It’s Halloween again. The one night of the year when the spooky and gruesome is all around us – and the undead walk…. Here at Another Kind Of Mind, I do worry about you, my lovely readers, at this time of the year; a season when the nights are creeping in and the cold wind …
Continue reading Halloween Special: Dead good (or maybe not?)
After Jack O’Lanterns, second sight, Soul Cakes and sea monsters in Part 1 of the Another Kind Of Mind Halloween Special, Part 2 looks at the myriad weird ways to predict your love life at Halloween… Love Divination: In a recent post, I looked at the ancient but often rather gruesome and spooky practice of …
Continue reading Halloween Superstitions and Traditions (Part 2)
As with every other major festival or holiday in the calender, there are countless customs, legends and superstitions associated with Halloween. Although the festival has links to Christianity, some of the superstitions surrounding it are (as is often the case) far older than that, dating back to the pre-Christian fire festival of Samhain, which marked …
Continue reading Halloween Superstitions and Traditions (Part 1)
“I’ll haunt you, haunt your bed/Tap the windows, awake in dread/Pray that you’d loved me instead/I’ll haunt you, haunt your bed/And I’ll haunt you, sleep in fear…” – Seth Lakeman, ‘I’ll Haunt You’ Whether you are a true believer in the existence of ghosts, ghouls and things that go bump in the night or you …
Continue reading Things That Go Bump In The Night: Ghostly Tales For Halloween
I’ve been seeing a lot of Christmas decorations going up this last week or so (although someone on my street has actually had their tree up since Halloween!). I’m still catching up a bit, I’ve only just dragged my tree out of the cupboard where it lives for the rest of the year – although …
On Halloween a few years back, I posted an early Disney cartoon with the title The Skeleton Dance (see below). This 1937 short, although not in Disney’s Silly Symphonies canon (it was released as part of Columbia Studios A Color Rhapsody series of cartoons instead), appears to be very close to a remake in colour, …
Continue reading Vintage Cartoon Scares: ‘Skeleton Frolic’ (1937)
I found these images whilst rummaging through a huge number of official and public domain archive photos taken during both World Wars, and they immediately stood out in a flash of weirdness. There is something very creepy about old black and white photos of people wearing gas masks, and these examples are distinctly odd… The …
Until Sunday, there will be lots more spooky stuff as we come to the end of Halloween Week, plus a few men with odd-shaped balls and interesting moustaches will drop (goal) by in celebration of England reaching the Rugby World Cup final. The Another Kind Of Mind Christmas is at the planning stage, but there …
Here’s another early Walt Disney pre-Code animated short from the long-running Silly Symphonies series. Released just before Halloween 1929, Hell’s Bells was directed by Disney himself, drawn by his frequent collaborator Ub Iwerks, and distributed by Columbia Pictures.
This is the first in a slightly belated series of spooky (and slightly silly) seasonal posts. All Hallows Eve may have come and gone, but the clocks have gone back and the nights are drawing in. The end of the year is not far away, which makes this the perfect time to be telling tales …
Continue reading Vintage Cartoon Scares: ‘Le Squelette Joyeux’ (1897-8)
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