Halfway to Halloween

For those of you who have been regular readers of mine for a while, you know that my favorite season is fall and Halloween. Sure, Christmas is great and all but Halloween is the only time of year where you can load up your front lawn with spooky and macabre decorations, find a horror movie on nearly every channel, head to festivals and load up on apple cider, among other things. Heck, back in 2016, I did my own mini-"Halloween Countdown" of sorts where for two months I featured posts about nothing else but Halloween and fall related material.

For Halloween nuts like myself, the end of April marks the un-official "halfway to Halloween" point and, judging by early indications, it'll be one for the record books with Lemax already announcing their "Spooky Town" decorations for the season and an October release date for the new film in the Halloween series already set. Hopefully this trend continues. Oh, what I wouldn't give for Burger King to bring back the Halloween Whopper.

Anyway, for those of you like me who can't get enough of the season, here are a four Halloween things you can do right now to mark the halfway to Halloween point and celebrate accordingly.

1. Watch a horror movie.

This is pretty much a given. Every Halloween season should be filled with as many good horror films as possible, anything from the classic Universal monsters like Dracula, The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc to old school slashers like Michael Myers, Freddy, and Jason. Heck, even throw Ash from Evil Dead in there for some fun! If you're new to this world, a good entry point would be The Fog from 1980, which is a really under appreciated John Carpenter thriller. After that, then maybe check out the original Dracula with Bela Lugosi, George A. Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead or the original Halloween from 1978. If you're not into horror movies, it's all good too. I won't judge.

2. Listen to Art Bell

Friday the 13th was a sad day. That's the day when the long time narrator of the night, Art Bell, passed away. Way back when I used to work late nights and would be driving home in the late night/early morning hours, Coast to Coast AM was there with me working Friday and Saturday nights mostly it was typically Art Bell hosting. I joined the party late when it came to Coast to Coast AM, as by that time (2003), George Noory had taken over as the primary host. To me, those were the best days of C2C, with Noory, Bell, and the amazing Ian Punnett. On my long drives home, that show was there with me. I listened to all of Art's internet projects, including his ill-fated six week run on Sirius XM in 2013 and his return in 2015 with Midnight in the Desert, with great joy as it took me back to that time in my life. So, if you're into UFOs, science, aliens, crpytozoology, ghosts, the paranomal, and anything else in the realm of the unexplained, I recommend checking out the free U7 Radio stream of classic Art Bell content that runs 24/7.

3. Watch a Bob's Burgers Halloween episode.

I'll admit it, when Bob's Burgers first debuted I didn't like it. I though the whole show was annoying and Bob was the only decent character in the whole thing. Now, it's one of my favorite shows on TV and their holiday themed shows are especially awesome. They've done some killer Christmas and Thanksgiving-themed episodes but every year, when I see their Halloween episode on the schedule, I get excited because they know absolutely how to do Halloween right and the best one they ever did was episode 3 from season 6 called "The Hauntening" as the whole plot of the show it to somehow scare Louise as she mentioned that she'd never been scared by anything ever. Sure, they've done other Halloween episodes and most of them quite good such as "Fort Night", "Full Bars", and the most recent one called "Tina and the Real Ghost" but none of them are as good as "The Hauntening".

4. Begin reading a creepy novel.

Most of my reading can be found in the realm of sports history and while I do crack open a novel from time to time, it has to be from an author I know I like, such as Elmore Leonard. A few years ago, I rewatched The Exorcist from 1973 when it was on Netflix and I forgot exactly how violent and frightening the movie was. Suffice to say, I felt at that time that I needed to read the book. I found it at the local library and tore into it immediately. When I finished it a few weeks later, what I read was more terrifying than the movie. So, of course, I went and found Legion, the follow up book and while it borders more on on being a religious crime thriller than a horror novel, there is a decent amount of the supernatural thrown in. Starting a creepy or horror novel now would be ... well .... a novel idea as if you find a good one, it'll start leading you down the rabbit hole of other works and that will keep you well in tune until fall actually arrives.

There's always a bunch more Halloween stuff you can do like listen to Halloween music, watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and other wacky stuff and I could've added more to this list but I'm already getting super wordy in an article that wasn't supposed to be very wordy. However, I've just given you four awesome things to do to keep those Halloween blues at bay until right around the end of August/beginning of September when the Halloween season officially kicks off.