Cryptozoology.
Tonight’s survey is all about CRYPTIDS.
You know, creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Those guys. The ones that have cute nicknames even if they eat people.
My questions to you:
1) Which cryptid is/was your absolute favorite?
2) As a kid, which one(s) did you 100% believe in?
3) Were there any cryptids close enough to home for you to consider a local monster?
Here are my answers, hastily written because I’m racing against the clock tonight:
1) I grew up as a Loch Ness Monster fanatic, but these days I’m all about yetis. Specifically the more cartoony versions that aren’t at all accurate if you believe the stories. (Basically, picture Harry from Harry and the Hendersons, but as an albino.)
2) As a kid I believed pretty much all of them. I may have been skeptical about ghosts and space aliens, but cryptids rarely seemed implausible. The most famous examples have since been outed as hoaxes, but for a long stretch, I completely bought the idea of sasquatches in forests and relict plesiosaurs in Scottish lochs.
3) I don’t live in Jersey, but it’s close enough for me to count the Jersey Devil as part of my home team.
Your turn!
Spooky Video Games!
Can I just say how blown away I’ve been by the great responses to the surveys, here? Way to run with the ball, guys. We’re still ironing out some functional/visual kinks with Dino Drac After Dark, but even as we do, thanks for proving that this was a concept worth trying!
Tonight’s topic: SPOOKY VIDEO GAMES.
Which ones were/are your favorites? Which ones legitimately creeped you out? Tell your fellow creatures of the night, in the comments!
As for me, any regular reader has probably picked up on the fact that I’m not a modern gamer by any stretch. And when I say “modern,” I pretty much mean the past 20 years. If it’s not a Smash Bros. game or some bullshit on Facebook, there’s a strong chance that I’ve never played it.
Still, I must admit that the first Resident Evil seriously freaked me out. I never got very far in it — certainly not far enough to hit any of its big moments — but just the whole design of that game, even from the very start, felt like a living horror movie.
I have much stronger feelings about older horror games, namely Ghosts ‘n Goblins and Castlevania, both for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Relive ‘em with these two walkthrough videos, crafted by people who are much better at video games than I’ll ever be.
Ghosts ‘n Goblins is notoriously hard, but since I kinda sucked at all video games, I’m not sure I ever even realized that it was inordinately difficult. The graphics are cartoony by today’s standards, but there’s still something so sincerely Halloweenish about those monsters. I look at them, and all I remember is drawing spooky pictures on construction paper with two markers and five broken crayons. That was yesterday.
Castlevania is more famous and held in higher esteem, and was clearly the superior game. I didn’t get the cartridge until it was completely out of style, so my fondest Castlevania memories are of going to my best friend’s house for sleepovers that consisted of me, him and his big brother trying to beat their game all through the night. Back before we watched horror movies, Castlevania was our surrogate.
Your turn! In the comments, talk about your experiences with spooky video games from the past and present!
Halloween Candy Survey!
Think back to your trick-or-treating days, and answer these three questions:
1) When going door to door, what was your #1 favorite candy to get?
2) What was the weirdest thing you ever received while trick-or-treating?
3) What frequently-distributed Halloween candy did you just outright hate?
My answers:
My favorite candy was really a tie between individually-wrapped Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and those fun-sized Snickers bars, but if pressed, I think I’d have to give it to the cups. Mmmm.
Weirdest thing? Our next door neighbor used to give out loose change (nickels or pennies), but she’d wrap each coin in an almost obscene amount of scotch tape. To this day, I have no idea why she did that. Other neighbors sometimes used tape to string several coins into one manageable unit, but this woman was literally wrapping them individually. It was bizarre.
And as for a common candy that I just plain hated, duh, Mary Janes. If you want a harder answer, I’ll admit that I’ve never liked black Twizzlers, and still can’t eat them to this day. (Seriously, I’ve been on this planet for decades, and I’ve still never eaten one whole black Twizzler.)
Your turn!
PS: If you missed it on the main site, there’s a new episode of The Purple Stuff Podcast! (And we’re also selling a special bonus episode, because we like money.)
Attack of the Giant Leeches.
It’s a holiday weekend and I’m not expecting much action here tonight, so let’s keep it simple and just watch some dumb movie.
Here’s Attack of the Giant Leeches, from 1959. The title says it all, I think.
Public domain horror movies are a tough sell when they’re absent the silhouette of Tom Servo, but I still love ’em in their natural state. I must’ve seen 75+ of them by now, yet I can only remember the particulars from a modest handful. I kinda treat them more as decorations than actual films.
We did that survey about “background noise movies” a short while ago. I can’t believe I forgot to mention all of the public domain horror stuff! They’re perfect to go to sleep to on nights like this. Quiet, creepy, and dim enough to act as nightlights. Try it sometime. (Maybe tonight?)
