Celebrate Summer Solstice ~☠~ The Wicker Way

Happy first of summer to all of you! Just one more season to go till Halloween!

Every holiday seems to have its accompanying horror films, and it seems the solstice is no exception. If you've never seen The Wickerman (1973), well you oughta. It's really a very hip and whip-smart mystery film. Police Sgt. Neil Howie travels to isolated "Summerisle" investigating the disappearance of a missing child. In the course of his investigations he discovers that the island has reverted to Paganism, and Howie struggles with the culture shock in dealing with the denizens of summerisle, while unearthing the truth of what happened to the missing girl.

The plot comes to ahead at the summer solstice, and this chilling rendition of a traditional celtic song "Summer is Icumen in" hailing the oncoming season.

(SPOILER ALERT)

~ ☠ ~ Interesting Haunts ~ Driveway Follies, Oakland Ca. ~ ☠ ~

This is such a unique yard haunt that I thought it would be cool to share, "Driveway Follies" sets itself apart from others, by being a live Halloween puppetshow for neighborhood kids. It's got a great vintage Halloween aesthetic, focusing more on classic spooky stuff, rather than contemporary ghoulishness and gore. Check it out!

"Mysterious Mose" puppetshow

Their yard haunt

An oldie, but a goodie ~ ☠ ~ The Life and Death of a Pumpkin

I've often contemplated the oddness of our curious custom. It's a bit grisly though, isn't it? Trepanning  pumpkin gourds, exentrate the innards, gouge a face into crisp orange flesh, and light a fire inside.

Yes I've oft contemplated the oddness of our curious custom; as I picked wet strings of pumpkin guts from my hands, and set the hollowed corpses out to dry in the waning autumn dusk.

The Hitchhiker ~ ☠ ~ Classic Suspense Story

This is one of the eeriest and most effective ghost stories I've ever heard, it still sticks with me today. It's the first hand account of one, "Ron Adams" of a trip from one coast of the American continent to the other, and the singular specter that haunts Ron's foreboding journey along the way.

Starring Orson Welles, and with a particularly eerie composition by Bernard Herrmann evoking an otherworldliness which makes the American landscape feel like the dark side of the moon. I can recall listening to this particular story on audio cassette as a summer evening waned into twilight, as my father worked away on an oil clay head that was to become a monster mask for Halloween.

Settle in for the evening, dim the lights, and enjoy. Won't you? ☠