Countdown to Halloween Day 8: Garfield, Lego Monster 4, and More!

Welcome back! Today we're looking at some more cool Goodwill finds I brought home to celebrate this Halloween season! 

Just a small pile of items today, so here's your first glimpse... Let's dig in!

A couple of book pick-ups include a collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories in "The Tomb and Other Tales" and "The Eye of the Warlock" by P.W. Catanese. I read "The Thief and the Beanstalk" by Catanese, and really enjoyed it. This Eye of the Warlock book is somehow related to the tale of Hansel and Gretel in the same way the other book was related to Jack and the Beanstalk.

Next up we have this Monster Maker card game from Buffalo Games. This one looks like fun, and one I can maybe even play with my kids!

Each of the 5 monsters you try to assemble as a part of the card game gets their own biography that lets you know a little bit about each of their likes and dislikes.

Can't wait to try this one out as it looks silly and fun and not too hard to learn.

I also brought home a stuffed Garfield toy because I almost never say no to Garfield. He is such an integral part of my childhood and of my Halloween that I consider this guy to be a bit of a Halloween decoration in and of himself. Here he is sizing up my little Halloween Garfield PVC figure (I got that on eBay and he is a German import apparently... that figure is one of my most prized possessions.)

Finally, I picked up a copy of LEGO's Monster 4, which was miraculously COMPLETE! No missing pieces or materials whatsoever!

The game was already mostly assembled for me, so it didn't take too much effort to get together.

 I figured that even if I didn't end up liking the game, I could use all of the monster heads included in the box as game pieces to build monster mini-figures, and there would be no loss either way.

Turns out, the game is pretty great, and simple enough that my 4 year old picked up the rules very quickly and BEAT ME two out of three times! Turns out it's a slightly more complicated version of Connect Four.

There's a die you piece together, and a spider that hops around the grave yard, scaring your monsters away. It's a lot of fun, very fast paced, and can be as simple or complicated as you make it, depending on what you roll and where you place your pieces. Very happy I picked this one up for several different reasons!

That's it for today kids! But I'll be back soon with more Grody Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Haunting!

I'm doing this countdown as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year.

Countdown to Halloween Day 5: Whitman Publishing Horror Story Anthologies!

Hey there! Today's post is going along with the anthology theme AND along with the stuff-I-found-at-Goodwill theme! It's a goocher! Let's take a look at some books I picked up that were put out by Whitman publishing in the 60s! 

Before we move on I just want to take a moment to drink in the covers of the three books together for just a moment. These things were cheaply made and distributed back in the 60s, and I had quite a few of Whitman's books on my bookshelf as a kid, including versions of the Wizard of Oz, Robinson Crusoe, and a few others. They all have the same lightweight feel due to pasteboard covers and bindings that are more glue than stitching. But just look at that cover art! Let's get a closer look.

The first book is called "Tales to Tremble By" and I cannot figure out who the cover artist is but LOOK AT THIS THING.

It's a wraparound cover, but the back isn't nearly as exciting as the bizarre, clawed spirit on the front.

None of the stories are dud by any means. They're all creepy and atmospheric and each one deals with a different type of haunting. I would say the slimy water-logged ghost of "The Upper Berth" and the ever classic "The Judge's House" by Bram Stoker are my absolute favorites though. But honestly, there's not a stinker in the whole bunch. I was very pleased!

I love the introductions to these books as well. You can really tell someone was having fun and wanted to get the reader excited.

The interior illustrations are nothing too terribly exciting. It's probably no coincidence that the illustrations I liked the best came from the stories I also liked the best, but honestly, these are the two most exciting illustrations in the book. Here's one from "The Judge's House".

And here is a picture from "The Upper Berth". The interior illustrations were credited to Shannon Stimweis and while they are serviceable... they aren't amazing. 

The second volume in the Tales to Tremble By series us the ante in almost every way. This cover is INSANE. Additionally it references the stories in the book! Upon reading each story within I would then scan the cover to see where the reference was hidden in the details on the cover. It also helps that the artwork, on both the cover and interiors, done by Gordon Laite, is much more dynamic, animated, and eerie.

This time around there are even some points of interest on the back cover.

And while the first book was good, the second book is even BETTER. Every single story seems to have a bit more bite to it than the last. "The Red Lodge" is a genuinely disturbing story of a family's holiday in a house haunted by some particularly repulsive spirits. "Sredni Vashtar" is a mean spirited little tale with a very satisfying ending. "The Extra Passenger" is a creepfest all around, featuring justice from beyond the grave, and "The Book" was a deliciously dark entry featuring the downfall of a family man due to some late night reading. "The Voice in the Night" is one of the earliest examples of disturbing "body horror" that I can think of. I would say the real star of this volume was "God Grante That She Lye Stille" however, as it spent the most time building atmosphere and had some genuinely shocking twists and turns.

Even the introduction to the second collection kicks it up a notch, suggesting that by simply reading the stories within you may end up summoning the things featured in the stories to haunt you.

Here we have the boy from "Sredni Vashtar" worshipping at the altar of his fearsome "god".

The illustrations from "God Grante That She Lye Stille" were so good I included two of them. Here's the narrator visiting the gravestone that holds the titular phrase. Dig that spooky spirit face watching him though!

The trippy patterns and facial expressions in this illustration just make it gorgeous.

And here we have the father from "The Book" just absolutely losing his s**t. I LOVE the curlicues used to detail his face here. 

Finally we have "SHUDDERS," or possibly the whole title is "Ten Tales Calculated to Give You SHUDDERS" which I love the idea of a bunch of scientists sitting around, deep in calculation on how to make me shudder.

If this book feels cold when I first touch it? Awesome! I love these little details. You never see stuff like this anymore.

 This collection has one of my all-time favorite stories, which is "Sweets to the Sweet". I was SO excited when I saw this was included! I first read this story as a kid and was completely enamored with it. Robert Bloch really is an amazing writer, and luckily he has two entries here. Again though we have a book full of stories that will not disappoint. I think if I were to cut any story it would have been H. G. Wells's "The Inexperienced Ghost" but only on the basis that it does not really fit the tone of the other stories, not because it isn't a good read. "The Monkey's Paw" is just a classic, and one of my absolute favorites, "Used Car" felt so similar in mood and tone to "The Red Lodge" from the previous book that I wasn't surprised to discover it was the same author! H.R. Wakefield was really very good at instilling dread in his stories.

Also, the introduction to "SHUDDERS" isn't above pretty much just flat-out threatening you with bodily harm. So... enjoy! 

I have to say there are few things I enjoy more than curling up with a good collection of supernatural tales for the Halloween season, and these old anthologies really hit the spot! The next time you're out thrifting, don't discount older looking collection of ghost stories because you think they'll be to dusty or out-of-date. These are some of the best kinds of tales to read as October progresses!

I'm doing this countdown as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year.

That's it for tonight kids! I'll be back soon with more Groaning Goodwill Goodies... so until then, Happy Haunting!

Halloween Countdown Day 18: Scottie's Books Finds!

So last year around this time of year, I went to Scottie's books, a used book store in these here parts, and found a pile of spooky books to share. Well this year, I've done the same thing again! 

Scottie's is just a little more overpriced than I prefer in my used books... but I still like going in there, especially if I'm looking for fun genre books like the ones I'm about to share. Overall the average price of the books I picked up was around 1.50. 

First up, I went looking for anthologies. This was my main goal in going to Scottie's in the first place. Some of my best Halloween-season readings in the past couple of years have been short story collections, and I want to make sure I have a nice pile to choose from for next year. So I picked up three collections in all. Historical Hauntings edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg. I'll be honest, I am probably the least excited by this one, as it focuses mainly on historical figures and time periods. But it promises some stories of vikings, the Civil War, Iwo Jima, Harry Houdini, Jimmy Hoffa, and Helen Keller... so I'll give it a shot. Next we have Peter Straub's Ghosts which is an anthology edited by Straub but has 13 other contributing authors as well. Peter Straub's story "Pork Pie Hat" is actually a really creepy little Halloween story so I thought I'd give this anthology a try. Finally we have Night Visions: In the Blood which is a weird collection (IMO) in that it is a book eidted by Alan Ryan containing three collections of stories from three different authors, Charles L. Grant, Tanith Lee, and Steve Rasnic Tem. This is the book I'm probably the most curious about out of the three.

This book quite possibly has some of the worst illustrations I have ever seen. I am sorry for being so blunt about it, but I honestly think Napoleon Dynamite may have drawn the pictures for this book. Either way, it was super cheap, and it is a collection of monsters from mythology. So I couldn't leave it behind just based on aesthetics unfortunately. 

It wouldn't be a book post without some novelizations and so I picked up these two little gems. The first is Frankenstein: The True Story which turned out NOT to be a novelization but instead the script for the teleplay. So hm. Not sure how I feel about that or if I'll actually read it now. The second is probably one of the more exciting finds of this lot: It Lives Again! which is a novelization of the sequel to the movie "It Lives". It is amazing to me when sequels of obscure horror films get novelizations. It gives me hope for humanity (Not really. Kind of the opposite is true... but I still love this). So many claw-handed babies...

I think my absolute lose-my-s**t moment happened when I found this book however. This is a novelization of not one but TWO of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies together. The Nightmares on Elm Street might not be the most clever title... but I don't love it any less for that. This book incorporates both Part 4: The Dream Master and Part 5: The Dream Child. This makes sense as both of those movies featured Alice as the Final Girl and it follows her out of highschool as a dreamy teen and into her adult life and motherhood. A little disappointing is the fact that the "8 pages of skin-crawling movie photos" only include shots from Part 4, and I would have liked to have seen some shots from Part 5 for sure.

I may be stretching things a bit with this one, but (1.) I always consider pirates a valid part of the Halloween festivities around here and (2.) I couldn't leave this behind, and I didn't want to try to shoehorn it into a different post. So here we are. I find this either hilarious or a little sad because The Druid of Shannara has lettering almost as big as the title, and probably takes up as much space either way. They're really selling the adaptation by TERRY BROOKS more than the movie, Hook.

The final book I brought home I may actually try to read this season before it's too late. Scared Stiff by Jahnna N. Malcolm is one of those cheap-looking Apple Paperbacks from the late 80's to early 90's. This one came out in '91. And it stars a bunch of kids who straight-up have to deal with a walking corpse.

It is probably awful, and if circumstances had played out differently, this would probably have just ended up as one of those filler books for a knock-off Goosebumps-clone-series. But I like the cover art, and the fact that it deals with a real-live dead guy wins my heart. This thing looks like a Ramona book starring a toe-tagged zombie. I can get behind that.

So here's the whole pile I brought home from Scottie's books. If the place is still around again this time next year, I'll go back and do it again. For now though, that's all I have for tonight kids! I'll be back with more Gut-Wrenching Goodwill Goodies soon enough... So until then, Happy Haunting!

Halloween Countdown Day 5: A Second Mystery Package from Brian Lapsley!

Welcome! Due to Birthday celebrations yesterday I never got around to posting this... So I missed a day. Not going to let it bother me:

Today I'm not talking about Goodwill finds, but I am featuring some secondhand geekiness in the form of a SECOND package that came from the ever-generous Sir Brian Lapsley! 

So above is a grainy took-it-with-my-iPod photo of the image on the outside of the box that I took when it arrived (It was a good mail day! John Gaither I haven't forgotten you either, promise!). I held off on sharing this specific package because it has such a Halloween-y slant to it. 

Well, I mean not this part obviously. There was this Daffy Duck driving a fire-truck included that I guesssss... you could saaay... is Daffy in a costume... sort of. 

And this guy is in a csotume too! See? I made it work! ("This guy" by the way is Hardcase from the Ultraverse books, back in the 90's.) 

Mr. Lapsley included some Neil Gaiman/Comic book goodness. I should have gotten a better shot of the Strange Tales comic from Marvel, as it features not only Dr. Strange, but Cloak and Dagger as well! Probably my favorite long-running, non-one-shot or mini-series starring any of these characters actually. Neil Gaiman has nothing to do with Strange Tales, so I honestly have no idea why I included in the same picture... but these are the life choices I've made and now I'm 36 so there's no real going back. Black Orchid and Smoke and Mirrors are two different books that ARE written by Neil Gaiman, one of my all-time favorite authors. One of those happens to be a comic book too... so the connection is tenuous but there. All amazing items that I now own.

I've read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and I legitimately enjoyed it. I doubt I would have ever read the zombie-free version. I though the idea was great. It was when Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Android Karenina came along that I thought maybe they were going overboard with the concept. I now own this though, and since it was a gift, I am going to give it an honest shot. I mean, adding sea monsters to Jane Austen can only make it more interesting, right? I never look a gift book in the mouth.

Now we're talking! Here we have a couple of scary story collections, "The Oxford Book of Scary Tales" and "Great Irish Tales of Horror" which I have tossed on this year's Halloween reads pile.

And also joining the pile are "More Super Scary Stories for Sleepovers" and "Haunted Places", which I also can't wait to read! Look at these things!

And finally, this beautiful guy is a Frank Kozik REDRUM Qee!

I think he speaks for himself. 

I (again) want to heartily thank Mr. Lapsley for his generosity. He is a kind and giving fellow, and he even ended up making a contribution to my Halloween Countdown! Thanks!

That's it for tonight kids! I'll be back soon with more goblin-y Goodwill Goodies soon enough! Until then, Happy Haunting!