Creepover #9: No Trick-or-Treating!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[" Egbo's Website debut music plays with reverb,

(00:20):
solid
fuzz
and
Thank goodness we got that trap door secured.
You may have heard that noise previously.

(00:41):
Anyway, welcome to the-
Yes, especially with the-
No, perfect, keep going.
Well, you started talking.
Welcome to the Black Magic Treehouse where it's always October, except for today when
it's actually October.

(01:03):
Oh, actually the intro that I was going to use, I'll go ahead and do it anyway.
Welcome to Black Magic Treehouse, the podcast where we discuss the horror media we consumed
as children that hollowed our wings.
My name is Eric and with me is my illustrious co-host, Jose.

(01:26):
Hi, Jose.
Hi, I like the first one better.
I would say that I'm not even trying with those intros anymore, but to be honest, I
don't know that I was ever trying.
But I think that's the fun of them.
Well, the first step is honesty.
Yeah, absolutely.
We just kind of come up with them on the fly just to get them over with.

(01:51):
So Eric, you may mention just now that we mainly talk about on the show the horror media
that we consumed as kids, but today's topic, I think, is actually from the more recent
past.

(02:12):
Is that not correct?
Sure, why don't you just micromanage everything I say?
I don't want to say that that was micromanaging so much as being an attentive listener and
a good wingman kind of calling back to something you said.
You're welcome.
It must be those improv skills paying off.

(02:36):
So here's the story.
Ever since we started this podcast, I would go to the thrift store with my girlfriend,
and there's two things I look for when I go there.
One of them is old film cameras, and the other is children's horror books.
I always go over to this section.
Oftentimes they're mixed in with the YA, which is annoying.

(03:02):
Because I said before on this podcast that it's difficult for me to imagine if anthology
horror series in the vein of goosebumps could succeed today, because I think the literary
trends started by Harry Potter and continuing through, I don't know, anything genre is to

(03:22):
have more that you build on book after book.
But I think I found a series that is relatively recent that is indeed an anthology horror
series.
Jose, you're more in touch with- The youth?
Well, because of your job, I should specify.

(03:44):
Yeah, please.
Thank you.
You are surrounded by the delightful laughter of-
Well, it's getting worse.
Of little tykes.
Oh my God.
So, to clarify what Eric's saying, I work as an elementary school media specialist.

(04:05):
And so, yes, the literature of the now with regards to our youngest readers is something
that I try to keep abreast of as best as I can professionally.
Abreast?
Abreast, yes.
I regretted that as soon as I said it.
So have you heard of this series?

(04:26):
The issue, well, the, I don't know, entry of which we are talking about is the fifth
in the series was published in 2012, is called Creep Over.
Is that anything you had any former knowledge of?
A little bit, because I did see some of those at the public library where I worked prior

(04:48):
to working at the elementary school.
I'm not sure if the official title is You're Invited to a Creep Over, or that's just kind
of like the catchy tagline on the front, or if it is just simply Creep Over.
But in any case, yeah, the Creep Over series, I just kind of saw them in passing and I gleaned

(05:13):
from looking at the handful of them that, okay, this is an anthology horror series,
like My Beloved Goosebumps and all the others from my own youth, and they appear to be ghost-ridden
by one or several authors because each book bears the pen name PJ Knight, which I find

(05:38):
very delightful as far as pen names for children's horror authors go.
Of course, I'm thinking back to things like, and I didn't have any exposure to this series,
this is just something I've learned of in later years, especially in doing this podcast,
the Graveyard School series by Tom B. Stone.

(06:03):
And I gotta admit, that's pretty good.
That's pretty good.
There's a handful of others that I can't remember, but Tom B. Stone does come to mind.
So PJ Knight, I feel like, is cute and kind of not as aggressively jokey.
I don't think anyway, not as aggressively jokey as a Tom B. Stone kind of feeling.

(06:28):
Or I'm thinking of like Paul Bearer from The Wrestling World, Undertaker's little toady,
Paul Bearer.
Is that a real person?
Or did you just make that up?
No, I did not make it up.
Just a character from WWE World.
Yeah, no, seriously, we just watched videos of Undertaker intros and yeah, Paul Bearer

(06:52):
was like his straight man, I guess you'd say.
Is he also wrestle?
No, he's just a character who comes out in his little mortician suit and tie.
And he basically looks like a horror host of old, like this is a Ratan gentleman, mustachioed

(07:21):
Ratan gentleman who looks like during the day he forecasts the weather on the local
news station.
And then at night he puts on the vampire cape and he's like, doctor, suck your face off
or whatever clever name he goes by while he's introducing horror movies.
Just kind of Paul Bearer's vibe.

(07:42):
Alright, I didn't know that was a thing in wrestling that you just had a guy who didn't
do anything.
Yeah, like a handler just for kicks.
And I don't know how prevalent it is.
My wife is, believe it or not, more of the pro wrestling fan than I am.
So I don't know how common that kind of thing is, either then or now.

(08:02):
But yeah, at the very least he existed at one point in time.
Do you remember when they did that, I don't know if you call it a stunt, but there was
some plot point where Vince McMahon's limo got blown up and people were like, oh my god,
he's dead for real.
And I was like, come on, professional wrestling fans.

(08:24):
You have to be smarter than this if you want people to take this seriously.
It's an art.
Also, this guy just got killed on prime time TV, which, you know, sad as it is, that is
something that has unfortunately happened in some cases.
But anywho, yeah, so this book, Creep Over Number Nine.

(08:48):
What's it called?
You're invited to a creep over.
And I want you to know, Jose, this is a story so scary, it broke the creepometer.
I saw that.
That's really charming.
Given that this is the first of our two Halloween episodes we'll be dropping in the month of
October, I pretty much chose this book knowing absolutely nothing about it except that the

(09:11):
title is No Trick or Treating Super Scary Super Special.
I didn't realize it was a super scary super special.
Hey, well, I guess it wasn't then.
Since you read it and all.
Yeah, no, it was just a regular.
It was just a regular ass book to me.
And the cover is, I really like the illustration style.

(09:35):
It's like a little cartoon, like not anime, but just like very deliberately cartoonish
where these, I don't know, preteen girls, I think they are, are like rendered like their
dolls kind of.
And it's portraying a moment in the story where they're asleep over playing light as
a feather, stiff as a board.

(09:56):
And you can see the one who's dressed as a bride is floating.
And you can see through her white dress to the hands underneath her that are holding
her up with their fingertips.
Yeah, the illustration style is pretty interesting for this type of book, I feel like, especially
from, I feel like this is something that maybe you see from a smaller publishing house, but

(10:21):
this is Simon and Schuster.
And yeah, the vibe almost kind of makes me think of, this is probably inaccurate, but
kind of like, oh, what would you call it?
Spray paint art, like something you'd see on the side of a van.
Yeah, like very like airbrushed looking.

(10:44):
Yeah, yeah.
But in kind of a grungy way, as opposed to when you hear airbrushed or whatnot, you think
kind of like perfect and precisely rendered.
But there's, yeah, like, I really like your comparison to dolls.
They really do look like these little doll people.

(11:06):
Yeah, they're meant to represent human characters.
And just in case you're wondering which creepo meter this book breaks, you can see it on
the back.
It says, creepo meter one, sleep like a baby, two, sleep with one eye open, three, hide

(11:26):
under the covers, four, sleep with the lights on.
And of course, because this story broke the creepo meter, the needle is all the way past
four into the forbidden zone.
And I guess I'll go ahead and read the back of the book.
Here we go.
What's being kept hidden in Heaton Corners?

(11:46):
City girl Ashley McDowell is beginning to adjust to her new life in a small farm town
when she starts making plans for Halloween.
She is shocked to find that no one in Heaton Corners celebrates it.
Ashley is determined not to let that stop her, so she convinces her friends to join
her and go trick or treating for the first time.

(12:07):
But Ashley soon discovers that there's a reason why Heaton Corners doesn't do Halloween.
A reason so haunting and so terrifying that Ashley will never be the same.
Which is true.
There's nothing lying about that synopsis.
Yeah.

(12:28):
And also, I appreciated how, spoiler alert, by the way, this has not been the norm in
previous episodes of the podcast, but Eric and I have actually both read this book.
So we are both abreast.
Yeah.
Hey, how about that?
We are both abreast of all the events that transpire in this fun little middle grade

(12:54):
chapter book.
The historic occasion.
So what the hell?
Yeah, it is.
I was going to say, what the hell was I saying?
Oh, yeah, I was going to say that I appreciate not only that the synopsis on the back cover
of the book is accurate, but the artwork rendered on the front accurately depicts a moment that
takes place in the story.

(13:15):
How about that?
Oh, yeah, you're right.
I didn't even think about that.
So when I first picked this book up, like I said, I wasn't sure it was an anthology
series.
So my assumption was, because this is on the back, it says it's about a girl who just moved
to this town.
So I was like, I wonder if every book, maybe it's about different, like Peer Street, basically,

(13:38):
is it take place in the same neighborhood and you'll see the same characters crop up
in different stories, but everyone has a different protagonist.
But based on the little preview they give you in the back of the next book in the series,
which is called, It's All Downhill From Here, I don't think that's the case.
I think everyone takes place in a different setting.

(13:59):
Yeah.
And the other interesting thing about this series that I gleaned back when I was kind
of combing through the handful that I saw at the public library is that even though
this is an anthology series, it seems like the thematic link between all these diverse

(14:19):
stories is that they each have a sleepover.
I was wondering if that was the case.
I think it is, which is really strange.
I mean, it's not a terrible idea, I guess, but super specific, I feel like.

(14:43):
If you're kind of hoping to build a readership or to build fans of this series, I just can't
help but wonder, how does one feel going from one book to the other in this series, just
knowing without a doubt that, oh, we're meeting these characters.

(15:03):
These motherfuckers are about to have a sleepover.
I know it.
I can just feel it.
I was wondering when I got to the sleepover in the book, I was like, is this series called
Creepover because every single book has a sleepover?
Oh, man.
I think it does.
You know what?
Kudos to you, PJ Night.
I know, right?
I mean, interesting challenge.

(15:24):
Yeah, really interesting challenge to Gauntlet to throw to your authors.
It's like, hey, you do something different with a sleepover.
I dare you.
I think it's a good choice though, because that is one of the rites of passage of being
a preteen and for a lot of, I think especially, I don't want a gender stereotype.

(15:46):
I think especially for young girls, the entry into horror movies and horror interest is
telling stories at a sleepover or watching, renting.
In my day, it was probably Final Destination.
I think now it's The Purge.
I feel like every generation has R-rated horror movie franchise that's specifically geared

(16:14):
towards preteens.
Yeah, I'd say so.
Well, you bring up a good point there about this series.
Possibly, to my eyes, it is kind of marketed to a young female readership.
And I say that too, because from what I could tell from the other covers and synopses that

(16:39):
I read, all the books do seem to involve a group of girls getting together for a sleepover.
And that kind of raised an interesting question in my mind, just to kind of touch on our own
personal experience of not being young females previously in our past.

(17:01):
I was curious, just as far as the concept of a sleepover is concerned, what is your
history, a thumbnail of sleepovers, did you do them often as a kid?
If you did, were they with family?
Was it with friends?
What did your sleepover history look like?
It's an interesting question that you say about family, because we all slept in the

(17:24):
same bed, Willy Wonka or Charlie Bucket style.
Just kidding.
No, because my sister is a year older than me and we have cousins our age.
So when we were junior high, somewhat in high school, mostly junior high, because in high

(17:46):
school everybody started getting jobs and stuff, so it was harder to coordinate.
But they lived in Texas and we lived in Illinois.
So every summer we would fly down to Texas and spend two weeks with their family and
then they would fly back to Illinois and spend two weeks with us.

(18:08):
And it was kind of just like a big sleepover, like talking until you fell asleep or the
one that I remembered.
Speaking of thrift stores, I sent a picture to my sister the other day because I saw VHS
of the Tom Green show.
And I sent her a photo and she was like, haha, I've never watched that.
And I was like, what?
I sent this to you because we had that day when Emily and Sarah were visiting us and

(18:32):
we spent a whole night shotgunning the Tom Green show.
You don't remember the Slutmobile?
And then there was also with friends, I never did a group sleepover.
Again, if I'm stereotyping, I feel like girls do big party sleepovers, but I would usually

(18:55):
just have a single friend over and we would just play action figures or video games or
whatever.
But I think that cut off because of toxic masculinity and heteronormative culture.
I think it was like you didn't want to be caught having a sleepover with another boy

(19:15):
past the age of like, I don't know, 12 or whatever.
I'm not saying that's right.
I'm just saying that's the way it was when I was a kid.
But I think I was also getting tired of my best male friend at around that time too.
So maybe that was also partially it.
It's funny you say that last line.
I'll come back to that about getting tired of your friend.

(19:39):
For my part- Oh, he's about to end the podcast.
Question the same way that the doctor ended the life of that poor boy from uncovered.
Oh, it'll just be a few more moments.
Do you hear my tears falling on the microphone?
Yeah.
Anywho, my sleepovers as a kid were predominantly with family members.

(20:03):
And by that, I mean my maternal grandmother and grandfather.
Some of my core memories as the kids say, sleeping over at their house, Friday nights
into Saturday.
The Friday nights would usually be a McDonald's run followed, well, maybe not in that order,

(20:24):
but a McDonald's run along with a Blockbuster run.
And I mean, it was just the best.
It's the best feeling in the world being with your grandparents, eating a happy meal and
watching some movie that you picked up from the video store.
Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad.
Other nights, I'd have like liverwurst sandwiches with them in the kitchen.

(20:47):
Yeah.
I mean, hey, it's an acquired taste, but they were old.
They liked it.
They gave it to me.
So I'm like, this is pretty cool.
It's not bad with mustard.
But those were my main sleepover memories.
I think as we discussed in a previous episode, that was how the whole freaky stories slash

(21:09):
Fox Family Channel incident occurred.
It was when it was a Saturday that I had slept over there and it just sprung up on the TV
out of the blue.
I also remember watching Oh Yeah cartoons a lot at their house.
Oh yeah, cartoons.
Yeah, I remember having a sleepover with my friend.

(21:33):
We moved when I was nine, so I had my pre-move friends and my post-move friends.
But my pre-move friend, I remember having a sleepover there and watching the first episode
of the Powerpuff Girls on Oh Yeah cartoons and being like, what is this?
The villain was like that hillbilly, what was he even?

(21:58):
Not a bear.
Do you remember this guy?
It was a guy in overalls who was some kind of anthropomorphic.
Top hat, like the purple bear with the top hat or straw hat or something, I think.
Something like that.
Or like a, yeah.
But I was like, this is a weird show.
What are we watching?
Yeah, that was the end of that story.

(22:18):
But anywho, yes, yes it was.
I figured that out eventually.
So how did you?
That was the brunt of my sleepover experience.
The one non-family sleepover experience that I remember and the one experience that I think
I had was, I believe second grade, I went to sleepover at the time, my best friend's

(22:48):
house.
One reason I think we were good friends was because we had the same initials.
So we were like right next to each other in line.
Jesus Christ.
Sometimes, yeah, yeah, Jesus Christ.
He's all of our friends.
Yeah, it was a great sleepover.
But no, no, his name was John, John the Baptist.

(23:09):
Just kidding again.
His name was John and I slept over at his place.
And I think that's a game, the sleeping over at another family's house.
That's a game that is just meant for kids of a certain constitution.

(23:30):
And I did not possess that constitution then and perhaps now in the sense that I was just
too weirded out being somewhere that my family was not and being in a sense unsupervised
by my own family, which I guess speaks to my codependency that I had as a kid and for

(23:57):
quite a stretch of my youth.
And I just remember that you're eating somebody else's dinner and it's like, oh, this is not
the same way we make it or this is just not something we eat at all.
It was just lots of that kind of stuff, you know, just kind of coming to grips with the

(24:18):
fact that, oh, there are other people in this thing called life and they're not just like
cardboard cutouts that surround me, the main player of this drama.
And they have their own ways of doing things and their own interests.
And this is really hard for me to swallow right now.

(24:39):
And I just remember, I think we watched Small Soldiers that night.
And the next morning I was just so and I was so weirded out by the experience that I remember
John and I sitting on the couch, you know, just talking.

(25:03):
And I was like full of these feelings, I was full of these feelings of like grief and confusion.
And I just had it in my mind that I have crossed the point of no return.
I have entered this person's house.

(25:23):
I have to like be friends with them forever now.
Like, I feel like I've signed some kind of social contract that I wasn't prepared for.
And I have to like love his family as much as I love my family.
And I'm not ready for this.
And so like as we were sitting there, you know, I just like broke out and I told him,

(25:48):
John, I don't know if I could be your friend anymore.
It's so terrible for me to admit that.
And I like broke his heart.
He like, he started getting upset.
He's like, what are you talking about?
I'm like, I just, I don't know.
I don't know what's going on.
This is just too much for me.

(26:09):
I don't, I don't think we can be friends anymore.
We're from two different worlds, John.
Yeah, we're too.
This week, this can't work out this thing we got going on.
I've, I've seen, I've seen what your, your baking dishes look like when they have lasagna
in them.
And I can't unsee that, John.

(26:30):
I've seen what your backyard looks like and that's, that's just not what my backyard looks
like.
And I don't know how to reconcile those two facts in my little elementary mind right now.
And dear listener, I told John that I don't, I didn't think we could be friends after that

(26:50):
day.
And if I'm being honest and if my memory is not deceiving me, I kind of feel like we did
start growing apart after that.
Cause I mean, how can you, yeah, as traumatizing as what I quote unquote experienced, you know,
I mean, how much more traumatizing was it for John to sit there and just have me dump
him for inexplicable and probably unexplained reasons.

(27:13):
So John, if you're out there, I'm sorry.
And I will never forget that.
I hope you have, but I will never forget it.
Man, that is pretty rough.
I've, I don't think I've ever been on that side of the friendship dumping grounds.
Oh really?
You've been John you're saying?

(27:34):
Speaking of being codependent.
Yeah.
I think I was very, I think I stayed too long in a lot of friendships that I should have
gotten out of when people were not treating me right.
Um, my, the one guy that I had sleepovers with post move was named Mike.
And we had a bit of a checkered history because it was, he was my best friend when we moved

(27:58):
there, but he was always very, uh, conscientious about reminding me that I was not his best
friend.
His best friend was his kid named Ricky from before he moved to Lakewood falls.
So there was always a power imbalance that I, I was always struggling to surmount.
I was like, look, I watch he's the friend that I talked about on the episode where we're

(28:21):
talking about why we'll never do a Godzilla episode.
Um, he was the friend who was obsessed with Godzilla and I was like, I'll, I'll watch
the Godzilla movies with you.
I'll sit here and page through the Godzilla magazine you subscribe to.
And then I met Ricky, he would come over and be like, Godzilla's dumb.
You'll never get a girlfriend, Michael.
And I was like, why do you prefer this guy to me?

(28:47):
So I think I growing apart, you know, speaking of growing apart, I think I became very resentful
and like didn't leave him as a friend, but just got a lot shittier to him over the years.
Like will this make you like me?
You fucking asshole.
Perfect.
Oh my God.
Perfect.
Well, um, isn't it interesting growing up?

(29:10):
Wow.
What a wild ride.
Um, I gotta say returning to, yeah, go ahead.
What you're, when I was thinking about, when you're talking about how it's weird to go
over somebody else's house and see like they do things differently and it's like a culture
shock.
Um, Michael's family ate dinner at like five o'clock, which was so weird to me because

(29:31):
at my house we always ate.
My dad, like, I don't know why, but for some reason my dad like never got home from work
until like, you know, eight o'clock at night.
So eating when the sun was up was like, this is a weird experience.
Is this supposed to last me until I wake up in the morning?
Um, and Michael, Michael had to ask if he could be excused from the table and I did

(29:57):
not at my house.
So that was super awkward sitting there.
Michael would be like, can I be excused?
And I would just be looking at everybody like, am I supposed to ask if I can be excused?
I'm not their kid.
So yeah, exactly.
I'm just a kid.
I think I should be able to do whatever I want.
Yeah.
Michael would get up and then I would just kind of like moonwalk out of there.

(30:23):
Peace.
Thanks for the meal.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
That, I mean, that is a culture shock.
Um, I gotta say though, uh, as far as no trick or treating is concerned, I, when it came
to those handful of chapters where the sleepover or the creep over was taking place.

(30:45):
Um, so to provide, you know, we, to provide a really quick thumbnail, I mean, Eric already
did with the back synopsis.
Um, so that there's a new girl in town, Ashley to Heaton corners, um, and Georgia, I presume,
uh, cause they mentioned moving from the big city of Atlanta.

(31:07):
I was curious.
I was going to ask you, did they ever say what state Heaton corners was in?
They didn't.
I just presume.
Well, they didn't say specifically that it was in Georgia, but Ashley, our protagonist,
her sister has gone away to college in Chicago.
And I feel like at some point she makes mention of the distance between them.

(31:32):
And yeah, I feel like it was equitable to, you know, her basically saying, oh yeah, you
moved so far away, you know, from Atlanta and now from us.
So I feel like, yeah, it's, it's somewhere in the state of Georgia.
Who knows?
Maybe Heaton corners is a real place.
Maybe it's not, we're not looking it up.
Um, but any who, uh, she's new to town, but unlike how might you expect that plot point

(31:57):
to develop, she's not the source of derision from her classmates or ostracization.
Um, she's actually welcomed with open arms and, uh, everybody in this rural community
actually thinks she's really cool.
Um, so she quickly, uh, develops a group of friends, three girls, Danielle, Stephanie

(32:24):
and Mary Beth, and Ashley has a birthday, which is on Halloween.
And she just so happens to love Halloween, but Halloween is not celebrated in any fashion
in Heaton corners.
And they have a definite strict rule that nobody is to go out trick or treating on that

(32:49):
fateful night.
So that bums Ashley out, but she conspires with her friends who have not really had a
proper Halloween experience.
She says, I'll invite you over for like a sleepover birthday party, but we're going
to use that as a pretense to get dressed up and like our scariest, you know, most ghoulish

(33:12):
outfits.
And then we will sneak out and go trick or treating and won't it be a blast?
Um, so that's the premise of the sleepover or the creep over.
And I gotta say during, um, those, those passages, those chapters where Ashley is preparing for
her birthday party slash sleepover.

(33:33):
And when the friends initially come over and, you know, it's talking about the pizzas that
her dad went to go pick up the, you know, the next town over 20 minutes away because
they live in this kind of podunk, uh, farming community.
You know, the pizzas that he's going to pick up, she decorates the barn out back with all
of their Halloween decorations.

(33:56):
You know, they're making plans for what they want to wear.
Uh, they're putting on the makeup, uh, you know, later in the story, they're getting,
uh, or, you know, some of them anyway, who are getting snuggly to watch some scary movies
on television.
During all of those moments, I had such a visceral, and I read this book pretty quickly.

(34:20):
So it wasn't like I was taking my time with it and, uh, savoring, you know, uh, the story
so much, but even in that kind of quickly scanning slash reading mode, those passages
just really sparked something in me where I actually found myself thinking like, wow,

(34:43):
oh, that sounds like so much fun.
I cannot wait to have a sleepover of my own.
And then it was just like a big cold splash of reality where I realized, oh my God, I'm
a 32 year old man.
I can't have sleepovers anymore.
And I immediately got so, so depressed.

(35:03):
So a credit to PJ night or whoever you are, you really sold me on how fun sleepovers are.
And I kind of wish that, um, that I had the chance to relive one, maybe not this one in
this particular story, but man, oh man, that sounds like a really fun time to be alive.
Yeah.

(35:24):
Well, I, um, I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I keep having
this idea that I want to like buy a bar or a movie theater, whatever, and make it like
90s themed ish and one of my ideas for that was like, I would like to do a sleepover where

(35:44):
it's like, you just choose a theme for the night.
Um, like whether it be a TV show that you would binge or like a movie franchise, you
know, and it would just be like, um, kind of like when those movie theaters do like
the 24 hours of horror movies or whatever.
Um, but just have people show up with their pillows and their pajamas and just like hang
out all Saturday night.
Cause yes, I also would love.

(36:06):
I think now that I have a better sense of myself and, um, better boundaries that I can
draw with people.
So I'm not hanging out with people that I, uh, feel lesser than.
I think adult me would love to have a sleepover and just, you know, or like there's something
fun about, uh, discovering like a video game and then just playing that for like hours

(36:30):
on end or something, you know, so I miss that too.
And getting back to what I was saying earlier about the way girls do sleepovers versus the
way boys do sleepovers.
I do think a really fun aspect, um, of the book is the way that they get into the party
game.
Like a group of girls is always just like one, you know, a party game away from just

(36:51):
becoming a coven of witches, it seems like, which I think is like more, which I think
sounds a lot more fun than, um, I don't know, being a boy and just like having to punch
each other or whatever, which I never quite was masculine enough to, I had a feeling yesterday
of like, uh, sometimes I do something around the house and I'm like, I am the most manly

(37:15):
man I installed the screen door the other day in our new place.
And I was like, yes, I have a masculine macho swagger now.
Um, but 98% of the rest of the time, I think I would rather be like playing on a Ouija
board and drinking wine or whatever.
Exactly.
It's like, we are just, uh, you know, we may appear a certain way on the outside, but inside

(37:40):
we're like Brooklyn witches that just want to sip wine and summon some spirits.
Yeah, it does.
And that's a desperate housewives spinoff.
That's just aching to be made.
I feel like a hex in the city.
You know what I mean?
I feel it.

(38:00):
Sure.
Yeah.
Get on it.
That should happen.
That should happen.
But would it be a group of...
Starring us.
Okay.
I was going to say, would it be a group of adult men who are like, I want to, you know,
do my hair up and watch scary movies all night?
Yeah.
I mean, it just sounds so nice.

(38:22):
Come on.
We live in a brave new world.
Anything's possible.
Maybe.
So long as there's not a law against it.
Yeah, no, I'm totally for it.
I mean, I feel like as millennials, I think we're pretty...
There are probably a lot of people our age who are on board with adult sleepovers.
But yes, anywho, like you said, I noted before in the Spooksville episode that the books

(38:48):
all have their own...
The chapter books that came out in the wake of Goosebumps all have their own variation
on the spooky chapter numbers and stuff.
And this book has what I would describe as like kind of a vampire or mummy-esque font
for the chapter headings.
Like in terms of everything being like a, what do you call it?

(39:11):
A scimitar or something with like the curved, like very sharp angle or points on these very
curvy letters.
Very like kind of monsters, I guess.
And then across the top of the book, they have...
Oh, nevermind.
Across the top of the book, they have blood dripping down and elegant swirls and patterns.

(39:36):
And as I was flipping through the book, I tricked myself because I thought there's also
a pool of blood at the bottom of the pages.
And I thought that initially that the pool of blood got deeper and deeper as the book
went on, so you could flip through it.
But I was just optical illusioning myself.

(39:58):
It's the same level the whole way through.
But some of the pages do have a little splash beneath the page number as if to imply that
the blood dripped off the top of the book and is falling into the bottom of the book.
So I think that's a pretty neat touch.
That is.
That's just having fun.

(40:19):
Good for them.
Well, in terms of the actual story...
In the course.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's basically what I was going to get into.
So you go.
OK.
Yeah.
So Ashley McDowell moves into this new town.
And you already touched on a lot of the details, but I will say the setting for me was A plus

(40:39):
10 out of 10.
I love heat and corners.
I love the details like the dad having to drive a town over to pick up a pizza.
I grew up in Plainfield, Illinois, which is not as remote as heat and corners.
But it was basically like a farming rural community that was gradually getting overtaken

(41:03):
by suburbia when we moved there.
So it was like people I met who had lived there their whole lives would tell me like,
oh yeah, when I was five years old, this place was like all cornfields and like one dirt
road and one convenience store.

(41:24):
By the time we got there, it was a lot more...
I don't know if you call it gentrified if it was all farmers that are getting shoved
out of their homes or whatever.
But it was just kind of this place.
Developed.
Developed, sure.
But it was like if you go five minutes in any direction, you'll find a different type

(41:45):
of, I don't know, township situation.
There was plenty of cornfields and dirt roads, but then you could also go...
There's a Walmart across the street from the dilapidated barn that's falling apart in this
abandoned field.
And then there was a really trendy downtown area.

(42:06):
It got increasingly trendy right before I moved when I was 30.
I remember there was a steakhouse that they built that had glass columns that were blue
lighting.
It looked very much like something you would see in Chicago or something.

(42:27):
So what's my point?
My point is that Heaton Corners, I think, resonated with the part of me that enjoyed
walking around in the cornfields at midnight and not worrying that somebody was going to
jump out and murder you or whatever.
Yeah, I was curious to get your feedback on the setting because the book definitely sparked

(42:50):
in the same way that the sleepover bits did.
I loved hearing about the town.
I loved hearing about their harvest festival and the abundance of all the local crops like
the apples.
Because the thing is, I've lived in Florida pretty much my whole life.
That's where I currently live now.

(43:12):
And that type of stuff is so utterly foreign to me that it was basically might as well
be the stuff of dreams, which for me it is.
Just because for the longest time, it wasn't until I was in my sophomore year of high school

(43:35):
that I saw real snow for the first time.
So autumn in its depiction in the book is, is, occupies that same space for me where
it's almost kind of like this fantastical thing that I have only heard about or read

(43:59):
about or seen in movies and I have never experienced it.
So anytime that there is a book that indulges in those seasonal trappings and just the season
itself, it can't help but just stir this sense of desire and longing in me.

(44:20):
I really crave the day that I can experience a proper autumn, even if it's in Georgia,
even if it's in the heating corners, just one state up for me.
There've just been so many Halloweens where it's just the weather is utter garbage here.

(44:43):
It is just so stinking hot, which I've heard conversely from folks that I've met who do
live or who have lived in places like Wisconsin or Michigan.
And they're like, Oh yeah, it usually snows on Christmas and, or excuse me, usually snows

(45:07):
on around Halloween.
Sometimes, you know, we'll get a little bit of snow and you can't go outside trick or
treating unless you are also bundled up from head to toe.
It's like, well, that also sounds like it sucks, but you know, yeah, I just long for
the day where I can, you know, kind of like we were talking about in the dollhouse murders

(45:28):
episode.
I could be able to dig into an apple chiller and, you know, breathe in the wood smoke and
and stroll through the leaves and do all the, you know, the basic, the basic bitch fall
things basically and just love every second of it.

(45:53):
I await that day.
Well, you're an adult now.
You can move away from Florida.
I can move away.
That's easier said than done, especially when, you know, you've got family hanging around
and making you feel all guilty.
Sure.
Either implicit implicitly or explicitly.
Illinois was not, we didn't get snow in October ever.

(46:17):
I remember anyway, but you definitely had to like incorporate long sleeves into your
costume.
Which is not the worst thing.
It sounds like.
No, I mean, it was fine.
It was one thing that I miss about Illinois because I moved to Colorado when I was 30
and people in Colorado don't really decorate for Halloween.

(46:39):
And it was like a pretty big thing where I lived in Illinois.
Like people would have the full on, you know, like haunted house in their front yard that
they made themselves.
And yeah, people don't even do like Jack Lentons.
So I will say probably my best Halloween memory as an adult, at least of Halloween that I
stayed at home because Adana, my girlfriend and I do tend to travel around Halloween because

(47:06):
we just want to see like, what would it be like in New Orleans on Halloween?
And the best one was Salem, Massachusetts.
We went in 2021, which is like exactly what as an adult I want Halloween to be.
Because once I was too old to trick or treat, I never quite figured out, you know, I wasn't
popular enough to go to the parties where everybody was drinking and wearing sexy stuff.

(47:30):
So, but Salem is like all of the adults who love Halloween because they just want to dress
up as something really cool and scary.
They all congregate in Salem on Halloween.
So if you and your family ever want to like go rent a house up there on Halloween, because
there's like a million houses in like Sleepy Hollow or I mean, Sleepy Hollow, obviously,

(47:53):
I know that's in New York or in like between Boston and Salem, there are all these like
gigantic palatial houses, like, you know, four bedrooms or whatever.
It's like, I would love that, but I can't pay $500 a night.
So yeah, see, I've heard great things about the vibe and the atmosphere and the events

(48:14):
that go on in Salem at that time.
I've also heard that it is an utter bear to be there as far as traffic and just, you know,
massive people.
So I'm curious, you know, this podcast is turning into a travelogue.

(48:35):
Won't you join us?
We'll get back to the book, we promise.
What was, we can even cut this part out.
I don't care.
What was your experience like as far as that was concerned?
Well, we went in 2021.
So I think the population was somewhat down from a normal Halloween because of reasonable

(48:58):
concerns that people had.
Yeah, no, it was, people were all packed together the entire time and nobody was wearing a mask,
which I wasn't either.
So I'm not criticizing everybody else.
But I think we were all just kind of like, whatever, this is worth dying for.
Exactly.
If I had to, this is where I want.

(49:19):
But I like, for me, the crowds of people were like, it was fine because it wasn't rowdy
or I don't know, it wasn't like a giant party atmosphere.
It was just people really enjoying the atmosphere of all being together, everybody being in
costume.
It wasn't crazy in any way because I don't love being in crowds when they're all crazy.

(49:43):
And it was funny because my girlfriend was all proud of herself because we stayed at
a hotel in Boston and there's like a commuter rail or whatever that goes from Boston to
Salem.
And she bought us like weekend, what's this service called?

(50:05):
Public transit.
She bought us like weekend passes for the train.
And then so we went to the Boston station and she was like, these were only like $10
or whatever they were.
Can you believe it?
And we sat there for like an hour at the station waiting for the train to come in.
And then the train comes and keeps going.

(50:30):
And we were talking to the other people there and they were like, yeah, I think the train
is just too full from all the previous stops.
So we're all going to Uber there.
And we were like, oh, okay.
As far as the traffic goes, I mean, it was like a 40 minute drive.
I don't know.

(50:51):
Once we got to Salem, we just walked everywhere because there wasn't anything that we needed
to drive to.
So I didn't have any problems with the traffic either.
Good to know.
Yeah, that's definitely a bucket list item though, for sure.
I mean, I'll certainly take-
Anyway, to get back to my, sorry.
Yeah.
Anything in the Midwest.
I'll close the loop on my, because I started by saying my favorite memory of Halloween

(51:14):
where I stayed at home.
Because Salem is probably my favorite memory overall.
But October of 2020 was, we did like a social distancing trick or treat where we had like
a tube on the porch and Adana's mom was living in this house at the time.
So she was sitting on the porch, whatever people would come up, she would put a piece

(51:36):
of candy in the tube and it would roll down and they would catch it in their bucket.
And we had Adana bought a digital projector.
So we watched Hocus Pocus outside in the yard while all the kids were walking around in
their Halloween costumes.
And it was like the most people that I've ever seen out on Halloween.

(51:57):
I think probably because of people just being like, I need to get out of the house because
we'd been living in lockdown for six months.
So it's funny because it's the inverse of living in Illinois where it was like nobody
had decorated, which they do in Illinois, but also we got so many more trick or treaters

(52:19):
than I'd ever gotten when living in Illinois.
So anyway, that was my boring story.
No, no, not at all.
I mean, that's the other depressing thing about Florida, or at least, you know, my neighborhood,
unless you live, it seems like I don't know if this is true of other states and the regions,
but it's like unless you live in a like a gated community or the equivalent thereof,

(52:43):
you're not seeing any trick or treaters in any kind of quantity because that's what everybody
does, they go to the gated communities where the houses are closely knit.
And you know, the communities kind of like go all out, you know, to a certain extent,
at least some houses do enough to make it feel like an event.

(53:04):
So that yeah, you can just walk from house to house to house and, and get your fill of
candy.
I was shocked though, because last year we actually got three or four groups at our door
for trick or treating, and that's about three or four more than we usually do in my neighborhood.

(53:24):
And my neighborhood is not like desolate of people.
There are other young families that live around here.
But that just adds to the overall bummer ness of Halloween where I live, you know, not only
is it hot as hell.
But yeah, it doesn't seem, it doesn't appear at least residentially where I am that there's

(53:48):
anybody out there celebrating the spirit of the occasion.
So it's very, very sad.
Very much in the same way that it was sad for Ashley in Heaton Corners.
See, I'm bringing it back to the book.
Yep.
I guess I'm done talking about my personal Halloween memories anyway.
No, no, I don't want to, I don't want to cut you off.

(54:10):
You can, you can jump in or, you know, find a creative way to, to rope it in to our next
course of discussion.
As far as the book is concerned.
Let me ask you this though.
Oh, go, go, go.
You.
So we talked about, there's a reason why Heaton Corners doesn't do Halloween.
At what point did you figure out exactly what the curse was?

(54:34):
I didn't, honestly.
So yeah, by the way, there's a curse.
Well let me tell you this.
Maybe this just says more about me than PJ Knight's abilities as an author or her preoccupations
as an author.
I, so first let me lay it out for you, dear listener.

(54:58):
So what ends up happening is that Ashley goes out trick or treating with her friends, all
garbed up as they promised as they planned and they come across other trick or treaters.
But they seem odd.
They're not really talking all that much and the costumes they wear are very, very realistic.

(55:22):
Like the first pair that they run into is a child dressed up in the kind of like an
old school devil costume and another child who's dressed up as a bat and the child who's
carrying or excuse me, the child who's dressed up as the devil is carrying a jack-o-lantern

(55:42):
that's emitting this very sulfurous smoke from from its card face and the child that's
dressed as a bat.
I thought it was pretty, pretty cool.
I kind of love this whole sequence, the whole trick or treating sequence, because.
Yeah.
I felt like it built up genuine unease and foreboding in me in the sense that I really

(56:07):
didn't know where it was going to go.
I didn't know what was going to happen to Ashley and her friends because it seemed like
some heavy, some heavy stuff was about to go down because basically they come to find
that or suspect or feel they just get a bad feeling from all these kids they keep running

(56:32):
into.
They're not really talking like kids.
They're kind of talking in this dazed fashion.
They run into a witch and a werewolf near their junior high slash high school and the
witch, you know, it seems like she, you know, it's not a mask.
It's like really her skin that looks so warty and her fingers really seem genuinely gnarled

(56:53):
and long and clawed and, you know, she's talking cryptically about, oh, I used to like soft
things like this costume that you're wearing.
We'll see you soon.
You know, it was genuinely creepy.
Pretty.
But let me know.
She said soft things.
I do remember that.

(57:14):
Oh, really?
Because I thought because I thought it was creepy.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I thought it was creepy.
I'm like, damn, that's good.
Nice PJ night.
I'm like, yeah, that's good.
And then we actually has seen a couple of times up until this point, a strange symbol
that seems to crop up around the town.

(57:34):
Shut up for a second.
Yep.
Go ahead.
You read it.
We were both right.
She says, I always liked pretty things.
Soft things.
Look at that.
Pretty things.
That's an album title right there.

(57:54):
So Ashley has seen the symbol crop up on a number of occasions, first on her mailbox
post, then on a door inside the town's general store that at first looks like it's an eight
laying down, the number eight laying down.
But then she comes to realize it's and they don't refer to it as this.

(58:17):
But I believe the term is the or a boros, the snake eating its own tail.
Yep.
Yeah.
Well, it's the infinity symbol that's been crossed with or a boros because it has the
middle part.
Okay.
So yeah, it's like it's a hybrid of the two.

(58:39):
And at first, the symbolism or the meaning of this sigil, this symbol is not known.
But yeah, the whole sequence with the trick or treaters out on the street at first and
then Ashley goes up to the house of a boy that she has a crush on like, oh, let's go
trick or treat at Joey's house.

(59:00):
And she knocks on the door and Joey answers the door and he's covered, not exactly tattooed,
just like painted with this symbol on at the very least his head.
I don't know if it was said it was like covering his body or covering his face and arms.
But at the very least, there's one right on his forehead.
And then his stepmother comes screaming, running at the door saying, no, no, no, no, no.

(59:25):
And she slams the door shut on Ashley and her trick or treating friends.
And that whole that whole sequence is really effectively done.
And like I said, just really sets you ill at ease for what the heck is going on here.
So I'm going to pause and let you talk about that part because I feel like I hogged it
all.

(59:45):
Yeah, two things.
One, it is maybe important to note that Joey earlier on overheard that Ashley was planning
on trick or treating.
And he got really angry and was like, no, nobody does that here.
You can't do that.
And Ashley was like, well, I thought I had a crush on you, but I guess you're just a

(01:00:08):
big old jerk.
So Joey clearly knows something about the insidious nature of Halloween heat and corners.
And the other thing was, yes, I do.
I thought that this book did a really good job, especially in that trick or treating
sequence of we talk a lot about like when stuff horror for kids makes concessions to

(01:00:32):
the fact that they're writing for kids.
And so you wind up with something that feels a little too, I don't know, like goopy or
just not.
Yeah, tepid.
But I think the best solution is just to go full on creepy and seeing a bunch of kids who
look like they're kind of frozen in time with their old timey Halloween costumes that

(01:00:58):
are becoming real.
Because I love those old, you see those old photos shared on Tumblers or whatever of terrifying
old back when costumes were made out of paper mache and stuff.
And you see these just grainy old, yeah, they're so creepy and terrifying.
And I kind of want to bring that back actually.

(01:01:19):
If I ever go to Salem again, maybe I'll make my own paper mache creepy mask because I love
the atmosphere of those old photos.
So I think that was a really good decision by the apparently unreal PJ Knight.
I'm assuming.
Because it was like, yeah, yeah, because it was like nobody's getting killed here.

(01:01:40):
But it hits that creep factor really nicely.
That's like age appropriate, but still makes me as an adult be like, ugh.
Yeah, like it felt dangerous.
But not in a way like I don't think that these kids are going to be killed by any means.
But what they're encountering feels like there is genuine danger here.

(01:02:02):
They're getting involved in something.
And that kind of goes along with some of my disappointment about some of the revelations
that come about later in the story.
Well, we can go ahead and talk about that.
I mean, I don't know that I have.
Oh, I will say you talked about the harvest.
And there is a small town fair in this book.

(01:02:24):
The carnivals come into town and that's where Ashley goes to meet up with her potential
or her crush that she hopes will become more than a crush Joey.
And that's another thing that I love.
That's another trope that I love is like a date or a meeting somebody that you hope will
be a date at a small town carnival.

(01:02:44):
Wow, that's right on the head.
PJ Knight knew who she was writing for.
Yeah, he or she is in the about the author section.
They take pains to not use any.
It's just like PJ Knight, the author.
We've been sworn to keep PJ's identity secret and it's a secret we will take to our graves.

(01:03:10):
So that's fun.
Okay, we had to sign some non disclosure agreements.
You don't want to get involved in all of that legalese though.
So we're going to present it in a fun way for you.
It's funny because I saw the name PJ Knight and I was like, do I remember that name from
like a short story in the Bruce Covill's book of series?

(01:03:34):
But I think I must just be thinking of some other author with initials.
Yeah, they're kind of popular, especially when it comes to this content, wouldn't you
say?
First initials.
First and middle initials, followed by monosyllable last name.
Anywho.

(01:03:54):
But anyway, I will say, I figured out, I mean, I don't know if you want to go chronologically.
I'm not going that way.
Yeah, I don't care.
I figured out that the danger was that the costumes were going to become real.
I think Mary Beth is the one dressed up as a vampire.
And at some point when they're trick or treating, she says something and Ashley's like, oh wow,

(01:04:17):
you sound a lot better because she has like the plastic vampire fangs.
And Ashley's like, oh, you can talk a lot better with those fangs.
I guess you're just getting used to them.
And I was like, no, they're becoming real.
That's what's going on.
Wow, that's pretty good.
I didn't clue into that as early as you did.
I think it was right around the time that Danielle, who's dressed as a skeleton, it

(01:04:44):
talked about how she had contorted herself into her hiding spot and how her bones were
creepy.
Oh yeah.
Again, really creepy.
Really creepy in an unexpected way.
That was creepy, but it was also kind of funny because nobody reacts to it as being creepy
at the moment.

(01:05:05):
They're all just like, oh, Danielle, you scamp.
Well honestly, that whole sequence too.
So we have the sequence outside trick or treating when the girls return back to the barn and
start playing their games.
That whole sequence I thought was handled well in the sense that it just seemed to have

(01:05:28):
a kind of eerie dream logic to all the events that were happening.
This feels like something that you would have a dream of happening to you and your friends.
The fact that here are these girls having a sleepover, but it's not in the house proper
where the responsible adults coming to the rescue are.

(01:05:51):
It's in this separate building.
It's in a barn.
I don't know.
For me, it just kind of made it feel isolated in that sense.
They are isolated from help.
They're kind of in the jaws of this seemingly cosmic, magical transformation that they can't

(01:06:12):
do anything to stop.
It's just the wheels are kind of inexplicably or not inexplicably, they're inevitably turning
and they really just have no sense of what's going on.
But PJ Knight doesn't waste our time with all of those kind of questions that authors

(01:06:37):
make their characters say the things that they think the audience is thinking like,
what's going on here?
Why don't we call the police?
But I found the whole transformation part during the sleepover to be unsettling.
It was also really well handled.

(01:06:58):
Well, yeah, Danielle turns into a skeleton because she's dressed as a skeleton.
Stephanie, I honestly don't really remember what happens to Stephanie.
I just remember she disappears at some point.
Yeah, she just kind of up and vanishes.
No pun intended because she's the one dressed as the bride that they do, slight as the feather,
stiff as a board.

(01:07:19):
She does genuinely levitate at one point, but Ashley kind of like pulls her back down
to earth.
But then after that, she just ups and pops out of existence.
Yeah, I've been praising the book so much.
I want to level that with a little bit of nitpicking.
Oh, me too.
I think a little would have gone a long way.
Okay, great.

(01:07:40):
I think a little would have gone a long way in the levitating scene because the way it
plays out is like Stephanie, they look up and Stephanie's levitating like five feet
above everybody's head or whatever.
I feel like they could have done just some little thing that would have been a little
bit uncanny as opposed to something that's impossible to explain.

(01:08:01):
Yeah, maybe something distracts, maybe there's a loud sound and all the girls look over like,
oh, what was that?
And then they turn back and realize they're not holding Stephanie anymore, but she's still
exactly where they left her in midair.
I don't know, something like that.
I don't need to be rewriting other people's stuff.
No, I think you're right though, just something where it felt like she left our fingers or

(01:08:28):
whatever.
And then they're thinking back on it later and they're like, that couldn't have been
real, right?
We're just making that up or something.
Anyway, but just like an inch or two instead of like, whoa, she's up on the ceiling.
But I'm okay because I was going to say if you're okay, I don't really have that much
else to say, so I'm just going to talk about the rest of the story.

(01:08:51):
Do you want to say more about the sleepover part?
No, not about the sleepover part.
Like I said, you alluded to the whole curse aspect of it and that's really where the brunt
of my critiques are nestled.
If you want to catch us up to pace and then I can offer my comments on that part.

(01:09:15):
Yeah, so the sleepover culminates with all three girls disappearing from the party at
various times.
And Marybeth, who's dressed as a vampire, starts to say like, I'm so thirsty.
Can you get me some water?
And then Ashley gets her some water and then she like Marybeth tasted it and she spits
it out.

(01:09:36):
She's like, no, I don't want that.
And Ashley's like, what about juice?
What about milk?
And Marybeth is like, that all just sounds disgusting, but I'm so thirsty.
Please help me.
And then she becomes a vampire basically.
So Ashley runs upstairs because at this point they moved out of the barn into the, I think

(01:09:57):
basement maybe, to watch scary movies.
And so Marybeth is like, you know, Benny Hill style chasing Ashley around the table and
stuff like, I'm going to bite your neck.
And then Ashley runs upstairs and wakes up her mom.
And then when her mom comes downstairs, Marybeth has also disappeared.
So Ashley is like, I guess all my friends in heating quarters don't really like me

(01:10:21):
because they all ditched me at my Halloween sleepover.
And then, I don't know, I forget the details, but it's not really that important.
She realizes the curse is real.
So she's like looking for her friends and then like over the course of the next week
or whatever, the teachers at school are like, oh no, those three girls, their families all

(01:10:43):
moved away.
And Ashley's like, what?
They all three just moved away?
And the teacher's like, yeah, I guess being a farmer just isn't the life for everybody.
And she goes and looks at their houses and sees that they're all like, it looks like
they just left, like nothing's moved, nothing's packed up.
There's like food on all the dishes that are like stacked up in the sink and stuff.

(01:11:04):
It is like they just all evaporated.
So then she goes to this, I don't remember if you touched on, what's her name, Miss Bernice
or whatever her name is, who works at the local convenience store.
And she earlier warned Ashley like, you don't want to go trick or treating little girl.

(01:11:29):
And Ashley was like, ha ha ha, just give me some marshmallow pumpkins old lady.
And then so she goes back to her now because she's like, I think that lady is the only
person who actually knows what's going on in this whole town because she's old.
And so she and Joey go over to the general store and get like handed a whole written

(01:11:54):
document that's like, Miss Bernice is like, I can't tell you anything, but here, read
this.
And then Joey's like, oh, I don't like reading.
And then it like outlines the whole story of the curse and how it came to be.
Do you want to tell that part?
Because it seems like that was the basis of your critique.

(01:12:14):
Yeah, I'd say I would say that this whole section of the book, with the exception of,
I'd say maybe the final notes, I was not the biggest fan of just the promise of all of
that eeriness and unease that's packed into the trick or treating sequence and sleepover

(01:12:40):
sequence.
I feel like it, you know, as is the case in narratives like this, you know, horror narratives,
especially where you're building up all this mystique and all these questions, the answering
of the questions just kind of fumbles the ball.
And I feel like it kind of fumbled the ball here with this book.

(01:13:02):
First of all, may I say now I know that this book was not written for me, a 32 year old
person.
It was written for a much younger audience who have not been exposed for the most part
to narratives like this in the abundance that I have over my three decades on this earth.

(01:13:26):
Having said that, let me just say how utterly tired I am of curses.
I am so tired of curses and curses of this nature.
Especially the written, you know, the written oral history that Bernice has in this book,

(01:13:50):
which is hysterical because she's like, here, I don't have the strength to tell you about
what happened.
Read it.
The kids read it.
And then Bernice just goes on and starts talking to them about it.
She's like, oh, yeah.
So anyway, it's like, well, fuck, why couldn't you just tell us in the beginning?
What was the point of giving us this book?

(01:14:10):
Anyway, as the story goes, back during the Depression, 1931, there was a local girl,
a local family, the Snowdens, who managed to remain pretty well off despite like everybody
else in the town living hard Scrabble lives and their daughter, whose name I've already
forgotten because I don't care.

(01:14:31):
I think it was Charlotte.
She just lorded her wealth and her privilege over all the other kids, you know, shoved
her luxurious lifestyle in their faces anytime she could.
And that was expressed a lot during Halloween, particularly one year in 1931, when she actually
had a genuine dressmaker come to the house and design her Halloween costume.

(01:14:57):
She wanted to be a snake charmer.
And they had a special order, a stuffed or a toy snake for her to wear and to perform
with for to go along with her ensemble.
Well, the local kids, you know, all these poor dustbowl-esque farmer families were just

(01:15:25):
so fed up with Charlotte's selfish ways that they thought, hey, you know what's going to
be a really great way to get back at Charlotte that's totally not going to come back and
bite us in the ass?
Pardon my pun is let's replace her toy snake with a real snake.
And that they do.
And it scares the pants off Charlotte.

(01:15:46):
Huh, everybody gets a big laugh out of that.
But oh, no, Charlotte's not screaming because she's terrified.
I mean, yes, she is, but she's also been bitten by this snake, which is guess what?
Poisonous.
And before you know it, she's on the ground writhing around, foaming at the mouth, and
then she's just dead.

(01:16:06):
Dead from a snake bite.
Now, I'm not a herpetologist, so I can't tell you if there is a snake in existence that
renders that effect as immediately as it sounded like it did in the story.
I feel like snake bites, even the most poisonous ones, would have at least a little bit more

(01:16:27):
of a lingering effect.
And there would be at least a little bit of time to attempt saving this person's life.
But it sounds like it's a pretty instantaneous, yep, she got bit and then she fell down and
she died.
So that right there is like, hmm, lazy, don't care for that.

(01:16:49):
Yes, I agree with you, but also I think I've learned to just kind of swallow that because
like a snake, you might say.
I read a book a while ago called Poison, a memoir.
I think the author's name is Gail Bell or something like that.
And it's a book that's like, it's a really, actually it's a really good book if anybody's

(01:17:13):
interested in poison, because she's like relating an incident that happened in her family that
may or may not have been a murder.
So she's kind of investigating that.
And then through that story, she talks about all the various kinds of poisons and their
effects and stuff like that.
But one of the points that she makes in the book that always stuck with me, because I

(01:17:34):
read it like 10 years ago, was she talks about how like movies, when somebody gets poisoned
in a movie, they're just like, oh, and they fall over, you know, and it's like they just
kind of go to sleep or whatever.
And she's like, no, there's no poison that does that.
Poison is like, it's prolonged, it's agonizing, you're like vomiting up blood.

(01:17:57):
So every time I see a poisoning in a movie now, that's just like somebody like starting
to shake and then dropping the teacup and then just like falling over on the couch or
something.
I'm like, bullshit.
The only movie I ever saw that got it right is The Hateful Eight, does a really good poisoning

(01:18:18):
scene where everybody is just like vomiting up blood.
Wow.
I never finished watching that past the first like 10 minutes.
That's just because that's my life.
It wasn't like, oh, this movie sucks.
So maybe one of those days I'll get to enjoy that.
Yeah, it seems like it is.
Yeah, but I think it's one of my favorite Tarantinos, but a lot of people think it's

(01:18:40):
like one of his worst.
So, you know, whatever.
Anyway, that's not what we're talking about.
You can't please all the people just like you can't poison all the people as quickly
as you want to.
So anyway, Charlotte dies.
And guess what, folks?
That's the genesis of the curse right there.
And it's just as if this wasn't bad enough that we have to deal with this kind of curse.

(01:19:03):
It's told to us.
All of this is told to us that now the reason that we don't celebrate Halloween and we don't
go out trick or treating is because Charlotte, the spirit of Charlotte, who has not made
any appearance whatsoever in any way throughout this entire story.

(01:19:25):
Oh, we're pegging all of this on her.
This is her doing.
This is Charlotte taking her revenge, because if anybody dares go out trick or treating
on Halloween night, they are doomed to, first of all, vanish from this reality and to only
reappear on successive Halloween nights.

(01:19:48):
And as happened to Ashley's new trio of friends to become the the costumes that they were
wearing at the time that they went trick or treating.
So to become all these misshapen creatures and miscreants and to only reappear once every
year on Halloween night on an endless trick or treating routes and hell.

(01:20:14):
Basically, all of the or most of the houses and heat and corners leave out candy.
And I guess that that was a nice touch in the sense that, you know, it harkens back
to the origins of the holiday itself.
The whole trick or treating concept came from offerings being left outside people's houses

(01:20:35):
to kind of ward off evil spirits or spirits of the dead to be like, hey, we realize you're
dead.
Don't eat us.
Eat these soul cakes instead that we've baked for you, please.
So that was kind of a nice play on that.
I did enjoy that.
I'm going to back up a little bit to go to just say that my my anticipation and my expectation

(01:21:01):
probably, naively, given that this is a middle grade book for, you know, kids, was that I
just got much more of a cosmic hellish vibe from what was happening during the trick or
treating sequence that I just did not really anticipate or wanted to pan out to be just

(01:21:28):
like a run of the mill, lazy curse kind of storyline that we ended up getting because
not only, oh, kid dies very quickly.
And now this this is the reason why everybody like.
Like what?
Like, so just because they die and now their ghosts is around, they have the power to basically

(01:21:52):
warp reality.
So how would you have if you were the writer, if you were tasked to be PJ night?
I really how would you I really wanted this to just be kind of like an inexplicable thing
that, you know, is was not so that was not so specific to one person or even one event,

(01:22:18):
especially the one we ended up getting like I could just if they even just went the general
route of saying like this is cursed land and this is something that has always happened
here, you know, just the fact that they try to like it's kind of similar to.
There's a trope in horror narratives that I don't really care for that you see in like,

(01:22:43):
did you see the scary stories that tell in the dark movie?
Yes, that's what I was thinking of when you were saying, do we really need more stories
about curses?
I hate this thing.
Like it wasn't quite the case in this one, but I hate this thing.
It happened in a graphic novel, a scary graphic novel for kids that I that I read a little

(01:23:06):
while ago where like in scary stories to tell in the dark, it's like, oh, this this outcast,
you know, the social outcast is.
Persecuted and what's the word I'm looking for?

(01:23:30):
Is accused of being a witch, basically this horrible creature that has the power to do
terrible things to people.
But as it turns out, it's just like, you know, a family trying to get somebody out of the
way or a mob mentality taking over.
And it's like, oh, that persecuted person wasn't really a witch.

(01:23:51):
But then the mob or the terrible family do something terrible to that person.
And then that person basically becomes a witch slash becomes a monster and wrecks their vengeance
on the descendants of whoever or the town as a whole.
And that kind of thing just makes me shake my head like, well, why couldn't they just

(01:24:14):
be a witch or a monster to start with?
Like, why are we playing these games?
You know, why are you giving me the run around where it's like, oh, no, it was, you know,
it was society that was the real monster.
OK, but we'll now look at what they're doing.
It's like, what what fucking difference would it have made?
Like, OK, I guess you're trying to make a point, but I find it really irritating.

(01:24:36):
And you know, it's also not great.
Like it's it's like, well, this person had something terrible happen to them.
So clearly now you understand why they made a pact with the devil to slaughter like an
entire lineage or an entire town.
It's like that kind of sounds worse than what happened to them.

(01:24:58):
So I'm not really sure who you are wanting or expecting me to align my sympathies with
here, because this is all bullshit.
I don't know.
Did you get that feeling at all?
I get that feeling sometimes.
I will say Paranorman kind of does that, but I remember really liking Paranorman.

(01:25:19):
So maybe I just saw that before I started getting which fatigue or whatever.
Yeah, but yeah, well, it's not quite the same.
But like there are so many like Italian horror movies from the 60s and 70s where it starts
out with the flashback, you know, everybody wearing these like party city medieval costumes

(01:25:40):
and then they like bring the witch out and then they always give the witch time to be
like in the name of Satan.
And I place a curse and it's like, no, just kill her before she talks.
You're creating problems down the line.
Scary Stories was probably the first time that it bothered me in that because I think

(01:26:00):
it, maybe for me, it's the difference between using that as what I guess it would be the
opposite of a Deus Ex Machina like as an origin story, just as a plot point versus having
the movie thematically be about that thing.
You know what I mean?
Right.
And that's kind of what it felt like in Creep Over is that like, yeah, there's no depth

(01:26:22):
to Charlotte Snowden as a character and maybe there could have been, but that's not what
the book is about.
So it did just kind of feel like, we just wrote this down on a toilet paper roll to
explain the history of this town.
Here you go.
Bye.
Really?
It was so rushed while at the same time that everything post Halloween night in the book

(01:26:44):
kind of felt like it also dragged.
It's like, yeah, we know that they didn't really move away.
It's like, we have to go through all these motions.
So what if, let me ask you this, because I think it was last year, I rewatched Trick
or Treat with my girlfriend because she'd never seen it.

(01:27:04):
She was like, I've been seeing my girlfriend crochets and she's like in with the crochet
community.
And she was like, I keep seeing this Sam Hain that people are crocheting.
Do you know what that's from?
And I was like, well, let me educate you, my sweet little darling, like the patronizing
ass that I am.
But anyway, so we rewatched Trick or Treat and I kept thinking as I was reading No Trick

(01:27:29):
or Treating, maybe because of the similar title, I kept thinking of the segment where,
have you seen it?
Yeah, the segment where they're like pranking the girl who dresses up as a witch, but they
give you the backstory of the kids in the costume, like before the actual stuff happens.

(01:27:49):
Do you think if they had done something more structurally like that in this book, it would
have worked better for you?
Like instead of building up to it?
Yeah, I mean, just like it.
Yeah.
I mean, it was trying to play it off as a mystery to be solved.
But when you have like so much rich material just in, like we said, the trick or treating

(01:28:10):
sequences, the transformation sequences, that is enough to fuel your engine.
You don't have to play these games of who's leaving the strange sigils behind and where
did this mysterious necklace come from?
I thought it was from my sister, but it was sent to me by somebody else.
That was an interesting point too.

(01:28:31):
Especially because that never really pays off.
Right.
I was going to say, Miss Bernice actually tosses it off as like, oh, that sign doesn't
do anything to ward off evil spirits.
If anything, it just tells you who in the town believes in the curse and who doesn't.
But then I thought to myself, well then why do you have it on the door to your creepy

(01:28:53):
little room back there?
Well, bearing that in mind, because you could cut out all the Miss Bernice story and still
have the same epilogue that you actually get at the end of this creep over.
How did you feel about that, bummer?

(01:29:13):
Having said all that about, well, I did not care for the story to pan out this way.
So honestly, anything I would have skipped from like Halloween night to when they arrive
at the general store and skip the part with the book, don't care about the town's history

(01:29:36):
archives, historical archives.
Just get to the part where we just like cut that out entirely.
Like when Ashley first encounters Miss Bernice back at the general store, Miss Bernice just
kind of like realizes what happened, that Ashley was essentially the cause for her friend's

(01:29:57):
disappearance because she didn't realize just what powers were at play here in Heaton Corners.
I would have loved it if that whole last chapter, instead of being like an explanation for this
dumbass curse origin story, instead of it was just them talking to each other.
Like this is just how it works here.

(01:30:18):
You know, the spirit realm gets close to the living realm on Halloween night.
And this was a lesson that I learned decades ago when I took my own friends out.
And now I'm here as a survivor and I visit them every year and there's nothing you can
do about it.
That would have been perfect for me.

(01:30:39):
That would have been perfect because I do think the way it ended was actually really
brave and different.
I was surprised that it ended on such a bummer.
Did I need it to flash forward to old Ashley at the general store?
No, I didn't.
I could have done without that.

(01:31:01):
But just her leaving the general store and like hearing the whispers of her friends telling
her that they miss her and like seeing like when she sees like she's like at Danielle's
house and she sees like the flash of the skeleton around the corner, like peeking out from around
the corner that immediately made me think of laughing in the dark.

(01:31:23):
Overrated.
Sorry.
But you know, like with the zebos with zebos cigar smoke coming from around the corner
of the house.
That's what it made me think of.
But I thought that was so creepy because it was like this broad daylight moment where,

(01:31:46):
oh, I think I see my skeleton friend, but then she just kind of flits right out of existence
again.
That would have been the perfect ending to this story for me if it just kind of ended
with a conversation between Miss Bernice and Ashley about you just this is something terrible
that's happened.
There's nothing that anybody can do about it.

(01:32:07):
And you just kind of have to learn to live with it kind of like our friend, the Babadook
that we talked about in the previous episode.
You just have to learn to live with this.
It's not going away.
And then just her kind of walking solemnly back to her farmhouse with the ghost of her
friends, you know, whispering to her that would have been the perfect ending for me.
And I need all the extra crap.

(01:32:29):
Yeah, I like that because then you could make Ashley's first encounter with Miss Bernice.
Miss Bernice could have like the reputation of being like the town kook, like, ah, she's
the old lady, runs a general store.
And then Ashley comes in and she's like, she's in the back room and you hear her speaking.
And then Ashley goes back there and is like, there's nobody in here.

(01:32:50):
Who are you talking to?
And Miss Bernice is like, oh, nobody.
And then at the end of the book, she goes back to Miss Bernice and she's like, I know
who you were talking to.
Yeah.
See?
That's my pitch.
Why aren't these agents and editors tapping us to write these books?
I don't know.

(01:33:10):
I think of that every single time I read a YA book.
I'm serious.
I'm always like, I could cut out 200 pages of this for you, tell you what these relationships
need in order to have chemistry between these two romantic leads, tell you how to make the
plot actually work, tell you how to structure it so it doesn't just seem like a whole bunch
of crap happening that doesn't have any coherence.

(01:33:34):
That's just not our lives right now.
Maybe one day.
But yeah, I like the idea of Miss Bernice being a tragic figure instead of just having
the encounter with her where she does the same thing that every other adult has done
and be like, don't you celebrate Halloween?
I'm warning you.
Yeah, the foreboding old person.

(01:33:55):
Yeah, she could try to warn them and Ashley doesn't take her seriously because she thinks
she's crazy.
And then after all this shit goes down, she's like, oh.
Yeah.
That made me think like a Home Alone turn.
Sure.
You know it's true.
Oh, wait.
Yeah.

(01:34:15):
Is that the Grinch?
I think I got the Home Alone with the Yahoo!
Doran.
Yeah, that one.
Yeah, she looks out the window where it snows in Halloween and heat in corners and sees
old Miss Bernice trudging along with her pack of demon friends behind her.

(01:34:40):
Yeah.
And all her cats instead of pigeons.
Well, that's no trick or treating, I think.
That's the book right there as I live and breathe.
Overall, I would say I enjoyed it.
I think I might give another creep over a try.
I think I might see what else PJ Knight has in store.

(01:35:05):
Gemma Knight.
Yeah.
I mean, I think the strength of it was definitely the atmosphere.
And because this says it's a super scary, super special, I wonder if they're regular
books because this one clocks in at 191 pages.
So I wonder if the other books in the series are like more goosebumps length, like 110

(01:35:28):
to 120.
Right.
Yeah.
That's the creep over version of a superchiller, right?
Oh, I had something I wanted to say though, because I feel like I owe our audience at
least one hot take per episode.
Oh boy.
My hot take today is I don't think John Carpenter's Halloween is a very good Halloween movie,

(01:35:52):
sorry.
But I said I thought about trick or treat a lot while reading this book.
I also thought about the moment in the Halloween franchise that to me is the most evocative
of the atmosphere of Halloween, which is the opening credits to Halloween 4.
Yes.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah.
I've seen them shared across multiple Facebook friends pages.

(01:36:18):
Nothing lives up to, like in this movie or in some cases other Halloween set movies,
nothing lives up to this opening credits sequence from the fourth movie.
Man, that's absolutely true.
Yeah, it's just atmospheric shots of the wind blowing over corn fields and farmlands
and abandoned barns at sunset.

(01:36:40):
There's the silhouette of a weather vane and a close up of a scarecrow and just pumpkins.
Just chilling on a tractor.
Yeah.
Yeah.
To me, this is what Heat and Corners looks like around Halloween time.
It's like perfect encapsulation.
Yes.

(01:37:00):
Anyway.
I would say that is true of the first Halloween movie though.
I would say that for me, for whatever this is worth, this is going to sound strange.
A lot of people, myself included, when you want to get the Halloween vibes, you seek
out either in IRL in real life, Halloween decorations that explicitly call to that holiday,

(01:37:27):
reference that holiday, same for movies that deal in it, trick or treat versus John Carpenter's
Halloween as far as decorations and atmosphere go.
It's not a close match whatsoever.
But I will say that in John Carpenter's Halloween, this probably sounds strange, but I have these

(01:37:53):
vivid memories and associations that I make with the autumn time for whatever that's worth
here in Florida.
But I have specific memories tied to the autumn time that basically boil down to, to be succinct
about it, darkened houses.

(01:38:16):
Not exactly in a skin-a-merink fashion.
Or like just like the setting sun overcast skies.
I have this memory of reading a novelization.
I had these pair of two Universal Monster novelizations like Paperback for Kids, one

(01:38:37):
of Dracula and one of the Wolf Man.
And I just have vivid memories of reading those in the living room of one of our houses
and smelling my grandfather's cologne as he was getting ready to go out dancing and hearing
Rory Orberson on his record player.
And it was just that was autumn time.

(01:38:59):
And so now I also associate Rory Orberson's voice with the autumn time.
Just the house being kind of naturally lit by the setting sun and seeing the shadows
creep in the corners.
That makes me think of autumn.
And I think that vibe is pulled off very well during the latter half of John Carpenter's

(01:39:21):
Halloween.
Like I just think of the shot of Michael at the top of the stairs.
And you basically can't see any part of him except just a vague outline because the shadows
are creeping everywhere.
And for some reason that just more than like the fire-hued leaves or the little kids out

(01:39:44):
with their buckets saying trick or treat, that encapsulates the autumn for me.
And I guess that's indicative of the fact that I have had such shitty autumns here.
I have nothing else to go on except just the nights kind of creeping in like that.
So there you have it.
There you go.
Yeah.

(01:40:04):
Maybe I just have a bug up my butt about it because I was actually raised in Illinois
and Halloween supposedly takes place in Illinois and looks nothing like Illinois in autumn.
So I'm like, fuck this movie.
You don't have palm trees in Illinois?
You got me.

(01:40:25):
Every street corner has a palm tree.
When you're hiding from the cops, you carry one in front of you.
Yeah, exactly.
Good cover.
Well, I would say that we'd probably place this one in the time capsule, yes, for future
reference, future enjoyment.
Oh, do we still do that?

(01:40:48):
Do we still do that?
I don't know.
I mean, we enjoy the book, folks.
Is there really more you need to know?
Yeah, we have this thing where we'd say we'd either stick it in a time capsule for future
enjoyment and reference or we'd just put it back in the bargain bin where we got it from.
But yeah, I'd be curious to maybe check out at least one other creep over from PJ9 and

(01:41:11):
see how it stacks up to this one.
But I would say for our purposes, this being an October episode, I think it got the job
done as far as giving us those precious Halloweeny vibes.
Halloweeny.
Why couldn't Mr. Ghost get Mrs. Ghost pregnant?
Because we had a Halloween.

(01:41:34):
Bring it back to my intro that I'm keeping in even though you told me to only do the
other one.
Well, that's it for us folks.
Have a great night.
We have some kind of sign off?
OK.
That's the sign off.
That's the sign off.
My being tired of these terrible Halloweeny jokes.
That's it.
That's what's doing it for us.
Bring back adult creep overs, millennials.

(01:41:55):
Also, check out our Instagram, Blackmagic Treehouse Pod, and email us if you have memory.
If you're reading Halloween books or something.
BlackmagicTreehousePod at gmail.com.
Thank you for listening.

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