31 Nights of Halloween - Night 16: Supernatural Thing

Long after Midnight one lost evening, I grasped towards sleep, lulled towards unconsciousness by a radio program concerned with all things weird. Soon, a muffled, rhythmic thump flowed from the speakers into the darkened room as the accursed commercials, scourge of the airwaves, came to an end after another quarter-hour break. Yet another aural ghost of '70s disco came to encroach upon my mind, infiltrating troubled dreams. Who has not confronted the specter of a love that defies reason? Listen as the durable Ben E. King weaves a musical spell.

31 Nights of Halloween - Night 2: Disco Drac

After the sane, yet eminently listenable, Tavares of yesternight, let us now descend into unutterable madness; prepare to have your brain broken, to be manually remolded into a thing which can see into the Dark Dimension...and beyond. How may this be done, I hear you ask in quavering tones? Why, let Old Granddad Granvil unearth yet more long-buried '70s insanity (nevermind how Old Granddad grasped the use of a computer and the internet while his grandson - my dad, I leave off the "greats" for expediency's sake - never could figure out how a mouse worked). Don't shamble off that disco floor just yet, as we astrally project once again to 1977 to face another mystery, this time of a studio band of indeterminate origin (are they French? are they German?) called Hot Blood rearing its fang-filled collective head (heads? I'm losing my grip on proper English with the craziness) to lash our ears with this, the tale of...SOUL DRACULA. And not just one instance of this nightmare, but two - there are more, but I dare not risk my sanity and yours by posting more than these two.

"Ah, mercifully brief," I hear you sigh. Indeed. But questions remain (like, what's up with that dog puppet that shows up in the crowd right at the tail end? That's disturbing in itself). Prepare to have none answered, and many more arise, as we gaze again at a '70s European television stage where true lunacy is painfully birthed.

I think now our journey down the shadow-filled path to Halloween can continue, as those who survived this video onslaught have sufficient emotional fortitude to weather the psychic storms we will encounter along the way.

31 Nights of Halloween - Night 1: Tavares on the Case

Halloween being our favorite season here in the Dark Dimension, we - myself, dear Old Granddad Granvil, and Granny Black, the latter two here in spirit, natch - thought we'd try something different during this thinning of the veil between the world of the living and the Dark Dimension. Normally, posts are sparing, favoring quality (such as it is) over quantity. For this best of all holidays, we're going to be going daily, er, nightly. We'll be coffin up fearsome flotsam all month long.

And, damn, I don't know how the EC guys and the staff at Creepy kept up the wordplay - or should I say wordSLAY - and dreadful - or should I say DEADful - puns. I'm already exhausted - or should I say I feel like I've been EXHUMED?

It's an art, fellas, and I have UNDYING respect for you!

First up, let's ease into the season. Mystery is the cousin to horror, and SOUL group Tavares runs us through (not with a sword...yet) a list of '70s-era private dicks as they lament being ghosted by their best girl. So sit back and prepare to be disco-funkified as a love is purloined.