DHM Halloween Special
Six-ish Recommendations for The Haunted Season
BOO-ks: The Best of Richard Matheson by Richard Matheson (~1950s/60s)
Every October, my wife and I gift each other spooky books. But one of the books we gave each other our first year still takes the candy corn. The Best of Richard Matheson remains the best of Richard Matheson and one of the best Halloween reads ever. It’s highly probable that you know Matheson’s work even if you don’t know his name: he’s the writer behind some of the most iconic episodes of The Twilight Zone and one of the first ever zombie novels I Am Legend, which turned into the huge blockbuster movie starring Will Smith.
Short stories might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Halloween is where you should make an exception. The form has always been uniquely suited to the genre as scary short fiction has a clear mandate – have something unnerving or scary happen and get out. And Matheson wrote in the golden age of these short form stories— there’s a reason the ideas in The Twilight Zone, like rouge drivers and a creature on the wing of the plane in flight, and I Am Legend continue to haunt us to this day. Plus reading a story early in the morning or late, late at night is the ideal way to keep yourself in an October mindset.
Music: Dead Man’s Bones (2009)
Did you know that the best thing Ryan Gosling has ever done doesn’t involve movies or acting? My screaming hot take on Gosling is that he is an overrated dramatic actor and an underrated comedic actor, but again the most important thing he’s done is not on the silver screen so I don’t know why I’m sharing this opinion with you. His most important achievement as an artist is creating the best Halloween album of all time, the eponymously named Dead Man’s Bones.
Why is there a dearth of music made for Halloween, when we have approximately 1,400 versions of each Christmas song? Enter Dead Man’s Bones a duo consisting of Ryan Gosling— who delightfully and somewhat creepily goes by “Baby Goose” as a musician — and a fellow haunting-obsessed movie producer, as well as a bonus guest spot from the scariest thing of all…a children’s choir. Now you don’t have to listen to “Monster Mash” on repeat for several hours at your costume party, instead pop on Dead Man’s Bones and feel like you’re in a haunted graveyard listening to music performed in an abandoned church lit by candles.
What’s extra perfect about this album? It’s a true October holiday feeling album unlike a lot of rock, metal, or old-timey music that is certainly spooky but isn’t made with the express purpose of evoking mischief, ghost, ghouls, and scarily ethereal sounding kids. Pop on “Pa Pa Power”, “Lose Your Soul” or “My Body’s a Zombie For You” and feel the spirit of a terrifying funk consume your soul.
Movie: The Witch (2016)
The movie The Witch shows that absolutely nothing is more terrifying than early colonial America, or really the basic struggle for survival. The premise of the movie is that a man gets kicked out of town because he shuns the church and, presumably, the people running the town. He takes his four children (including two very creepy toddler twins) and pregnant wife just outside of town to hack it through a New England winter. It does not go well.
The movie is a marvel of setting and acting. But it is also a supreme feat of writing and adaptation. The dialogue, all delivered in real old timey English, is mostly culled from real letters from the 1600s. To say they just lifted the script from letters would be doing the writers a grave disservice. For as wrong as committing to 1600s English could go, the movie is completely legible to the modern ear. It’s done carefully so that it’s translatable while adding a disturbing layer of realism to the bad stuff that happens. As disturbing as the things that happen in the film are, just as scary is the real feel of being with these people in the 1600s, where you have to go without pants to wash them because it’s your only pair and praying by the light of one candle with the whole family is your only form of entertainment. There aren’t many jump scares in The Witch, but it’s the best kind of horror film that sticks in your head for reasons other than the elements of pure shocking imagery.
Television: The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
It’s fitting that the best horror television show to come out is based on Queen Shirley Jackson’s famous novel. Loosely based on, one should say. What makes this series so perfect is that master of the adaptation Mike Flanagan completely reimagined Jackson’s novel with his own story while putting it together with fun nods and thematic homages to Queen Shirley (my favorite is him working in the Shirley’s line “a cup full of stars”, a beautiful line that’s hard to miss in either the novel or the show). In creating a show about a family rather than a bunch of strangers who gather to discover the psychological frights of a haunted house, Flanagan also understands like Shirley that it’s humans rather than creatures from hell that make for a poignant and completely riveting drama full of terrors seen and unseen.
Drink: The Moscow Ghoul (~2020)
As far as internet searches go, I’m pretty sure a group of friends along with my mother invented this cocktail. I’ve entirely fabricated the measurements below as the truly chaotic and unnerving among us don’t follow recipes. It’s great because it provides a cold weather appropriate spirit with the “bloody” juice of a cherry, and it will take you approximately 30 minutes and 30 ingredients less to make than the other most obvious cocktail choice: the Zombie.
2oz Bourbon
4oz Ginger Beer
1 Luxardo (or equivalent) Marsicano Cherry and some syrup juice
Decoration: Halloween Advent Calendar
Like Jack Skellington tried to bring Christmas to Halloween Town, the advent calendar is a Christmas tradition worth stealing for Halloween. Instead of counting down, count up and be thankful that no one is asking you to celebrate the entire month (or two months) before the actual holiday. Get a real steal by going to your local Paper Source or other craft store on November 1st and buying your advent calendar at a steep discount for next year.
Food: Halloween Chili
Word of advice: Don’t google “Halloween Chili” like I did attempting to find this recipe. Apparently, people are into making chili that looks like it has toes in it. Gross. Clearly there is something appropriately disturbing about chili that people are picking up on. Still, this Halloween Chili makes a perfect cold weather stew as you hunker down to read books, watch movies, and drink drinks in your forest of Halloween decorations.
