys" with Robin Williams and "A Pyromaniacs Love Story", but that's only because we kept falling asleep in the middle of it.

I remember we would torcher my little brother telling him about the troll and how it was coming for him. I didn't mind sharing my little brother with her to help induce his nightmares-- she was the youngest in her family with two older brothers so she needed the catharsis I'd imagine.

Then, every spring my family would rent this house in the Shenandoah mountains. We'd end up leaving late and driving along the highway in twilight all those tiny pines that lined the manmade hills I'd tell my brother were the trolls following us to the cabin. He bought it every time. He never did make the connection about milk being a viable weapon against the troll and his minions.

I watched this a few weeks ago and fell in love all over again with Eartha Kitt and the lactose intolerant, child-eating trolls. Even though, technically I guess they didn't really eat 'em, just turned 'em into tree root sculptures. Another fact lost on The Brother all those years ago.