Why UFOs? Part 3: It gets scary

This is Part 3 in a series where I examine my lifelong interest, despite all reason, in UFOs. Here are links to Part 1 and to Part 2.

It was late September in 1988.

I was at my friend Brad's house and we were watching Unsolved Mysteries. Delightful! That night, Robert Stack led viewers in an examination of what would later be called The Gulf Breeze Sightings. This was a spate of UFO sightings in, as the name implies, Gulf Breeze, Florida. Not only were there sightings, but there were also a series of spectacular photographs. Many of those photos came from a man named Ed Walters. Here's one of them:

It was taken from inside an automobile and you can see the reflection of the UFO in the glass of the windshield. Brad and I were quite convinced. Later, as I understand it, plenty came to light that strongly suggested most of these photographs were hoaxes. I invite the reader to look into that and decide. Regardless, even if I knew the photos were fakes on that night in 1988, it wouldn't have helped me.

You see, Brad lived a fair ways out in the country. To get back home, I would have to drive along a two-lane state highway through nothing but lonely cornfields after dark. And let me tell you, it does get dark in rural Indiana. The sky is filled with stars. Sometimes one of those stars moves and proves itself to be a plane. Maybe.

Chilling. Why was I so afraid? Was I scared to see a UFO? Not really. I was more scared of what would happen if one saw me.

That's because just one year before, I had read a book called Communion by Whitley Strieber.

As I might have mentioned, I am in a terminal degree program for nonfiction writing. Every once in a while, I am asked what my favorite nonfiction book is. I don't know about favorite, but if I were to answer what nonfiction book had the most profound effect on me, I would have to be honest and say Communion, for it made me sleep with all the lights on for at least a few weeks afterwards, and fueled my nightmares for years.

Communion is Whitley Strieber's account of his alleged numerous alien abductions. At this point in my ufological experience, we're talking mid-high school, I had already known of at least a few cases of people claiming to have been brought aboard UFOs, sometimes not by choice. Travis Walton would be an example of such cases. Communion was different. While Strieber was not the first to make claims of this kind, nor was he the last, he was, I would argue, one of the primary forces that thrust what would be known as "the abduction narrative" into public consciousness. Here's how that template narrative goes:

Someone wakes up in the middle of the night. They find themselves unable to move or speak. Strange beings appear at the foot of the bed. These beings are typically between three and four feet tall, with large, bulbous heads, pale skin, spindly forms, and their trademark feature: the black, almond-shaped eyes. A depiction of one is at the top of this post (it also happens to be the art that adorns the cover of Communion.) Through various methods, often levitation, the hapless, paralyzed victim is brought aboard a saucer-shaped UFO.

Image from CrystalLinks.

Once onboard the craft, the abductee is subjected to a series of medical tests, and most of them aren't much fun. They are said to be invasive, painful, and all the more traumatizing as the abductee is rendered immobile, save for responding to the telepathic commands of the, we presume, aliens. Later, the abductee is returned to their bed. The abductee awakes with no memory of what happened...for the time being. Bits and pieces come back in traumatic flashes. They may even have scars that they cannot explain or bouts of "missing time," where hours elapse which they cannot account for.

There are variations on this narrative template. Sometimes, as I feared would happen to me that night in 1988, the aliens may take someone on an isolated rural road. Other accounts speak of broad daylight abductions, or abductions involve multiple parties such as the Allagash Incident. As I said, however, the template for the narrative and the genre constraints are more or less standard, despite the occasional and inevitable outliers.

The uniformity of abduction narratives is actually one of the arguments against it as a real phenomenon. This template enters the public consciousness and it becomes a part of the subconscious, thus perhaps creating vivid dreams or hypnagogic dreams/hallucinations. There is also the criticism that abductees often recall their alleged experiences only under hypnosis, which is an imperfect practice at best. Additionally, more than a few abductees have been found to have sexual abuse somewhere in their past. Alien abduction might be how the brain masks such awful events, making it easier to deal with rather than facing the reality of a family member or someone else being responsible. Ultimately, aside from a few scars, there is precious little concrete evidence for this as a legitimate phenomenon, despite 3% of Americans claiming it has happened to them.

And yet...

And yet...

Even if my teenage self knew that in 1988, it would have done no good. It still would have scared me. To be honest, it still scares me today. Logically, I understand all of the valid counterarguments. Sometimes when I'm home alone, though, or sometimes when I'm walking my dogs under dark skies and a light moves in the sky...I shiver. Is this the time when they come for me?

That's because when I read Communion and encountered the abduction narrative as a whole, the entire narrative arc of UFOs changed for me. The aliens no longer looked like us. They resembled us, but those ominous eyes convey no warmth, rather they are expressionless and calculating. The rhetorical stance of the visitors shifts from "space brothers" to at worst hostility to at best indifference. They could take anyone from their bed, or anywhere else, against the person's will and perform invasive tests and experiments. There would be nothing you could do to stop them. In fact, one abductee is said to have been able to ask the aliens why they were doing this. The alien telepathically responded with a deadpan:

"You do it to lesser evolved species, don't you?"

Fair point.

Whitley Strieber's book conveys all of this experience in striking literary fashion. In certain regards, I am of the same rhetorical stance as I was upon reading it at age 17. I remain convinced something happened to him...I just don't know that it was aliens doing it. Could it happen to me? Therein is how the UFO phenomenon came to be something that caused me genuine fear.

In fact, abduction narratives, as I see them, are ghost stories of old, updated in brand new drag. Human folklore is replete with stories of people being taken in this night by strange creatures and later returned (maybe). What's more, many abductees report having sperm extracted or embryos implanted, thus creating alien/human hybrids. This is closely related to ancient myths of incubi and succubi. Skeptics would say that this is further evidence that abductions are linked far more with human psychology and mythology (Derrida's "ever-expanding archives") than with space people. Proponents would say that the folklore means this has been happening for a very long time.

Either way, this new dimension to the narrative changed my view of Ufology forever and not really for the friendlier. Still, like a good horror story, I could not help but remain fascinated, regardless of just how scared I was. One of the ways I dealt with this fear was by constructing snarky, mocking abduction stories with Brad. We were teenage boys and when you're that gender and age, that's kind of your super power. One of the experiments many abductees report having is an anal probe. You can just imagine what we did with that. Trondant!

Raunchy and scatalogical rhetoric? Sure. But laughing at it, shifting the stance thrown at me as invasive to ridiculous and absurd in a Camus-like way, helped me sleep at night. I can't speak for Brad, but I was genuinely scared. As I said, still sort of am.

Just one month later in 1988, NBC would air a prime-time special called UFO Cover Up Live. It featured UFO sightings, including Gulf Breeze. It covered abduction. It also introduced me to a whole other dimension of the narrative.

They know, and they can't let us know what they know, otherwise we would know that they knew.

More of that next time...



Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

Why UFOs? Part 2: Space brothers

This is Part 2 of a reflection on why, despite all reasons not to, the UFO phenomenon fascinates me to this day.

As I blogged in Part 1, the UFO bug bit me at around age seven after pulling a book from a shelf in my local library. Yet another unsolicited testimonial as to how libraries corrupt the young. I kid, I kid.

I mentioned in that post that one of the library books published a photo of a saucer-shaped UFO, all in black and white and typically fuzzy and grainy. It was the caption that got me, though: "The witness of this UFO also claims to have met the occupants of the craft." It was exciting enough for my young mind to drink in narratives of flying saucers, but to add in actual face-to-face encounters with aliens? How do I get in on that sweet action?

One of the books even had a photo taken by a police officer of a purported bipedal alien in a spacesuit.

Imagine my disappointment years later to learn that it was a guy covered in aluminum foil. 

Many other early encounters I read about sounded positively heartwarming. A bit unnerving, perhaps, just from fear of the unknown, but all in all a positive experience that someone could really get behind. The aliens weren't at all like the malignant types I saw in any of the various iterations of "invade the Earth" scenarios I saw in my science fiction shows. Instead, they were completely human-like in appearance. Perhaps more human than human.

They were tall, well over six feet. Their hair was blonde and their skin was described as being perfect. They came with a message for humanity: peace. As I kept reading, I found that there was a man who had been having interactions with these aliens for years. He even got a ride on one of the UFOs, the lucky schmuck. His name was George Adamski.

That's George, pictured with an artistic rendition of one the aliens.

Starting in 1946, Adamski claimed to have seen dozens and dozens of UFOs. On November 20th, 1952, he brought of group of friends to a remote spot in California, where they saw a massive, cigar-shaped object. Adamski claimed that the ship was looking for him, and ran off from his group of friends to attempt contact with the craft. After returning a while later, Adamski claimed that he met a being named "Orthon" who was reportedly from Venus. Orthon was described as being of average height, with tan skin and long, blonde hair. "His trousers were night like mine," Adamski added.

"The presence of this inhabitant of Venus was like the warm embrace of great love and understanding wisdom," Adamski said. Orthon professed concern about humanity's warlike tendencies, particularly our willingness to use nuclear weapons. Likewise disturbing was our mistreatment of our environment. As I mentioned earlier, Adamski claimed to have a longstanding, friendly relationship with these Venusians. He claims they even took him to the Moon, where saw cities and flourishing forests. What's more, Adamski published books about his interplanetary friendships in effort to let the world know that the "Space Brothers," as he called them, are looking out for humanity and have valuable lessons to impart if we will only listen. A whole movement began to build around Adamski, as more and more witnesses claimed to have met "the Space Brothers."

Young Jon ate these stories up. Why wouldn't he? Adamski even had convincing photos of the UFOs he witnessed and they are far clearer than their contemporary counterparts. Sadly, there wasn't much evidence for Adamski's accounts and as you might have guessed, Venus was determined to be uninhabitable and the Moon was found lacking any trees or buildings. The UFO photos Adamski published were found to be faked using a surgical lamp in a few cases and the top of an air conditioner in others. It wasn't long before people were using words and phrases like "hoax" and even "con man."

I get it though. The rhetorical stance of the "aliens" in the narrative at this point is one of benignity in the extreme. They are single-hearted and want only to help us after we have lost our way. The threat of nuclear war is a scary thing. Anyone who lived through the Cold War will tell you that. The 1950s and 1960s also saw a burgeoning sense that our environment was feeling the pressure and strain from fossil fuels and massive consumption. Now, we're looking at the whole world falling apart from it, but not many seem to want to even consider the notion. Indeed, many would rather burn more coal.

Maybe if aliens said something we'd listen.

You can see that them at work in the films of the 1950s, especially The Day the Earth Stood Still. The message Klaatu, the quite human-looking alien from the film, has is a stern, paternal, "Get it together, humans. Or we'll do it for you and you won't like it." The message of the Space Brothers is similar, but expressed with far more peace and love.

It intrigues me how much this area of the narrative matches religious beliefs. Allow me to explain.

I have made no attempts to hide just how difficult the past year and a half have been for me. If I am to be fully honest, I could palpably sense a small child inside me at times, silently crying, "Mom, Dad, fix this. Because I can't." I believe reports of these "Space Brothers" are born out the same need. War is a horrible thing, and it can feel like whether it starts or not is out of the hands of the average person. I made a snide remark earlier about no one wanting to face climate change, but really, who does? How do we tackle something so large and looming, and face an effort so herculean?

If only there were a higher power that loved us, looked out for us, and could fix things when they break, while we can only sit immobilized on the floor, tears streaming down our cheeks.   

For a few brief years in elementary school, I thought the Space Brothers might do that for us. Who wouldn't be comforted by such a story? I mean, read once more the description of these aliens. Tell me there aren't deep similarities between them and Christian depictions of angels. I also must wonder what this narrative says about us when the savior aliens are said to be more Caucasian than most Caucasians. Not sure I like where that might lead.

Despite the wide discrediting of George Adamski, "contactees" to this day still claim to encounter the "Space Brothers," only now these aliens are called "Nordics" and they are said to be from the Pleiades star cluster. Guess that's because Venus didn't pan out. I'm not surprised the sightings continue. Our problems remain massive and our solutions are few. Humans still cry for someone to save us and the composed narratives reflect that yearning. Perhaps these stories are generated by our collective subconscious, arguing to us what we already know deep down: Things aren't right. Fix them.

I mentioned last time that the UFO narrative also held a strong strand of fear to it. After reading about these benevolent, Nordic-looking aliens, you might wonder where any fear would come from. Don't worry. It gets creepy next time.

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Why UFOs? Part 1: The childhood years

Photograph of a purported UFO over Minnesota in 1979. Found here.

This is the first of a series that discusses writing, rhetoric, history, modern myth...and UFOs.


"It's not 'What are these things?' It's 'Why are there these things?'"

I don't remember where I read that or who said it, but it perfectly encapsulates my thinking at the moment.

Eight years ago, I started this blog for several reasons. It would serve as a mental distraction. I could plumb subjects that serve as real-life inspirations for my favorite literary genre, science fiction. Most of all, I saw myself as a sort of Art Bell-wannabe...the blog could be a Coast-to-Coast AM in my own, minuscule corner of the Internet. My primary subject matter would be UFOs.

Obviously the blog has evolved quite a bit over the years. I've come to cover...well, just about anything I want (it is mine, after all). But lately I've been considering what was once my primary subject matter and asking myself, "why?"

Why did I ever get interested in this subject? Why did it stick with me for so long? I'm a college professor, a reasonably educated person, and I have at least a foundational understanding of science. Why then would I devote any mental bandwidth to this cultural phenomenon, risking possible ridicule or even worse, professional detriment in the process?

When couched that way, why would anyone pursue it? For any reason?

Yet many do. Take a spin around your cable or satellite guide, and you'll find Ancient Aliens, The X-Files, or something of the ilk. Why? Over a series of blog posts, I want to give deep consideration as to why. For this first installment, I decided I must start with a reflective, autobiographical piece...

I was seven.

Every two or three weeks, the first grade class of St. Augustine Elementary School in Rensselaer, Indiana would walk to the Jasper County Public Library so that we could check out books to read just for fun. The idea was of course to encourage a love of reading, for if you read read read, you will likely learn learn learn. I got the reading part down, anyway.

First grade came right after I saw Star Wars and that movie became my whole life. I was an obsessed little six year-old, ravenous for anything even remotely like that film. On one of those visits to the children's section of the library, I pulled a book from the shelf. It was a hardcover in "that library kind of way" (hoping you know what I mean). It had a green cover, and a series of circular spaceships. It's title? Unidentified Flying Objects. I have googled and googled, but have been unable to find this exact book.

I flipped through the pages of what I thought would be a science fiction story. Instead I found photographs. They were fuzzy, black and white, and I thought the special effects looked nowhere near as good as Star Wars. That is until I read the text and learned that they were photos of things witnessed by other people. I took the book to my first grade teacher.

"Is this real?" I asked her.

"No," she said with vehemence. "It's cruddy garbage and you'd best not waste your time with it."

So what did I do?

I found and read every book I could on the subject. Here is one of them:

My mind drank in all the narratives of the sightings. As humans are predisposed to do, I began to discern patterns in the narratives. The sightings would most often take place at night and in rural areas. They would begin as a cluster of lights in the black. They might hover, or they might dart about with incredible speed, or just generally exhibit flight characteristics beyond anything anyone had seen...but no so weird as to be incomprehensible. If the lights drew closer to the witness, a structured craft, often saucer or cigar-shaped, might come into view.

And then it would be gone.

All of that was exciting enough for my little first grade self, but I wasn't ready for the tidbit that would really send me over the edge. One UFO book, the title lost to my aging memory, ran a photograph with the following caption: "The witness of this UFO also claims to have met the occupants of the craft."

Oh. My. GOD.

Real extraterrestrials? Visiting Earth? All of the science fiction I had been gorging on might be coming true somewhere? Was it anywhere near my house by any chance?

While I was a ravenous reader on the subject, it would be disingenuous of me not to take into consideration the influence of television.

Turning my TV dial one day (yes, I'm that old), I found the show In Search Of with "that guy from Star Trek." Nimoy's gravitas-laden voice paired with weird music that was probably made by some guy on a Moog...it was just classic stuff. The show drew me into the paranormal as a whole, but the UFO episodes naturally stuck with me. Right around this same time, NBC also aired a series called Project UFO.

It was produced by Jack Webb of Dragnet fame. I think I have his opening voiceover committed to memory:

"Ezekiel saw the wheel. This is the wheel he said he saw. These are unidentified flying objects that people say they are seeing now. Are they proof that we are being visited by civilizations from other stars? Or just what are they? The United States Air Force began an investigation of this high strangeness in a search for the truth. What you are about to see is part of that 20-year search."

Each show was (as the producers claim, anyway) based on a real case investigated by USAF's Project: Blue Book. I've re-watched a few of the episodes on YouTube and they're diverting, but void of any real substance. At the time, however, it was yet another enticing aspect of the phenomenon. There's such a chance that this might be real, that the government is investigating. Little did I know...

There was of course Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but I wouldn't end up seeing that until almost out of grade school. Rensselaer only had one movie theater, you know, and if I was going to beg my parents to take me to see something, it was going to be another showing of Star Wars.

Naturally, there were adult figures in my life who pumped the brakes from time to time on my enthusiasm for UFOs. As they should have. My father asked me to consider each case and its evidence...or lack thereof. In a form of the Socratic method suited for a lad my age, he would ask me questions about UFO cases and eventually force me to realize that I had not fully considered all possibilities and that the boomerang-shaped mothership from Zeta Retculai might have actually been geese flying in formation with light reflecting off their light-colored bellies. Other adults weren't so kind. Like so many before me, I learned that to have this interest is to subject one's self to ridicule.

Regardless, I would persist. Why?

Meditating upon the question, I've come up with the following, preliminary reasons:

1. Story. We all form our understanding of the world through narrative, but I feel like it has always held an especially important role in my life. Books, comics, TV, movies, all of it consumed my free time as a child. So enraptured was I by story, that I extended these narratives through play with my action figures and other toys, or even through my first fledgling attempts at writing. A UFO sighting, I subconsciously determined, held a narrative pattern and the elements of a great story. As we say in nonfiction studies, "You can't make this stuff up." Well, you can, but I think even when my younger self doubted a UFO account, I still liked reading it. Why? It was simply a helluva story. Often great stories contain an element of...

2. Mystery. It was an intriguing puzzle. Was it or wasn't it real? I believed it was at the time, but it would be an intellectual challenge to find the evidence and "solve the case," so to speak. Other people liked "Whodunits." I liked "how do we prove it?" As with most things mysterious, there was also...

3. Fear. My little self often wondered, "If these things are real, what would I do if I ever saw one? More to the point, what would they do to me?" These visitors from strange, alien worlds were obviously far beyond human capabilities. If malevolent, what could any of us possibly do to stop them? This x factor brings an excitement that is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. Fear of the unknown...

4. But not too unknown. A UFO story was fantastic, but not so utterly bizarre as to be incomprehensible, disorienting, or weird in the traumatic way. I could understand the concept of a spacecraft and aliens. In other words, the narrative was relatable.

This marked the beginning of my lifelong but ever-changing journey with the UFO phenomenon. Many close readers may be looking at the above four points, asking, "Well, can't you give any examples to support yourself?" Yes.

Next post in the series...


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We have 12 years to save the world from climate change

It's times like these I'm so glad climate change is a hoax.

The UN just dropped a significant report on climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report yesterday that asserts humanity will face "dire" consequences of climate change far sooner than expected. To avoid this, it will require changing the world in way that "has no historical precedent." This report paints a portrait of a future world that has "worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population."

Good news is, I suppose, that the report states that this can be avoided. It is still possible to keep the world's temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To do this, however, we will need to cut the world's fossil fuel emissions in half in 12 years.

That means we'd have to really work for it. That means to me, in turn, that we will likely do nothing. As evidence, I point to the current administration's vehement pledge to keep spewing coal into the atmosphere.

Aside: I don't know if I've blogged this before, but I have a new perspective on coal mining since my College closed. Whole communities depend on coal mines for their livelihood. And what is a coal miner in his fifties to do if we take away his job? While the environment is indeed at risk, what will we do for these people?

What can writers do in the face of this news? I suppose a few more cautionary tales of "hellish visions of the future"...as I've once been accused of...couldn't hurt.

Last night I watched a Saints game, and I just couldn't shake the memory of the people who died in the Superdome back in 2005. They sought shelter from a superstorm. As I watched the game, yet another hurricane gathered force in the Gulf of Mexico. We are just now entering the age of the superstorm. What will it be like to live with them on the regular in the future? What will a world of pervasive drought be like? Yeah, don't just say "dry." Think about it.

Drought, heat, and severe weather often bring scarcity. Lack of access to food and water tend to destabilize things. Military control might be necessary. What would life be like in that world.

As warmer temperatures melt permafrost, a good ol' pandemic becomes more likely. Hope you liked the move Outbreak, because you may soon be LARPing it.

We have 12 years...

Might I recommend Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler be kept on everyone's nightstand?


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When it comes to horror, I keep it old school

October has finally arrived.

For many, it will be a month-long celebration of Halloween. For anyone who has spent time in goth culture or who loves the weird and the unexplained, they'll tell you "October 31st is for tourists."

One of the ways people will observe the holiday is by watching horror movies, and channels like TCM are serving up a full and tasty buffet. I know that my students, especially my current ones for whatever reason, certainly devour the contemporary products of the horror genre, but me? I keep it old school. It's Universal Monsters all the way. Here's why...

1. Literary heritage.
Given that the Universal films were written towards the early end of the 20th century, the reservoir of film inspiration that could be drawn from was nil. Instead, writers turned to folklore and literature for sources. In the realm of scary stuff, one could hardly do better than Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, with that latter text being the true masterpiece of the two. While the film adaptations may at first appear to have little in common with their literary progenitors, I enjoy watching the movies and finding the themes that remain, hiding just beneath the surface like a child under a sheet. In certain respects, the films mimic the synthesis and composition techniques of Stoker. He drew together history and folklore to create his magnum opus. Tod Browning, in directing Dracula, took the best of the stage play adaptations (namely Bela Lugosi) and added the touches of German expressionism as Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake plays in the background.
Stoker might have also had a little help from John Polidori and that perhaps mythical night that birthed Shelley's Frankenstein, but that is probably best left for another post.
The outlier in the "holy trinity" of Universal Monsters is The Wolf Man. It has no "origin text" and relies solely on myth and folklore.

2. Old ones work for it.
As with so many of today's mass market films, screenwriters in the horror genre seem to rely on bombast and jump scares. Everything is bigger and louder, while also being utterly disposable...as is the case with so much of consumer culture. Use once. Then destroy. Then there's the gore factor. "Torture porn" has never appealed to me, because...among other obvious reasons...it's just too easy.
Given the film standards of the time, Universal Monster films needed rely on creating an ambiance. You might not be especially scared watching Frankenstein or Dracula, but it's hard not to come away with getting a creepy vibe. Just take a look at the graveyard scene that opens that former film. Wow. A straight masterpiece. Black and white film only adds to the effect and directors like James Whale and Tod Browning sure knew what the hell they were doing. There is an artistry at work on the screen that looks good enough to eat. That is if your tastes tend towards the gothy and expressionistic.
It takes thought and a creative eye to bring about this milieu...far more work than "crazy guy with a chainsaw."

3. Shared Universe.
Yes, I hear tell that all the Conjuring films and spinoffs are linked together in a single story. Sequels, such as the bazillion Nightmare on Elm Streets and so forth, are one thing. It's quite another to take separate mythologies and weave them together in a way that makes sense. But that's exactly what Universal did. While a few of the entries (Bride of Frankenstein) are better than others (The Mummy's Hand), I appreciate and enjoy how the different stories get drawn together. 
It's a shame that a few of those films are more or less forgotten today. I'm thinking of Son of Frankenstein, which was the basis for the comedy Young Frankenstein. Not only does it feature a strong performance by the inimitable Basil Rathbone, it's meditation on how wrongdoing can taint an entire family, leaving its members unable to get out from under it.
As for my favorite, "everybody and the kitchen sink" Universal film? Probably House of Frankenstein.

4. Comfort.
It sounds completely antithetical, but I like watching the Universal Monsters precisely because they don't scare me. I've often said, "My real life is scary enough. I don't need to add terror to it." Current horror, with its predilection for serial killers and "ripped from today's headlines" storylines, likes to leave viewers with the thought, "This could happen to you." I can understand how this naturally heightens the terror for those who enjoy such a sensation.
I don't need that. Watching entries in the Universal Monsters mythos, I seldom if ever think the scenario could happen to me. Well, I'll admit that at around age 8, I did have the night sweats while wondering if I was adequately prepared to defend myself against an intruding vampire or werewolf, but that was a long time ago. These films let me enjoy the creep factor from quite a safe distance. So safe that they eventually become the cinematic equivalent of a comfort food like mac and cheese. It's no wonder I love watching Svengoolie every Saturday night.

I have a similar fondness for Hammer films, but that's probably best left for another post.

Happy Halloween.   

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