31 Nights of Halloween - Night 23: Horror - at the Honky-Tonk!

As your Humble Host has, perhaps, made clear, the terror and fright of Halloween can be found anywhere. So, of course, we find it in the roadside bars and truck stops, from where the unnerving twang of steel guitars and plaintive cries of fiddles ring out into the night. Let us wander into one of them, whether tucked away off a turnpike in the Midwest or hidden on worn highways in the South or out in the Southwestern deserts. An old, brightly sinister Wurlitzer jukebox gleams in the dark, awaiting its sacrifice of coin to begin to blare out its thunder. With a whir and a click, it begins its musical litany.

We here in the Dark Dimension rarely avoid the chance to summon up the redoubtable Buck Owens, his jangly Bakersfield sound applying to any and all subjects. Here he tackles the Universal monsters.

Next, let's descend into a near-forgotten bit of swamp-boogie, with Jim Stafford offering up a tale of creepy-crawlers and their adverse effect on woo.

Let us linger a while longer in the mist-shrouded bayous, with Bobby Bare's spooky recounting of the legend of Marie Laveau, the real-life voodoo queen who seemingly dominated New Orleans for the better part of a century. Here, in this - perhaps - embellished description of her, penned by no less than Shel Silverstein, Bare's languid baritone adds a certain wry humor to a petrifying parable.

But not all honky-tonk is good-humored. In fact, much of it pours forth from the pain of a destroyed heart and betrayed loyalties. Prepare your souls for a shiver as Lefty Frizzell - whose stint in a Roswell, New Mexico jail in the fall of 1947 may only be a coincidence with the mysterious happenings there in the July prior - croons a morose story of love and loss and undying devotion.

Finally, let us close out this night of Halloween with honky-tonk royalty. Hank III, the grandson of the father of Honky-tonk, Hank Williams, occasionally, when not jamming with his metal band, will tear forth with a platter of hellishly hot honky-tonk of his own. In tune with Hank III's departed Granddad's own self-destructive bent, the title says it all.