Halloween season is not quite upon us yet…however it’s close enough for me to start planning some October activities – haunted houses, costume parties, ghost tours, and other events besides. There is always Bachelor’s Grove cemetery that is begging for a revisiting (right Ron?)…particularly when it’s not dead of winter. It’s been a few years since I and a group of compatriots went out to a suitable local and exchanged ghost stories in the middle of the night. Hey…combine that and Bachelor Grove cemetery and you have a winner…

For those who would like more INFO ON BACHELOR GROVE CEMETERY, one of the most reputably haunted Chicago-land locations, click away.

Now…close your eyes for me and picture please, some large city (let’s say Paris). Would it not be a cool world indeed if some group of fantastically eccentric locals went down into the uncharted catacombs beneath the city (the ones that are on no maps and that the city officials don’t even know of) formed a club, restored the underground chamber, dragged sound and theatre equipment down there, and ran a secret cinema?

It is a wonderfully strange world as this does exist (how would I make it up?). For the full story, click this anonymous obscenity: @!*$&*#$!@&!%!!!

They even watched Dark City, one of my all time favorite movies!

Hmmmmmm…and double Hmmmmmm…

Now my thoughts are mixing and bleeding into one another in a weird sort of alchemy. I’m thinking HALLOWEEN and WATCHING MOVIES IN STRANGE PLACES and remember that sweet WIDE SCREEN TV I was shown in Pritchard Theatre…

Tell me Rich and Karisa and Kris – would it be possible to do a horror movie night at Pritchard, some time in October??? I’m picturing a giant TV, spooky theatre at night, a marathon of horror movies, kettle corn, etc. What sayith you?

Oh Lord! Lenore is on the rampage again. Let’s have the official count judges…

LENORE’S DEATH COUNT: Hey boys and girls! Mighty Mouse says, “Good God! Lenore has ravenously devoured 18 young mice. I…I couldn’t stop her. She was too strong. Oh the humanity! The HUMANITY!”

And finally, here are some dug up bits of free writing…

“CAPTAIN TONY AND THE HANING TREE”
The roots dug into the floor. The branches exploded through the ceiling. Someone had built the bar around the great hanging tree decades before I was born. But Key West was the place to say things like, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

I sat drinking spirits, meditating on spirits as an ancient fisherman with eight fingers belched the notorious history of the tree in my ear. With some trees, you’d count the rings circling the trunk to determine its age. But the history of this tree was recorded in rings around stretched necks. Well over a hundred nooses and as many unhappy wraiths. Few religious alters held the kind of spiritual resonance as the jingle branch of this tree. All this five paces from the pool tables at Captain Tony’s Saloon.

“REALIZATION”
Realization came when I hung up the phone and the “I love” you came out as a dare or a bad name.

Realization came when the flood gates fell and tears, muddy in the swirl of every emotion, came out of the deep crevices they fermented in.

Realization crept in like a Cheshire cat when the mirror image liked what it saw and the sting of the words of bullies and high school royalty fled from the growing Cheshire grin.

Realization smoldered on my dad’s face like a spent bomb on a crazy cartoon villain, when the words “boyfriend” crawled out of my little sister’s mouth.

“ANSWERS ARE EASY…BUT QUESTIONS…”
Jack sat atop a random, aboveground grave, in a New Orleans cemetery. He drenched his soul with alcohol. The sepulcher stone felt pleasantly cool to the touch.

“Is there…is there an afterlife?” he slurred to the body interred, throwing his empty bottle with a crash. Jack was surprised that he had asked aloud, a question to the tomb.

He was more surprised that it answered.