Happy Halloween 2014

October 31, 2014 — I’m dating this post October 31 for psychological reasons, but I’m really writing it on November 1. That means I need to hurry up and finish this Halloween Season wrap-up before I automatically start typing words like “jolly” and “merry” and “Ernest Saves.”

September 12 seems so long ago, but that’s when this year’s Halloween shindig started. Now, 49 days and 40 posts later, we’re planning our Thanksgiving trip home. I know the transition happens every year, but that still doesn’t lessen the shock.

I mean, just last night we were walking through the glorious Halloween mob scene that is our neighborhood during the dark trick-or-treat hours. Now, this morning, it’s all pilgrims and turkeys. My daughter, not 12 hours from being wrapped in ragged mummy linen, already has all her toy reindeer out.

But don’t get me wrong, I do love that shock.

Halloween Seasons are supposed to be weird, but this one seemed a bit weirder to me. Actually, I shouldn’t be phrasing it that way. I was the one slightly out of rhythm. I blame it on Berlin. Taking an international non-vacation trip right in the prime of the season and losing two October weekends definitely disturbed my Halloween equilibrium a bit, even though it was a way cool trip and gave me the opportunity to see one of the top oddities on my wish list, the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic.

But looking over the season with the hindsight of a burgeoning nostalgia, it was a good’un. It featured the best Salem trip we’ve ever had. Fright Kingdom. An amazing German cemetery. Two great New England road trips. And, of course, lots and lots of Edgar Allan Poe, including two monument unveilings.

Speaking of Poe, I need to thank everyone for the support for my latest book. Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe has definitely gotten more interest than any book I’ve done, and hopefully it continues to do so. Thanks to everyone who has bought it, told a friend about it, gave me an Amazon or a Goodreads review, pushed it on the socials. Honestly, the only reason I’ve been able to publish any book so far is because of you guys (publishers refer to you as an “author platform,” but they mean well). But if you don’t mind, keep spreading the word. Not every Poe fan has heard of the book yet.

Normally at this point, I would take a month or so break from posting, but there are some loose ends from the past month that I really want to tie up. I actually ended up with 26 post ideas that I didn’t get to (sure, there are always Halloween leftovers, but that’s almost a whole new season). Some of those ideas will be saved for next Halloween, others that are more broadly macabre will be posted throughout the year (like my Strange Stuff From My Study series), others might stay in the cobwebbed corners of my brain until said brains rots inside a corpse’s shell.

But in the near-term, I still have two sites from Germany I want to write about before putting that trip to bed, plus I need to write about my time at the Sedlec Ossuary. The only reason I haven’t written 10,000 words on that yet is because of the Halloween Season. And I still have a few Poe pieces to share with you, including my account of the unveiling of the Poe bust at the Boston Public Library.

Anyway, I awoke this morning to a cold November rain, which besides lodging GNR in my head for the rest of the day, kind of makes me realize that I’m ready for some snow.

I hope you had a great Halloween Season. Thanks for letting me intrude on it every once in a while. Happy Halloween, everyone.

If you still need to catch up on all the 2014 OTIS Halloween Season posts go here.

For all the in-between pictures that weren’t in any official posts, you’ll want to hit September and October sections of the OTIS archive.