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Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

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Revisiting Frankenstein

I’ve been on a Mary Shelley roll lately! On my latest “Looking Back at Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 747), I revisit the brilliant Frankenstein. Here is the episode. ALT ALT
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Paula Welden and Missing Students

On December 1, 1946, sophomore Bennington College student Paula Jean Welden vanished. Her disappearance remains an unsolved mystery. I’m currently working on a book project that involves the Welden case. Today it feels especially important to say her name. Note: If anyone would like a (very brief!) peek into my current book project, here is a video of my presentation “Missing Students and Their Fictional Afterlives: True Crime, Crime Fiction, and Dark Academia.“ I gave this talk earlier this year at the Popular Culture Research Network’s “Guilty Pleasures: Examining Crime in Popular Culture” conference. ALT ALT
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Bertha Mellish and the Missing Student

On November 18, 1897, junior student Bertha Lane Mellish vanished from Mount Holyoke College. Her disappearance remains an unsolved mystery. I’m currently working on a book project that involves the Mellish case. Today it feels especially important to say her name. Note: If anyone would like a (very brief!) peek into my current book project, here is a video of my presentation “Missing Students and Their Fictional Afterlives: True Crime, Crime Fiction, and Dark Academia.“ I gave this talk earlier this year at the Popular Culture Research Network’s “Guilty Pleasures: Examining Crime in Popular Culture” conference. ALT ALT
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The Last Dangerous Visions

On my latest “Looking Back at Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 745), I discuss the New Wave in science fiction and the Dangerous Visions anthologies, including the newly-published The Last Dangerous Visions. ALT ALT
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!                                                           Today’s text is “It’s Halloween” from The Philadelphia Inquirer on 10/31/1898. Read the article here. Quote: “Goblins and fairies, good and evil, will be running amuck to-night, if the old Halloween traditions do not fail…. Every one may be both superstitious and sentimental to-night.” ALT It’s Halloween headline: “Goblins and Fairies Will Be Roaming Abroad Tonight”
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 30

Today’s text is “The Goblins" from Asbury Park Press on 10/31/1913. Read the article here. Quote: Who said that elves were banished? That goblins were no more? That sprites and fays had vanished From all their haunts of yore? Not so. They surely flourish As in their golden prime, And Hallowe’en they cherish As their most joyous time. ALT The Goblins artwork depicting trick-or-treaters on Halloween
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 29

Today’s text is “Hallowe’en – A Holiday of Traditions” from The Stoughton Courier on 11/1/1907. Read the article here. Quote: “From time out of mind this has been heralded as a night when witches, devils and other mischief-making beings go abroad on their baneful midnight errands…. The traditions of Hallowe’en also teach that on no other night in the twelve-month do such supernatural influences prevail as after dark on the final day of October.” ALT Hallowe'en - A Holiday of Traditions
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 28

Today’s text is “Halloween Lore Told” from The Butte Daily Post on 10/31/1931. Read the article here. Quote: “Halloween, the night of black hours, ‘when churchyards yawn and graves give up their dead.’ will be celebrated in traditional style when the sun goes down… legend has it, the lake of hades freezes, and friends skate across to stalk the world unchallenged. Evil will possess the shadows until cock-crow.” ALT Halloween Lore Told
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 27

Today’s text is “Spook and Goblin Atmosphere of Halloween Today Tame Compared with Horror Motif Expressed in Gothic Tales” from Indianapolis Star on 10/31/1937. Read the article here. Quote: “… the Halloween tradition in its various aspects runs through a surprising amount of highly respectable adult literature. Shakespeare’s frequent ghosts, the so-called Gothic novels or novels of terror which came to a climax in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein,’ Irving’s ‘Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ and Poe’s ‘Ligeia’ are certainly all in line with the Halloween tradition…”  ALT Goblin Atmosphere at Halloween
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 26

Today’s text is “Hallowe’en Activities” from The News-Pilot on 10/29/1928. Read the article here. Quote: Goblins gobble and werewolves howl; Banshees shriek and cry and scream Ululations, while the mournful owl Makes many fitful mortals dream. Hallowe'en Activities (With an Owl and Witch)
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 25

Today’s text is “Twinkling Feet’s Hallowe’en” from The Topaz Story Book: Stories and Legends of Autumn, Hallowe’en, and Thanksgiving (5th ed. 1928) compiled by Ada M. and Eleanor L. Skinner. Read it here. Quote: The pixie looked at her for a moment. Then he asked, “Do the children laugh a good deal on Hallowe’en?” “Why, my little man, it’s the time in all the year when they laugh most. To-night there is to be a witch’s party. I shall secretly join the children, and play all sorts of tricks for their amusement.“  ALT
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 24

Today’s text is Helps and Hints for Hallowe’en (1920) by Laura Rountree Smith. Read it here. Quote: Hist! be still! ’tis Hallowe’en, When fairies troop across the green! On Hallowe’en when elves and witches are abroad, we find it the custom over all the world to build bonfires, to keep off evil spirits; and this is the night of all nights to entertain friends with stunts similar to those performed two hundred years ago. On this night fortunes are told, games are played, and if it so happens that your birthday falls on this night, you may even be able to hold converse with fairies—so goes the ancient superstition! ALT
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 23

Today’s text is The Book of Hallowe’en (1919) by Ruth Edna Kelley. Read it here. Quote: All superstitions, everyday ones, and those pertaining to Christmas and New Year’s, have special value on Hallowe'en. It is a night of ghostly and merry revelry. ALT
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 22

Today’s text is Games for Hallow-e’en (1912) by Mary F. Blain. Read it here. Quote: The dining-room should also be in total darkness, except for the light given by the Jack-o’-lanterns, until the guests are seated, when they should unmask. The supper could be served in this dim light or the lights turned up and the room made brilliant. After the supper is over and while the guests are still seated a splendid idea would be to extinguish all the lights and to have one or more of the party tell ghost stories…. Another suggestion is to have the hall totally dark with the door ajar and no one in sight to welcome the guests. As they step in they are surprised to be greeted by some one dressed as a ghost who extends his hand which is covered with wet salt. ALT
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 21

Today’s text is Myra’s Well: A Tale of All-Hallow-E’en (1883) by George Francis Dawson. Read it here. Quote: It is the night of all nights of the year, When ghosts and warlocks haunt the troubled earth, And disembodied spirits visit us— Spirits of good and evil from the dead, Fresh from the angel hosts and from the damned, And from the vast profound betwixt the two… ALT
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 20

Today we begin the final part of our countdown this year with texts (that are available online) about Halloween itself! Today’s work is Halloween, A Romaunt, with Lays, Meditative and Devotional (1845) by H.S. Parsons. Read it here. Quote: If souls, once more, to these their haunts on earth, Can come, dear Lady, from the Spirit-land, I ask’d thee,—would it spoil thine hour of mirth, To see some sudden shape before thee stand! And a cold shudder told me, and thine hand Press’d dearer to mine own. But then said I, Oh! if thy friend were dead, and could command Some midnight hour to visit thee; reply, Say, would it grieve thee, Love, if love could never die! ALT
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 19

Let’s wrap up the Gothic portion of this year’s countdown with a classic that was published the same year as the now-better-known Dracula: The Beetle (1897) by Richard Marsh. Read it here. Quote: So far, in the room itself there had not been a sound. When the clock had struck ten, as it seemed to me, years ago, there came a rustling noise, from the direction of the bed. Feet stepped upon the floor,— moving towards where I was lying. It was, of course, now broad day, and I, presently, perceived that a figure, clad in some queer coloured garment, was standing at my side, looking down at me. It stooped, then knelt. My only covering was unceremoniously thrown from off me, so that I lay there in my nakedness. Fingers prodded me then and there, as if I had been some beast ready for the butcher’s stall. A face looked into mine, and, in front of me, were those dreadful eyes. Then, whether I was dead or living, I said to myself that this could be nothing human,— nothing fashioned in God’s image could wear such a shape as that. ALT
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 18

Today’s text is “A Night in Monk-Hall,” an excerpt from The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall (1845) by George Lippard. Read it here. Quote: I was sitting upright in bed, chilled to the very heart, afraid to move an inch, almost afraid to breathe, when, far, far down through the chambers of the old mansion, I heard a faint hushed sound, like a man endeavouring to cry out when attacked by night mare, and then great God how distinct! I heard the cry of `Murder, murder, murder!’ far, far, far below me. ALT
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Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 17

Today’s text is the short story “The Invisible Girl” (1833) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Read it here. Quote: “What beacon is it that helps us at our need?” asked Vernon, as the men, now able to manage their oars with greater ease, found breath to answer his question. “A fairy one, I believe,” replied the elder sailor, “yet no less a true: it burns in an old tumble-down tower, built on the top of a rock which looks over the sea. We never saw it before this summer; and now each night it is to be seen,—at least when it is looked for, for we cannot see it from our village;—and it is such an out-of-the-way place that no one has need to go near it, except through a chance like this. Some say it is burnt by witches, some say by smugglers; but this I know, two parties have been to search, and found nothing but the bare walls of the tower. All is deserted by day, and dark by night; for no light was to be seen while we were there, though it burned sprightly enough when we were out at sea.” “I have heard say,” observed the younger sailor, “it is burnt by the ghost of a maiden who lost her sweetheart in these parts; he being wrecked, and his body found at the foot of the tower: she goes by the name among us of the ‘Invisible Girl.’” ALT
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