April 22, 2021 • 59 mins
The Creepy Parlour 17-Gregory Hallows from the Halloween Preservation Society. Genevieve and Gregory talk the mission of the Halloween Preservation Society and all things Halloween!
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Welcome to the Creepy Parlor, wherewe delve into the dark side with an
undercurrent of lighthearted fun. Our discussionswill explore gothic, macca or creepy topics.
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subject matter baby spooky, but ourspirits are high. You can catch the
Creepy Parlor every Tuesday at seven pmEastern only on wlf dB Radio. Good
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evening, everybody, and welcome tothe Creepy Parlor. I'm Genevieve, and
I'm absolutely delighted that you're spending theevening with us tonight. If any of
you know me, you know thatit's absolutely no secret that I love Halloween.
Halloween is an all your event inour house, and it is just
the absolute best time of year,which is why I'm so thrilled to welcome
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my guest tonight, mister Gregory Hallowsof the Halloween Preservation Society. So let's
welcome him. Hello. Hey,how you doing. I'm doing very well.
How are you good? Good,good, thank you for being here,
thank you, thank you for havingme. So let's uh, let's
hear a little bit about what youdo, all right, So I will
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just get it out there right offthe bat. My actual name is Gregory
Hallows. That's my real last name. I get that asked a lot.
Is that really my name? Butyes, it's my It's all my driver's
license. Um. I run theHalloween Preservation Society. I'm basically a big
nerd about a lot of things,and I love Halloween. And you know,
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with with my last name, Ibasically have to, all right,
obligated. Yeah, I'm obligated tolove Halloween, I guess. But luckily
it's one of my favorite things.I love researching, I love and finding
out as much as I can aboutit. I love meeting people that love
Halloween as well. So I justconsider it one of those things I'm going
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to do until I'm not here anymore. Awesome, and you're leaving behind some
wonderful, wonderful artifacts as well,yeah, I hope. So, So
how long have you been doing this? I started it officially about three years
ago. I've always been into Halloween, you know, but I wanted to
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make it official and kind of startarchiving things and taking you know, records
and start collecting this stuff because,like I tell people all the time,
you know, a lot of Halloweenproducts are paper, and you know it's
not gonna last, so you know, I want to make sure that there's
somebody or something, you know,to be left behind because this stuff is
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just great. I mean a lotof it was made to just throw out
and you know, just to findstuff. I still find things that haven't
been open, which blows my mind. Um yeah, So hopefully I can
continue to do it, because Imean it's getting harder and harder to find
things that you know aren't gonna youknow, make me mortgage my house.
So well, I think everybody everybody'svery Halloween centric lately. It used to
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be such a strange thing, likeonly the weirdos were Halloween oriented. Now
I feel like everybody kind of hasa little bit of special love in their
heart for Halloween. Oh yeah,and I'm one of those people that you
know, there's it's it's like whenyou know, nerdy and geeky things became
popular, there is a certain segmentthat it was like, well why do
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you like it? Now? It'slike Hey, the more people that love
this stuff, the better because thenthey're gonna make more They're gonna you know,
there's gonna be more options at Halloweenfor products because they're gonna make money
selling it. So that's good forall of us. It's yeah, And
the more I think the stronger it's, the stronger you make the spirit of
Halloween, right, Like, themore attention we give it, the more
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energy we put into it. Yeahsaround longer, Yeah, definitely, And
I mean it's fun to teach peoplethat don't know, you know a lot
about Halloween, you know what youknow, because it's it's like you know,
oral traditions, just keep passing themon and they're gonna tell somebody,
and they're gonna tell somebody and thenext thing, you know, like there's
that more people that are you know, love Halloween. Yeah. Um,
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just real quick, I want tosay hi to everybody that's been popping up.
We've got Jillian, my sister.She successfully shared the post to your
Your Halloween Preservation Society page. Hi, Natalie Otis, Chris Ashley. We
have Ashley here that says too much, too much Halloween is impossible. I
agree, one hundred percent is oneof our society members. She's awesome,
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awesome, welcome, um hire,I think I'm missing some people, Dominic
Hi. I well, we'll hitsome comments up later too. Um.
We got Chris Hike howdy, UM, and we got another share excellent,
keep sharing please. UM. Soin that vein, one of the things
I'm curious about, UM, isit, are you more more interested in
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Halloween, like the um vintage Halloweenstuff, or like predating, like back
to like the old Irish Celtic traditions? Like where's your level of interest?
I mean everything, honestly, butwhat I've I'm drawn to vintage Halloween just
because you know, to me,it's more accessible and it's easier to find
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out, you know, accurate information. Um. The problem I have with
researching, um, just historically alot of times is because you know,
you don't know what like it's whatI tell it's whatever people write down.
That's that's what you just have toassume is right. And I know this
stuff is for is so centuries old? Um, how much of it do
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we still not know? You know? That's that's the thing that I love
to you know, I've purchased booksthat hundreds of years old just to see
what they say, because it justblows my mind that you can find Halloween,
you know, so long ago.But yes, I'm interested in everything
about Halloween. I don't ever claimto know or will ever know everything,
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There's no way, but I'm Ialways seek out people that are more historical
based because that's one of the thingsthat I want to know more about because
there's so much that um, youknow, we get the basics of it
every year, but I want toknow more because there's so much that,
you know, gets left out whenwhen people you know talk about the history
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of you know, soloing and Halloweenand you know, the festivals and why
you know it was a celebrated inthe first place. So I definitely am
into all of it. But likeI mean, see behind me, I'm
a vintage guy. So well,I love I love like them, like
the Victorian Halloween cards and like thatthat art style, Like I just think
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that's so it's just so beautiful.Yeah, it's it's great. It's got
such an extreme creep factor too.Yeah, yeah, I love the fruit
the fruit cards and you know,like the the pumpkin drive in the car
and it's like it's so insane.Like, who came up with this?
But I know it's so good.Yeah it is. It's amazing. Um
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Otis is common here. My favoritememories are Halloween. When I was like
seven to ten years old, wasalways Dracula Legosi, Dracula all all time
favorite. Do you have a favoritea favorite Halloween movie? Or I should
say, well, we kind oftalked about this yesterday. Halloween and horror
are two different things. Yeah tome, I mean, I'm a horror
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guy. I mean I love horrormovies. I love you know, but
I try to make a distinction betweenhorror and Halloween because there's a lot of
things. Like my favorite Halloween movieis a fairly recent one. It's It's
the House is October Bill. It'sabout, you know, this group of
friends that drives around to find thescariest taunted house that they can find.
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But you know, I also loveArsenic and Old Lace and Meet Me in
Saint Louis, you know, andthose aren't traditionally Halloween movies, but uh,
Meet Me and Saint Louis has oneof the most accurate portrayals of early
Halloween that you can find. It'slike those kids are just destroying things like
Yeah, that's you know, that'swhat it was. So you know,
I run the gamut of of youknow, what I love, and it's
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you know, I just like learning, so I'm I'm all about learning as
much as I can. What doyou think of Trick or Treat? Oh?
I love Trick or Treat? Ilove loved every single minute, every
single minute of that movie. Andevery time we watch it again and again,
I'm just like, it's gonna happenagain. And I still can't believe
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it took so long for them finallyto release it, because I mean it
sat on the shelf for years.Really, yeah, and finally it can't
put out. But yeah, Trickor Treat is one of my favorite movies
because they go over like these arethe rules, don't break on and it's
it's so much common sense, soit's like, yeah, don't break the
rules, this is what happens.Don't blow out that candle. That's right.
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I want to go back to Otis'scomment favorite his favorite memories of Halloween
were seven to ten. Do youhave a favorite Halloween memory? Like,
were you always into Halloween as akid and stuff? I mean from what
I remember, yes, because it'sone of those weird things you don't really
think about it. But Halloween forus my age, I mean, I'm
forty five, so I can't remembera time grown up that there wasn't trick
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or treating. But now like kidsnowadays left out, you don't like,
there's a lot of places that justdon't do it anymore, which just drives
me insane. But probably my bestmemory of Halloween, I have a picture.
It's up on one of my websites. It's me dressed as the Hulk.
But I didn't buy the costume.I painted myself green. I think
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I had the Hulk Ben Cooper mask, but the rest of my costume was
like I shoved a pillow in myshirt to make me look bigger, and
I'm just completely be playing a greenI probably look more like Shrek than anything,
but Shrek wasn't around back then.So but yeah, stuff like that.
It's like make your own Halloween,you know, just do make it
fun, you know, keep gettingkids involved, because you know nowadays it's
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become more of an adult thing,and that's just you know, let's I
want the kids to know what they'remissing, absolutely, and I think,
yes, otis kids will never knowit is sad we are. We're having
a halfway the Halloween party for mysister next week. Yeah, but uh,
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one of my mom always made ourcostumes. Yeah, like always,
Like I remember laying on a whitesheet when I was maybe second or third
grade, no, probably like first, first or second grade, and she
was cutting around the edges and makingme a princess lay a costume. That's
also yeah, and like that's tome, like just the energy that went
into doing that and the care thatwent into doing that is just you can't
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you just those are the best memories. It's it's so it's so much fun
to remember what we did as asHalloween kids. Yeah, I mean,
did you have a favorite? TheHulk was your favorite? Right that your
I think the Hulk is my favorite. Like I'm a big Spider Man guy,
but like I don't ever remember dressingup like him. Um, I
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think i've did you know the Hulkand always stuff that. Like my parents
were the same. My mom mademy costumes because it was just easier.
Yeah. And it's crazy because Ilook back at some of the prices of
the costumes back then and they wereso like a dollar and I'm like,
I know, I wish I hadsome of those still, but it was
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more fun for us to dress upwhat we wanted to be, and you
know, just figure it out,like all right, well I need to
be green, Okay, paint megreen, or I need to you know,
I need to have this costume.Mom make it. And we just
assumed our parents could make anything.Absolutely, my friend Kelly's commenting here said
her kids are already mapped out theneighborhood for the best houses for trick or
treating. Kelly is absolutely doing parentingright. You should see some of her
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kids costumes that she and her owncostumes are just magnificent. Yeah, where
I live, it's in the middleof nowhere, Mississippi. I can't get
anybody, and I buy full sizedSnickers bars. I you know, like,
hey, kids, I'll give youmultiple ones, you know, but
you know, it's just not oneof those things. Natalie's comment here,
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we talked about this yesterday. Itwas all It used to be a shock
when a house wasn't partaking in Halloween. When I was a kid, there
was a reason kids back then usepillowcases. I absolutely remember always having a
pillowcase. Yes, and most kids, if you didn't participate in in Halloween.
Your house got egged. Yeah,so you did it anyway. Yeah,
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it's just not the same anymore.I remember, you know, we
would leave school and we were neverallowed to wear our masks and stuff in
school because they were I guess atripping hazard or whatever. And then on
the way home we'd start trick ortreating. Oh yeah, yeah. It
was like, you know, you'restarting before it gets dark, and you
I don't even remember when I camehome. Most of the time, it
was like, I know, itwas pitch dark, yeah, and you
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know, you got a full bagof candy and you just pass out,
and then the next day you're highon sugar and you know, I can't
imagine the teachers back then, They'rejust like, yeah, we're not doing
anything today. Your kids aren't gonnalisten. We also always have English muffin
pizzas on Halloween because it was likethe quick thing you could run into,
yeah and get back out and starttrick or treating again. And then there
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was like the trading afterwards. Youknow, you've got like yourself, Yeah,
you got to trade out all yourstuff and I'm not I don't want
titsy rolls come on, trade me, what was your favorite? I love
just, you know, any kindof candy bar, and I would even
eat stuff I didn't normally like justbecause it was Halloween. Candy. Yeah,
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I never really liked anything like Iguess the closest thing now is the
candies. They are just basically sugarin a shape. I didn't like what.
I don't remember what they were called, but it was basically you're eating
a shape of sugar and that's allit was. And it had a color.
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Uh, I can't really remember whatit was, but I remember I
would trade anything for a candy bar. And I lost out a bunch of
time because I do ten to ones. You know, I'll give you ten
of this for a candy bar.But yeah, you know I still ended
up with so much that it wasunhealthy. Well yeah, and you know,
hopefully it lasts a while too.Was it smarties? Now? They
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weren't, Yeah, smarties. Icouldn't stand those. I would give those
away for anything. I loved theVanilla Charleston shoes. They still remind me
of Halloween. Oh yeah, stillfor this does. Yeah. And there
were certain candies that I swear youcould only find it Halloween like you try
to find it the rest of theyear and it didn't exist. But a
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Halloween it's like here it does itpops up? Yep. And then there
were those um oh they were awful. I don't know what they were like
they were wrapped in like black andorange wax. Oh yeah, it was
taffy of some kind. Oh god, that was like I think that was
like what you would buy or theyI think that's what we bought to Jake
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fill up the bowl. It's like, well, we can't get all the
good candies, so let's get onthis and mix it up. A few
years we hardly get any trick ortreaters in our neighborhood anymore either. And
a few years ago I was likefollowing kids down the street going I had
handy, like they're gonna call thecops on me or something. Yeah,
yeah, I mean it's just youknow, you shouldn't be chasing children down
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the street to give kidsy. Youshouldn't have to. No, you shouldn't
have to. I mean, youknow, it's dressed like a witch,
following the kids around. Yeah exactly. Did you ever do any like um,
like crazy like urban exploration or anythingon Halloween, like go to like
the creepy places in town and tryto get some and stuff. I grew
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up a big majority of my lifeon military base, and I don't know
how we weren't ever arrested by themilitary police because we would just go wherever
we felt like going. And Iended up in a lot of places that
had barbed wire fences around it,or you know, one time we ended
up in a swamp and don't knowhow we got there. But yeah,
growing up in a military base wasgreat because it's a built in, you
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know community. But yeah, allthe kids knew each other and we basically
just you know, go wherever wewanted because we our parents felt safe because
you're on a military base. Soit's like, yeah, I'm leaving,
I'm not coming back till it tonighttime, Like all right, whatever.
If you try to do that now, like your parents like you can you
can play in this little square andthat's it, Like you can't go anywhere.
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I was like, it's just sodifferent. I think a lot of
people also do Halloween parties now too, so that the kids don't go out
and do the trunk retreats and thingslike that, and trunk retreats a big
thing now. I see those moreand more every year. Yeah, I
think that keeps a lot of peoplehome. I mean this year. This
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year, I was surprised that weactually had some kids coming out, but
we had a few, and therewere a lot of people. Got really
creative this year with how to distributecandy. Yeah, I've seen some.
I love the shoot that somebody madethat you could just put it in it
slides down. That was the bestthing I saw this past year. I
had gotten so sick during Halloween becauseI run my ghost tours and usually by
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the time Halloween comes, I'm kindof run down. And I had all
the equipment to make a nice shootand I just never got around to it.
But I'll do it for next year. Yeah, I hope to see
a lot of those. Yeah,me too. I have a coming here
from Chris Sumner looking at your website. Now, do you preserve just physical
objects or do you also collect Halloweenstories of the past. I would collect
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anything it's related to Halloween. Iwant to know about it, because you
know, I grew up in acertain area of the country that may have
different traditions or stories than someone else. So I always want to hear what
you know someone else has to say, because it's just like you know,
urban myths, and you know,we all heard different things grown up,
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but they're all really related. Itmay just have a different name. And
I love comparing, you know,those those stories like, oh, well,
you know you called it this whereyou live, I call it this
and it's the same thing. Howdid it make it across the whole country?
You know, mischief night? Whatdo you call exactly what do you
call the night before Halloween? Doyou call it mischief night? We didn't.
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I didn't even know if that wasuntil I got older. I'd never
heard of it until uh, probablyseeing the crow. Really yeah, that
wasn't a thing for us. LikeI looked it up. I was like,
what is this Mischief Night? Iwas like, Oh, it's really
a thing that's been going on solong. Like how did I not know
that Devil's night mischief night? Iheard Devil's Night. I heard Devil's night
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more than mischief night. But youknow, I grew up in the South.
They weren't going to call it Devil'snight. Probably not. Yeah,
so I got I got taken outof our library. Oh this is a
comment Halloweenian's Unite. I was goingto coin a different term and call you
a halloween Ologist, because I callus, I call us Halloween. He's
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that too. Yeah. Oh yeah, Goosey Nights. Some people call um
the night before Goosey Nights, allthat stuff. So I want to hear
all that. I've never heard anyof those things. Yeah. Um,
it's a it's a really interesting concept. Um, just to go out and
like make mischief and all that stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's more
like a traditional Halloween, like beforethey started bribing children with candy. Yeah,
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and they um, uh, we'llhave your birthday to my sister,
Thanks Dwayne, thanks to see you. Um. The thing that always bothered
me is when people would smash pumpkinsand thing, because that was another part
of it. You know, they'dgo around and smash up Jack lanterns and
yeah that was a little kid andtrick or treat. Yes, you don't
smash Jack the lantern come on.Um yeah, ODIs says it wasn't the
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thing for me either. Every nightwas mischief night. That's good, that's
that's a good time. Yeah.So we did talk a little bit about
um favorite movies. But what whatis your favorite your favorite horror movie.
Favorite horror movie is The Omen easily. Um. I'm not a big church
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person, but I love movies aboutreligion. I don't know why, but
The Omen has been one of thosethings that I've loved it since the first
time I saw it. I lovethe music, I love I mean,
a movie with a creepy kids alwaysgood to me, so you know,
and I love all of them,like I own original posters of all four
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movies. I even count the fourthone, which nobody even acknowledges, but
you know it fourth one. Yeah, yeah, the fourth one is the
one that nobody ever, you know, wants to talk about. But I
love all of them. Uh,you know, the first one's obviously the
best to me, but I reallylike the way they progressed the story,
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and you know, it was reallycreepy, and its just something about it
that got to me. It's like, man, this movie is so good.
Do you have a well, obviouslyThe Omens a little bit different,
but do you have it, likea favorite preferred genre of movie that you
like. I actually grew up watchingold fifties movies with my grandparents. We
used to always have to go tomy grandparents in the summer. So I
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grew up watching wrestling and soap operasand whatever TVs showed. So I one
of my favorite actors of all timeis the movies like the Gangster movies.
So I loved James Cagney and Iloved Edward g Robinson and anything that they
were in I would watch and thenyou know, it blew my mind.
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When I saw James Cagney in amusical, I was like, man,
this guy's really good actor. LikeI just thought he was just some thub
guy. But he's didn't make themlike that anymore. He's wonderful. But
yeah, I grew up watching allthat old stuff. I love Marilyn Monroe
movies. I love you know,anything fifties. I'll watch interesting. Um
I love the like The Hammer HorrorYears, like, oh yeah, all
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that good stuff does look so good. Yeah like that the whole the atmosphere
is just fantastic. Oh yeah,definitely. Um Ray says there seems to
be one house in town that hadcreepy people who acted like the Adams family.
I aspire to be that house intown. That's that's me, that's
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my family in our town. Ourhouse is black so black with orange doors.
So we are the Adams family wherein my town? So that brings
me to another question I have foryou. Are you Team Adams or Team
Monster? I like them both.Uh, That's Adams Family because I love
just the characters and I love therelationship that they have with each other.
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But the Monsters was always fun forme. But I if I had to
choose, I would be Adam's familyeasy. I just definitely everything about him.
Definitely. It's one of the mostpositive role models for a husband and
wife anything I've ever seen, andlike it doesn't get enough credit for that.
(25:21):
Absolutely. Um, real quick,before we go to break, I'm
gonna just talk about Miranda's question here. What what's your favorite vintage piece you've
collected so far. I've always wantedto own an original copy of Ruth that
Nickelly's book. She wrote the veryfirst book, like full book on Halloween,
and I finally bit the bullet andbought one. And I can't believe
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I have it. It's it's,you know, one hundred years old now,
and it's I'm scared to really touchit, but I haven't. Yeah,
I read it. My wife boughtme a copy of like a reprint
of it, because she's like,I know you're not going to read the
one bought, but here's there's thisone. You can at least rate it.
It's exactly the same. I waslike, all right, awesome,
Oh that's cool, that's love.Yeah. Yeah, So we're gonna we're
(26:07):
gonna take a real quick break andwe'll be right back to about about three
minutes, so you've got some timeif you need to get a drink.
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our program and just like that,we're halfway done. That's fast, it
(30:38):
is fast. Um. I justwant to say thank you all you guys
for all of the many, many, many comments that are coming up.
Everyone seems really interested. Um,how dare you try to make someone choose.
I'm using Adams versus Munster. Yeah, that's not fair. I know.
(30:59):
There's nothing like a and running aroundthe house, that's true. Um,
and I mean cousin it. Howcould you not love cousin it?
Yeah, he just passed away theguy that was I know. Um,
have you ever met any of yourlike horror or Halloween idols? Yes,
I've met a few. Um,because what I do for my day job,
(31:22):
I get to meet a lot ofcelebrities, which is fun. Um,
I've met some of the Jason's,Uh, some of the Jason's.
Yeah, there's there's not all ofthem. I've met some of them.
Uh, I've met you know,just I can't name one person that I've
wanted to meet except I was gonnameet Harvey Stevens, who played Damien in
(31:45):
The Omen, But then my wifeand I bought ticket well actually she bought
tickets for me, and then Ifound out she was pregnant, so we
had to cancel the trip. SoI'm not disappointed, but that was probably
the only chance I would have gottento meet him. So every now and
that kind of teaser about it,but you know, it was one of
those things I maybe eventually get tomeet him. But I probably have met
(32:12):
more people than I can remember,which sounds crazy, but it's a lot
of fun. We were at AUMwe were at a convention a bunch of
years ago, and one of myfavorite movies is Hell Razor, And all
of a sudden I hear the voiceand I didn't realize that he was going
(32:35):
to be there, and I gotlike you get like the goosebumps going up
the back of your neck, andI was like, oh, no,
Pinhead's here. He's so nice.He's one of the nicest guys. Yeah,
yeah, he really is crazy.I met Gunner Hansen. I was
I was happy. I met himright before he passed away a leather face
and there all those guys are sonice, Like it's crazy. You just
(32:55):
you know, there's a misconception thatpeople that like the stuff we do or
you know, something's wrong with us. But you couldn't meet the nicer group
of people. That's true and verysupportive, and we all pretty have a
common interest already. Yep, exactly, it's like you're built in friends.
Yep. What do you think itis about Halloween that like kind of draws
(33:15):
people in? I mean, there'sso much about it that you can like.
I mean, some people just likethe history of it, and some
people just like you know, dressingup, some people just like the candy.
I mean, let's be honest.But yeah, I mean there's not
really anything negative about Halloween really.I mean the media tries to bring up
(33:37):
a lot of things that aren't true, but you know, there's not really
anything that you know, bad aboutit, even the stuff they always try
to bring up for so long asyou know, people trying to poison candy
and all that. There's a professorof Joel Best. He's every year he
researches all that, and like noneof it's ever been true, proven true,
(33:57):
Like it's not ever directly related toHalloween, and it's like just the
happenstance. So I just think,I mean, what can you not like
about it? I mean, eventhe colors that are associated with Hallen are
awesome black and orange. So nowwe've likely kind of snuck purple into it
too, which means, oh,yeah, that I'm excited about the purple
edition because it just fits. Yeah, and then like that really cool green
(34:21):
is really yeah, it's like thoseadd a little flavor and royalty, a
little you know, um I was. I was kind of waiting on this
comment, but I figured maybe wecan bring it up now Chris's comment here.
You may mention it later, butcan you tell us about the Preserve
Halloween Festival? Yes, enough timeto talk about that. I decided,
(34:42):
you know, I do conventions fora living, and I've never really done
anything geared towards Halloween, so Ifigured, you know, why not try
it. I've done I've kind ofbuilt up the Preservation Society for the past
few years, and I've wanted todo a you know, an event that's
geared towards Halloween for for a while, but I wanted to wait until I
(35:04):
felt, you know, comfortable aboutit. So why not announce one in
the middle of a pandemic, youknow. So uh, you know,
I picked a place I love.I love visiting Texas, you know,
I love going there. I havefriends there, My daughter goes to book
camp in Texas, so we lovevisiting Texas anyway, and it's I picked
(35:25):
it because it's kind of, youknow, the centralized place, and it's
close to where I live, soit's easier for me to kind of,
you know, I don't want tostart out the first year and be crazy
and try to do too much,because then I'll never do another one.
So I built up a really goodrelationship with a lot of people doing conventions,
and I reached out to some ofpeople I've met through the Halloween stuff
(35:49):
I do, and I've I'm gonnareach out to some of the people I've
met, you know, doing justyou know, comic cons and things like
that. But I can. I'llgo ahead and give you people here listening
the first sneak peek. The firstguest I booked for the festival is Lisa
Morton, who wrote the Halloween Encyclopedia. She's a wonderful author, multiple Bram
(36:10):
Stoker Award winner. She is onif you watch any specials on the History
Channel or anything about Halloween, she'sin it doing an interview. So I'm
really excited about her coming, andall the guests that I'm gonna be bringing
in are going to be, youknow, focused on Halloween in some way
(36:30):
because you know, like like wediscussed, you know, there are horror
shows and I love horror, butthis is gonna be a Halloween centric event.
I really wanted to put out Halloweenhistory and Halloween you know, I'm
even planning on trick or treating atthe event. You know, all the
vendors are Yeah, all the vendorsare gonna get If you sign up to
(36:53):
be a vendor at my show,I'm gonna give you a pumpkin pelling candy
because you're gonna pass out candy.So I want people to come, Yeah,
I want people to come dressed up. I want people to have fun.
I want basically, it's you know, it's three weeks after Halloween,
it's the week before Thanksgiving. Soall of us who are yeah, all
(37:14):
of us who are her, whoare sad about Halloween being over, Let's
do it again and a couple ofweeks later, you know. And the
most important part to me is thatit's over my birthday. So I think
that's a sign. I think Ineed to go. That's awesome. Yeah,
I've heard a few of those it'son my birthday. I'm like,
oh, well, that's why Idid it. A lot of a lot
(37:35):
of us scorpios like Halloween. It'sa m I love. I love that
artwork. It's absolutely beautiful. Yeah, Austin Pardon is a wonderful artist.
I'm working on trying to get himdown there because he he everything he does
is great, Like he designed thatfor me, He's done a couple other
designs for me. Um. Heit is artworks all over a ton of
(37:59):
T shirt that I've seen. Um, it's like everything he does is just
ridiculous. It's so good. Mbrood. Before we get into Miranda's comment,
um, Ted says that you're awesome. Ted is our program manager here.
Oh nice, I love nice tomeet you. So Miranda has a
good question, what type of vendorsare you having? Well, Um,
(38:22):
I know that I'm going to geta lot of applications from vendors, you
know, horror related and things likethat. I'm gonna be I'm gonna be
the one that chooses who vends there. Um. I do want to have
a good variety. I want artists, I want you know, people that
make stuff. I want I'm hopingto get some maskmakers and you know,
I'm trying to pull in every aspectof Halloween that there is, um,
(38:46):
because I want everything there. Imean I literally want you to walk in
and just explode Halloween, you know, like I want it to be like
it's basically like the best place foranybody loves Halloween. That's my goal.
Um. And I'm one of thosepeople that when I go into something,
I'd go into it like ridiculously likeso um, I'm hoping that the guests
(39:13):
are people that you know, everybodywants to meet and talk to. But
I'm also you know, I'm folks. I want to bring in historians and
people that can give history, youknow, talks. They're gonna be panels
about Halloween. And yeah, Ihave some friends that you know are maskmakers.
I'm I'm hoping I can bring themin and kind of go over what
(39:35):
they do mask wise. Uh Andyou know, I'm hoping that I can
get some of the uh um gosh, I just blink, oh, like
historical societies like I'm in talks withthe people who run you know, have
the filiasue with Dennison, and I'mhoping to get you know, maybe Bezel
(39:57):
or you know, some of thetraditional makers of Halloween products. Maybe somebody
I can get from there. AndI plan on doing it again. So
whatever I don't get this year,I'm you know, I'm gonna take notes
and whatever. People tell me,all right, well you're missing this.
It's like it's going in my notebookand yeah, I'm gonna try to do
it again the next time because Iwant this to become an annual thing.
(40:19):
Um Ted says, which is whichis should pay attention to the world,
which is dance should go there?That would be fun. That sounds fun.
Um, well, I was gonnaask you about that. Oh do
plan on always having it in Texasor have you not gotten that far?
Um? I don't know. I'vebeen told like to move it around,
(40:40):
which you know, in theory,I would love to, but there are
a lot of factors that involve movinga convention around. Some places are more
less expensive than others. Some placesare just easier to get people to go
to. One of the other reasonsI chose Dallas is because of flight to
the BFW is it's easy most likeI think, from anywhere in the United
(41:01):
States, it's a straight shot,there's no you know stop. So I
did look at flights today. Iwas like, let me see if I
can go to this. Yeah,that's the first thing I did was like,
all right, I know all thesepeople and this is where they live.
How much is the flight's gonna cost? And it's like, oh,
DFW's pretty good. So um,yeah, because I mean, I'm getting
people from across the country, soI'm I'm hoping it turns out the way
(41:28):
I have it in my head becauseI'm kind of a perfectionist and I want
it to be fun for everybody.And like, I'm gonna be a nervous
direct the whole time hoping that peopleare having fun. Well, I hope
that you that you take some timeto enjoy it. Oh yeah, yeah,
And that's one of the things Igot. A show like this,
there's more time for me to kindof walk around and say hello to everybody.
(41:51):
And you know, I'm I've beento horror shows, and I know
some of the things people love,like karaoke, and you know, I'm
hoping that maybe I can plan amovie screening or you know, just some
after hour stuff that will keep peoplehaving fun, you know, as long
as possible. Um, because Iwant it to be a good event.
I want it to be worth peoplecoming. Um and I wanted, you
(42:15):
know, to I want to givepeople the value for for for being there.
So, um, I've got alot of stuff planned and um one
of the things that I'm trying tofigure out the logistics on is pumpkin carving.
Um, I basically want everybody tobe able to carve a pumpkin and
leave it outside and light them allat once and just take this crazy picture.
(42:37):
Yeah. Yeah, like we weretalking about yesterday. Um, but
you know this this venue is reallyneat. Uh. The exterior of it's
all glass, so like if wedid a pumpkin lighting, you could see
it for you know, pretty far, so that it would be really neat.
Yeah, so local garden clubs orsomething would want to get in on
that. Yeah. I interviewed alady who her name Sarah Fry. She
(43:01):
she owns a farm that puts ormakes they grow the most pumpkins out of
any place in the world. SoI'm going to talk to her and see
it's like, hey, you gotanybody in Dallas I can buy a bunch
of pumpkins from, because like,I want to have a ton of it.
I want to you know, Iwant Like that's the stuff I wanna
do is like traditional things like Harberpumpkin or trigger treating. I mean simple
(43:23):
things like that. There's gonna bekids there that have never trigger treated,
which was and things that things thatwe're kind of losing touch with, Like
you know you have all these youhave all these fake pumpkins. Now you
have like the artificial ones that youcan carve. It's yeah, yeah,
I want you to make a messand get sticky. Yes, and then
give me all the seats because Iwant all the pumpkins in my yard.
(43:44):
And then and then have that burningsmell when you light the candle, that
pumping smell. Yeah. I'm justgonna post up the flyer again real quick
because I think it's just so cool. Oh yeah, Austin's Austin's artwork so
good. Yeah that that it reallyis. It's amazing and it's it's just
reminds me so much of Vinta Challoweenand like traditional it's you know, it's
(44:06):
amazing. Yep. Um, guys. You can see the banner below www
dot preserve Halloween dot com. Pleasego check that out. You can also
find Gregory on Facebook Halloween Preservation Society. Please go there, like follow and
share um, and while you're atit, like following share off on wlfeedb
please um oh yeah, Bob forapples. Oh yeah, I mean anything
(44:30):
that I can do that the securityor the safety people are not gonna tell
me to, Like, no,you can't do that, then I'm gonna,
you know, go, I havea bunch of old party books from
the twenties and thirties. You know, I might even try to do that,
like you can find your significant otherall that weird stuff that you used
to like, do that, youknow. Yep, um Ted says,
(44:51):
we can post that on the website. So we'll post that up for you.
Awesome, that's great, thank you. Legend of the Headless Horseman.
We live not too far from SleepyHollow, New York. We're about an
hour way, and they have anactual Headless Horseman whole event. Yeah.
Yeah. I know a lady namedDanny who lives in Terrytown and she has
amazing knowledge of the history of ofHalloween. Like she's so good, uh,
(45:16):
you know, because she gets tovisit the cemeteries and she knows the
history, and you know, sheshe lives in the town, so it's
like, you know, it's kindof one of those things. And she
loves it too, so you know, it's fun to meet people that are
so into what they like that theywant to share it with other people.
Yep. That's how I feel aboutmy ghost tours. I love, I
(45:37):
love I love scaring people. Ilove sharing it. And the I love
the type of creepiness like that,like um, not the jump scares.
I love like subtle, like getin your brain, kind of weird,
creepy like Tye West creepy, flowburns, yep, um like. I
loved the Blind Manner series. Everyoneeveryone, I thought it was too slow.
(46:00):
I thought it was amazing. Yeah, that's I like that kind of
stuff. Ashley here says the PreserveHalloween podcast is pretty cool too. Do
you want to talk about that fora minute. Yeah, I M I
started a podcast this year because Iwasn't doing any shows, so I needed
something to you know, have anoutlet basically, So I started just a
(46:23):
podcast. And you know, wediscussed this earlier. For someone who hates
the way I sound, a podcastseems like torture, but it gives me
an outlet to do research and kindof share the things I learned, because
sometimes with what us, what wedo, we just assume everybody knows what
we know. But yeah, themore I do this, the more I
realized, like there's so much stuffthat I can share with people that they
(46:45):
may not realize or they may haveforgotten or you know, they may just
want to learn more about So Itry to do it really short. They're
like fifteen twenty minutes, and youknow, you know, it's one of
do it weekly and it's just fun. So it's like this, I just
sit and talk and ramble and youknow, next thing you know, it's
(47:05):
like, oh, I've been talkingfor fifteen minutes. I mean to stop.
It's fun. It's a good outlet. And I think that a lot
of a lot of people being inquarantine and stuff like that has really led
to a lot of different creative Ohdefinitely, I've seen so much creativity.
Ted is our program manager. Tedis saying bring him to WLFEEDB Radio so
we can talk about that later.It's always good when people want you there,
(47:30):
right, Oh hey, that's awesome. It's good to be wanted.
Absolutely. So we do have Gregory'swebsite running on the bottom and that has
links to all of his social media, all of all the upcoming events and
stuff. So that's really like theone stop shop to find out everything,
right, that's it. That's tryingto make it easy. Try to make
(47:52):
it easy, all one stop shopfor Halloween. And you've got memberships for
you people can sign up to bemembers of the Halloween Preservation Society. Yeah,
it sells yearly memberships. Uh thirtyone dollars because you know, thirty
one's a good number. Yeah.Um, And it's it's kind of a
basically it's a community thing. Iwant people to be involved and I want
(48:15):
to hear feedback, and I kindof have a sounding board were like,
hey, I want to try this. What do you guys think? And
I know the people that have signedup love Halloween too, so it's a
good diverse group of people to askquestions and get you know, really good
feedback because you know, I wantto hear what they have to say and
it's good to have that. UmSo. But yeah, that link's also
(48:37):
on the website too. Like likeI said, I try to make the
website be just a hub of everything, Like it's it's where you can go
and get everything you want. Andyou know, if you're on the Facebook
page, there's a link tree thatalso has all the same links. So
I mean, I tried to makeit as easy as possible for people to
find the things that I do becausethere's so much out there you can kind
(49:00):
of get lost. Yeah, andthis is an important thing to get out
there. Yeah, I hope soabsolutely. I don't know if you saw
that last comment, um, Tedwas asking if we can link that on
the website. So we'll cross postall that stuff for you. Awesome if
you want us to. Um yeah, I'll definitely. So we only have
(49:21):
a few more minutes left. Youhave any anything that you want to touch
on that we missed. Um basically, just you know, I want people
not to be afraid to ask mequestions. I always try to make it
be like, you know, Idon't want to come off as any kind
of authority. I'm just a guythat likes Halloween and I happen to.
(49:43):
Hey, you know, there's nota preservation society for this, so I'll
just do it and then you knowthat's what That's where I'm at now.
It's it's you know, I'm doingthis. I love it. I hope
that I can continue to do it. I hope my kids will want to
take over for me when I gettoo old to do it. Um.
I kind of told me have to. I said, you have to.
It's your last name. You kindof have to do this. Like,
(50:06):
yeah, it's not you can't avoidit. It's like you know, you
find out you're going to you know, Hogwarts, you have to do it.
You can't escape it. Yes,you don't have a choice. That's
right, it's your it's your destiny, your destiny. Yep um hi Tom
Hi a little bit. I mean, actually, Halloween is beautiful and needs
to be preserved. I agree.I'm like, I'm like the I go
(50:30):
to the Halloween stores and I'm justlike this, this is it everything I
need. I have to give myselflike a limit or I'll just buy everything
and I'm gonna run out a roomsometime. I mean, I don't know
what I'm Yeah, well then youneed a museum. Yeah, that's that's
the plan. Um. I rememberbeing like, you know, ten to
fifteen years ago, where you hadto buy everything all at once at Halloween
(50:52):
because that was it. Yeah,that was all. Yeah. Now you
can pretty much find stuff all yearround, which is pretty cool. Yeah,
it's great that there's people that dothis all year and you can find
products like handmade and really great stuff. Have you ever done anything like really
spectacular on any Halloween's? Like Iwent to New Orleans one year for Halloween
(51:15):
and that was awesome. Yeah,I because I live so close to New
Orleans, Like it's one of thosethings I like to go when it's not
Halloween because it's basically you know,it's the same all the all year round.
But my favorite place, I reallywant to do a full out haunted
(51:37):
house one year, like get up, get up property and just deck it
out and make it to where youknow people can come because you know,
where we live, there's so muchopen space that there are a lot of
people around here that like turn theirfarms into hall houses and it's so much
room that they could do pretty muchwhatever they want. So yeah, I
(51:58):
really want to do that one year, but so far I haven't. Do
you find that I know I runinto this sometimes that you get so focused
on doing things for Halloween for otherLike for me it's for my ghost tours.
I get so focused on doing allthe tours. I kind of miss
out a little bit on Halloween.Well, to me, it's one of
those gasp things like I start decoratingHalloween all my birthday in August and I
(52:25):
keep everything up until you know,almost Thanksgiving. But Halloween itself kind of
feels almost like a letdown sometimes becauseyou have this crazy build up and then
Halloween comes that there aren't any trickor treaders and there aren't any. But
the good thing is there's so muchonline now you can kind of just hang
out with people you know online andkind of do it yourself. There's always
(52:49):
some kind of event online and nowpeople are doing you know, half halfway
to halloween's a big thing now.And yep, I know I'm gonna say
it wrong, but there's actually areal you know what is it knocked or
something like that where they you know, celebrate Uh well, I don't know
if it's a great celebration because itwas you know, people trying to get
(53:12):
rid of witches, but uh,it's celebrated big time, you know still,
and that's tech. I mean that'sbasically halfway to Halloween. They're doing
that all over the country or allover you know, Europe and things like
that. So, um, thereare a ton of That's one of the
things I do on the podcast.I try to research other places and other
like events that are kind of relatedto Halloween but not really and kind of
(53:36):
you know, relate to how youknow, they come from a lot of
the same backgrounds. Like a lotof stuff is basically you know, religious
people not liking things, so theycreate something and then you know, or
it's you know, the response tothat, or you know, it's Christians
trying to change pagan traditional holidays intosomething they like. So I mean that's
(54:00):
mostly what the history is. Yeah. I love researching all that because I
find this, I find probably twentydifferent answers to the same question, and
it's fun trying to figure out whichone's right or are they all right?
Who knows, because it's whoever wrotethe book says it's right, you know.
So there's never gonna be a definitivehistory of anything because it depends on
(54:23):
how you ask. Yep. It'sall perspective, right. Yeah. So
that's the fun part for me becausethat means I'm never going to stop learning
and I'll never find everything I needto find because there's always something else.
Yep. Do you have really havea few minutes left, but do you
have any special Halloween traditions of yourown that you like to keep alive?
I generally, now lately I've pulledout like old horror stories that you know,
(54:51):
Mr James and things like that thatkind of start Christmas. They became
Christmas like horror stories I guess,but I like reading stuff like that,
and I generally do a sixty Daysto Halloween like movie list where I list
sixty movies you should watch and thereit's really hard for me because, like
I said, I'm really stickler forthis is not a Halloween movie. This
(55:15):
is a horror movie. But I'vekind of let up on that because I
want some of these movies to getwatched. Yeah, Worst Switch is one
of them, actually because that songand Worst Switch is the greatest song ever,
Like it's just amazing. So butyeah, there's stuff like that.
I watched a lot of the samemovies. I try to get a routine.
(55:35):
I carved pumpkins at a certain time, and you know, I last
starting last year, I started growinglong pumpkins. So that's become fard of
a tradition. Like after we didour pumpkin carving party, I threw all
my seeds in the yard and thenthere's pumpkins everywhere, and I'm like,
how did this happen? I didn'tdo anything. So have you ever tried
to carve a turn up? Oh? No, but I carved last year.
(55:59):
I carved a what fruit was it? I carved some kind of fruit
and it turned out awesome, SoI'm gonna do that again. I think
it was a grapefruit. Oh really, Yeah, I carved a grapefruit and
it looked awesome for about a dayand then it just wilted. But yeah,
it was a really neat picture becauseI've carved watermelons, I've carved you
know, any kind of fruit thathas some kind of substance on the outside.
(56:22):
Yeah, it'll hold up decently.But you can't beat a p You
can't, absolutely can't. In Ternsare really hard to scrape out. Yeah,
that just sounds like carving a rock. That's what they started with.
That's something you see use in Ireland. Yeah, so like have fun with
that. Man, it's hard,and I'm like the whole time one thing,
I'm gonna cut my hand off.I'm gonna do something really it scares
(56:43):
me. I'm gonna hurt myself.Yep. Well, we only have like
a minute or two left, soI just want to remind everybody to please
check out Preserve Halloween dot com.I'm gonna put up your flyer again real
quick. Check out um check outPreserve the Preserve Halloween Festival. It's cutting
off on the bottom. Sorry aboutthat, UM, but check out Gregory's
page Facebook page, UM, followhim over there. We're going to cross
(57:07):
post a lot of this stuff overon the Creepy Parlor, so please keep
an eye out and as you postupdates, UM, I'll happily cross post
and let everybody know all about thecause. Also, that's great. UM,
so we're just about it out oftime. Do you have any final
words for us? Like I alwaysin my podcast, I want everyone to
have fun with this and just keeppreserving Halloween. Absolutely. UM, thank
(57:31):
you so much for being here,and thank you all guys for watching.
We had so many great comments andso much good interaction tonight. I really
appreciate it. UM. I hopethat you had as much fun as we
did. I know, I certainlydefinitely. It's already done. Let's keep
going, I know, I knowwe'll have two minutes. UM. Well,
thank you, thank you so much, and thank you everyone for joining
(57:52):
in tonight. UM. Don't forgetto check us out on wlfdashdb dot com.
You can watch us on our TVon our dream TV channel. UM.
You can binge watch us there too, which is pretty cool. UM.
You can also check me out onPSYCHOMANTIM thirteen and Psycho Bunny, DCSUM
and all all those PPD, PBDCTV. I can never say it and
(58:14):
they always laugh at me. Um. Check out. There's a lot of
good content there, and there's alot of great stuff on w LFDB as
well. Stay tuned here. Where'smy stages up next? And just so
you guys know, next week,UM, what's coming up on the Creepy
Parlor. I've got Jason Cottam who'sa fellow w lf e dB host.
We're going to be talking about thehistory of dungeons and dragons and the Satanic
(58:37):
Panic of the eighties, and I'mso excited about that. It's gonna be
so much fun. That's a greatthat's a great story. Yeah, that's
a that's a good time. Um. So with that, I do have
to end for the evening. Um, thank you everyone for joining in tonight,
Thank you Gregory for being here.Everybody, please again check out his
(58:58):
page, check out his website andwe will see you next week. Thank
you for leaving, Thank you forjoining us on the Creepy Barlor. Join
(59:30):
us next Tuesday at seven pm EasterDay for another fantastic show.
Welcome to the Creepy Parlor, wherewe delve into the dark side with an
undercurrent of lighthearted fun. Our discussionswill explore gothic, macca or creepy topics.
The first Tuesday of every month,we will host a Hunted Happy Hour
where you can join us for agroup conversation that focus on ghosts, weird
events, urban legends, and more. Here at the Creepy Parlor, our
(01:14):
subject matter baby spooky, but ourspirits are high. You can catch the
Creepy Parlor every Tuesday at seven pmEastern only on wlf dB Radio. Good
(01:41):
evening, everybody, and welcome tothe Creepy Parlor. I'm Genevieve, and
I'm absolutely delighted that you're spending theevening with us tonight. If any of
you know me, you know thatit's absolutely no secret that I love Halloween.
Halloween is an all your event inour house, and it is just
the absolute best time of year,which is why I'm so thrilled to welcome
(02:05):
my guest tonight, mister Gregory Hallowsof the Halloween Preservation Society. So let's
welcome him. Hello. Hey,how you doing. I'm doing very well.
How are you good? Good,good, thank you for being here,
thank you, thank you for havingme. So let's uh, let's
hear a little bit about what youdo, all right, So I will
(02:30):
just get it out there right offthe bat. My actual name is Gregory
Hallows. That's my real last name. I get that asked a lot.
Is that really my name? Butyes, it's my It's all my driver's
license. Um. I run theHalloween Preservation Society. I'm basically a big
nerd about a lot of things,and I love Halloween. And you know,
(02:53):
with with my last name, Ibasically have to, all right,
obligated. Yeah, I'm obligated tolove Halloween, I guess. But luckily
it's one of my favorite things.I love researching, I love and finding
out as much as I can aboutit. I love meeting people that love
Halloween as well. So I justconsider it one of those things I'm going
(03:13):
to do until I'm not here anymore. Awesome, and you're leaving behind some
wonderful, wonderful artifacts as well,yeah, I hope. So, So
how long have you been doing this? I started it officially about three years
ago. I've always been into Halloween, you know, but I wanted to
(03:34):
make it official and kind of startarchiving things and taking you know, records
and start collecting this stuff because,like I tell people all the time,
you know, a lot of Halloweenproducts are paper, and you know it's
not gonna last, so you know, I want to make sure that there's
somebody or something, you know,to be left behind because this stuff is
(03:58):
just great. I mean a lotof it was made to just throw out
and you know, just to findstuff. I still find things that haven't
been open, which blows my mind. Um yeah, So hopefully I can
continue to do it, because Imean it's getting harder and harder to find
things that you know aren't gonna youknow, make me mortgage my house.
So well, I think everybody everybody'svery Halloween centric lately. It used to
(04:24):
be such a strange thing, likeonly the weirdos were Halloween oriented. Now
I feel like everybody kind of hasa little bit of special love in their
heart for Halloween. Oh yeah,and I'm one of those people that you
know, there's it's it's like whenyou know, nerdy and geeky things became
popular, there is a certain segmentthat it was like, well why do
(04:46):
you like it? Now? It'slike Hey, the more people that love
this stuff, the better because thenthey're gonna make more They're gonna you know,
there's gonna be more options at Halloweenfor products because they're gonna make money
selling it. So that's good forall of us. It's yeah, And
the more I think the stronger it's, the stronger you make the spirit of
Halloween, right, Like, themore attention we give it, the more
(05:08):
energy we put into it. Yeahsaround longer, Yeah, definitely, And
I mean it's fun to teach peoplethat don't know, you know a lot
about Halloween, you know what youknow, because it's it's like you know,
oral traditions, just keep passing themon and they're gonna tell somebody,
and they're gonna tell somebody and thenext thing, you know, like there's
that more people that are you know, love Halloween. Yeah. Um,
(05:30):
just real quick, I want tosay hi to everybody that's been popping up.
We've got Jillian, my sister.She successfully shared the post to your
Your Halloween Preservation Society page. Hi, Natalie Otis, Chris Ashley. We
have Ashley here that says too much, too much Halloween is impossible. I
agree, one hundred percent is oneof our society members. She's awesome,
(05:55):
awesome, welcome, um hire,I think I'm missing some people, Dominic
Hi. I well, we'll hitsome comments up later too. Um.
We got Chris Hike howdy, UM, and we got another share excellent,
keep sharing please. UM. Soin that vein, one of the things
I'm curious about, UM, isit, are you more more interested in
(06:18):
Halloween, like the um vintage Halloweenstuff, or like predating, like back
to like the old Irish Celtic traditions? Like where's your level of interest?
I mean everything, honestly, butwhat I've I'm drawn to vintage Halloween just
because you know, to me,it's more accessible and it's easier to find
(06:41):
out, you know, accurate information. Um. The problem I have with
researching, um, just historically alot of times is because you know,
you don't know what like it's whatI tell it's whatever people write down.
That's that's what you just have toassume is right. And I know this
stuff is for is so centuries old? Um, how much of it do
(07:04):
we still not know? You know? That's that's the thing that I love
to you know, I've purchased booksthat hundreds of years old just to see
what they say, because it justblows my mind that you can find Halloween,
you know, so long ago.But yes, I'm interested in everything
about Halloween. I don't ever claimto know or will ever know everything,
(07:29):
There's no way, but I'm Ialways seek out people that are more historical
based because that's one of the thingsthat I want to know more about because
there's so much that um, youknow, we get the basics of it
every year, but I want toknow more because there's so much that,
you know, gets left out whenwhen people you know talk about the history
(07:53):
of you know, soloing and Halloweenand you know, the festivals and why
you know it was a celebrated inthe first place. So I definitely am
into all of it. But likeI mean, see behind me, I'm
a vintage guy. So well,I love I love like them, like
the Victorian Halloween cards and like thatthat art style, Like I just think
(08:16):
that's so it's just so beautiful.Yeah, it's it's great. It's got
such an extreme creep factor too.Yeah, yeah, I love the fruit
the fruit cards and you know,like the the pumpkin drive in the car
and it's like it's so insane.Like, who came up with this?
But I know it's so good.Yeah it is. It's amazing. Um
(08:39):
Otis is common here. My favoritememories are Halloween. When I was like
seven to ten years old, wasalways Dracula Legosi, Dracula all all time
favorite. Do you have a favoritea favorite Halloween movie? Or I should
say, well, we kind oftalked about this yesterday. Halloween and horror
are two different things. Yeah tome, I mean, I'm a horror
(09:01):
guy. I mean I love horrormovies. I love you know, but
I try to make a distinction betweenhorror and Halloween because there's a lot of
things. Like my favorite Halloween movieis a fairly recent one. It's It's
the House is October Bill. It'sabout, you know, this group of
friends that drives around to find thescariest taunted house that they can find.
(09:24):
But you know, I also loveArsenic and Old Lace and Meet Me in
Saint Louis, you know, andthose aren't traditionally Halloween movies, but uh,
Meet Me and Saint Louis has oneof the most accurate portrayals of early
Halloween that you can find. It'slike those kids are just destroying things like
Yeah, that's you know, that'swhat it was. So you know,
I run the gamut of of youknow, what I love, and it's
(09:48):
you know, I just like learning, so I'm I'm all about learning as
much as I can. What doyou think of Trick or Treat? Oh?
I love Trick or Treat? Ilove loved every single minute, every
single minute of that movie. Andevery time we watch it again and again,
I'm just like, it's gonna happenagain. And I still can't believe
(10:09):
it took so long for them finallyto release it, because I mean it
sat on the shelf for years.Really, yeah, and finally it can't
put out. But yeah, Trickor Treat is one of my favorite movies
because they go over like these arethe rules, don't break on and it's
it's so much common sense, soit's like, yeah, don't break the
rules, this is what happens.Don't blow out that candle. That's right.
(10:33):
I want to go back to Otis'scomment favorite his favorite memories of Halloween
were seven to ten. Do youhave a favorite Halloween memory? Like,
were you always into Halloween as akid and stuff? I mean from what
I remember, yes, because it'sone of those weird things you don't really
think about it. But Halloween forus my age, I mean, I'm
forty five, so I can't remembera time grown up that there wasn't trick
(10:56):
or treating. But now like kidsnowadays left out, you don't like,
there's a lot of places that justdon't do it anymore, which just drives
me insane. But probably my bestmemory of Halloween, I have a picture.
It's up on one of my websites. It's me dressed as the Hulk.
But I didn't buy the costume.I painted myself green. I think
(11:20):
I had the Hulk Ben Cooper mask, but the rest of my costume was
like I shoved a pillow in myshirt to make me look bigger, and
I'm just completely be playing a greenI probably look more like Shrek than anything,
but Shrek wasn't around back then.So but yeah, stuff like that.
It's like make your own Halloween,you know, just do make it
fun, you know, keep gettingkids involved, because you know nowadays it's
(11:45):
become more of an adult thing,and that's just you know, let's I
want the kids to know what they'remissing, absolutely, and I think,
yes, otis kids will never knowit is sad we are. We're having
a halfway the Halloween party for mysister next week. Yeah, but uh,
(12:07):
one of my mom always made ourcostumes. Yeah, like always,
Like I remember laying on a whitesheet when I was maybe second or third
grade, no, probably like first, first or second grade, and she
was cutting around the edges and makingme a princess lay a costume. That's
also yeah, and like that's tome, like just the energy that went
into doing that and the care thatwent into doing that is just you can't
(12:33):
you just those are the best memories. It's it's so it's so much fun
to remember what we did as asHalloween kids. Yeah, I mean,
did you have a favorite? TheHulk was your favorite? Right that your
I think the Hulk is my favorite. Like I'm a big Spider Man guy,
but like I don't ever remember dressingup like him. Um, I
(12:54):
think i've did you know the Hulkand always stuff that. Like my parents
were the same. My mom mademy costumes because it was just easier.
Yeah. And it's crazy because Ilook back at some of the prices of
the costumes back then and they wereso like a dollar and I'm like,
I know, I wish I hadsome of those still, but it was
(13:18):
more fun for us to dress upwhat we wanted to be, and you
know, just figure it out,like all right, well I need to
be green, Okay, paint megreen, or I need to you know,
I need to have this costume.Mom make it. And we just
assumed our parents could make anything.Absolutely, my friend Kelly's commenting here said
her kids are already mapped out theneighborhood for the best houses for trick or
treating. Kelly is absolutely doing parentingright. You should see some of her
(13:41):
kids costumes that she and her owncostumes are just magnificent. Yeah, where
I live, it's in the middleof nowhere, Mississippi. I can't get
anybody, and I buy full sizedSnickers bars. I you know, like,
hey, kids, I'll give youmultiple ones, you know, but
you know, it's just not oneof those things. Natalie's comment here,
(14:03):
we talked about this yesterday. Itwas all It used to be a shock
when a house wasn't partaking in Halloween. When I was a kid, there
was a reason kids back then usepillowcases. I absolutely remember always having a
pillowcase. Yes, and most kids, if you didn't participate in in Halloween.
Your house got egged. Yeah,so you did it anyway. Yeah,
(14:24):
it's just not the same anymore.I remember, you know, we
would leave school and we were neverallowed to wear our masks and stuff in
school because they were I guess atripping hazard or whatever. And then on
the way home we'd start trick ortreating. Oh yeah, yeah. It
was like, you know, you'restarting before it gets dark, and you
I don't even remember when I camehome. Most of the time, it
was like, I know, itwas pitch dark, yeah, and you
(14:46):
know, you got a full bagof candy and you just pass out,
and then the next day you're highon sugar and you know, I can't
imagine the teachers back then, They'rejust like, yeah, we're not doing
anything today. Your kids aren't gonnalisten. We also always have English muffin
pizzas on Halloween because it was likethe quick thing you could run into,
yeah and get back out and starttrick or treating again. And then there
(15:07):
was like the trading afterwards. Youknow, you've got like yourself, Yeah,
you got to trade out all yourstuff and I'm not I don't want
titsy rolls come on, trade me, what was your favorite? I love
just, you know, any kindof candy bar, and I would even
eat stuff I didn't normally like justbecause it was Halloween. Candy. Yeah,
(15:30):
I never really liked anything like Iguess the closest thing now is the
candies. They are just basically sugarin a shape. I didn't like what.
I don't remember what they were called, but it was basically you're eating
a shape of sugar and that's allit was. And it had a color.
(15:50):
Uh, I can't really remember whatit was, but I remember I
would trade anything for a candy bar. And I lost out a bunch of
time because I do ten to ones. You know, I'll give you ten
of this for a candy bar.But yeah, you know I still ended
up with so much that it wasunhealthy. Well yeah, and you know,
hopefully it lasts a while too.Was it smarties? Now? They
(16:12):
weren't, Yeah, smarties. Icouldn't stand those. I would give those
away for anything. I loved theVanilla Charleston shoes. They still remind me
of Halloween. Oh yeah, stillfor this does. Yeah. And there
were certain candies that I swear youcould only find it Halloween like you try
to find it the rest of theyear and it didn't exist. But a
(16:33):
Halloween it's like here it does itpops up? Yep. And then there
were those um oh they were awful. I don't know what they were like
they were wrapped in like black andorange wax. Oh yeah, it was
taffy of some kind. Oh god, that was like I think that was
like what you would buy or theyI think that's what we bought to Jake
(16:56):
fill up the bowl. It's like, well, we can't get all the
good candies, so let's get onthis and mix it up. A few
years we hardly get any trick ortreaters in our neighborhood anymore either. And
a few years ago I was likefollowing kids down the street going I had
handy, like they're gonna call thecops on me or something. Yeah,
yeah, I mean it's just youknow, you shouldn't be chasing children down
(17:18):
the street to give kidsy. Youshouldn't have to. No, you shouldn't
have to. I mean, youknow, it's dressed like a witch,
following the kids around. Yeah exactly. Did you ever do any like um,
like crazy like urban exploration or anythingon Halloween, like go to like
the creepy places in town and tryto get some and stuff. I grew
(17:45):
up a big majority of my lifeon military base, and I don't know
how we weren't ever arrested by themilitary police because we would just go wherever
we felt like going. And Iended up in a lot of places that
had barbed wire fences around it,or you know, one time we ended
up in a swamp and don't knowhow we got there. But yeah,
growing up in a military base wasgreat because it's a built in, you
(18:08):
know community. But yeah, allthe kids knew each other and we basically
just you know, go wherever wewanted because we our parents felt safe because
you're on a military base. Soit's like, yeah, I'm leaving,
I'm not coming back till it tonighttime, Like all right, whatever.
If you try to do that now, like your parents like you can you
can play in this little square andthat's it, Like you can't go anywhere.
(18:32):
I was like, it's just sodifferent. I think a lot of
people also do Halloween parties now too, so that the kids don't go out
and do the trunk retreats and thingslike that, and trunk retreats a big
thing now. I see those moreand more every year. Yeah, I
think that keeps a lot of peoplehome. I mean this year. This
(18:52):
year, I was surprised that weactually had some kids coming out, but
we had a few, and therewere a lot of people. Got really
creative this year with how to distributecandy. Yeah, I've seen some.
I love the shoot that somebody madethat you could just put it in it
slides down. That was the bestthing I saw this past year. I
had gotten so sick during Halloween becauseI run my ghost tours and usually by
(19:12):
the time Halloween comes, I'm kindof run down. And I had all
the equipment to make a nice shootand I just never got around to it.
But I'll do it for next year. Yeah, I hope to see
a lot of those. Yeah,me too. I have a coming here
from Chris Sumner looking at your website. Now, do you preserve just physical
objects or do you also collect Halloweenstories of the past. I would collect
(19:36):
anything it's related to Halloween. Iwant to know about it, because you
know, I grew up in acertain area of the country that may have
different traditions or stories than someone else. So I always want to hear what
you know someone else has to say, because it's just like you know,
urban myths, and you know,we all heard different things grown up,
(19:57):
but they're all really related. Itmay just have a different name. And
I love comparing, you know,those those stories like, oh, well,
you know you called it this whereyou live, I call it this
and it's the same thing. Howdid it make it across the whole country?
You know, mischief night? Whatdo you call exactly what do you
call the night before Halloween? Doyou call it mischief night? We didn't.
(20:18):
I didn't even know if that wasuntil I got older. I'd never
heard of it until uh, probablyseeing the crow. Really yeah, that
wasn't a thing for us. LikeI looked it up. I was like,
what is this Mischief Night? Iwas like, Oh, it's really
a thing that's been going on solong. Like how did I not know
that Devil's night mischief night? Iheard Devil's Night. I heard Devil's night
(20:41):
more than mischief night. But youknow, I grew up in the South.
They weren't going to call it Devil'snight. Probably not. Yeah,
so I got I got taken outof our library. Oh this is a
comment Halloweenian's Unite. I was goingto coin a different term and call you
a halloween Ologist, because I callus, I call us Halloween. He's
(21:03):
that too. Yeah. Oh yeah, Goosey Nights. Some people call um
the night before Goosey Nights, allthat stuff. So I want to hear
all that. I've never heard anyof those things. Yeah. Um,
it's a it's a really interesting concept. Um, just to go out and
like make mischief and all that stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's more
like a traditional Halloween, like beforethey started bribing children with candy. Yeah,
(21:29):
and they um, uh, we'llhave your birthday to my sister,
Thanks Dwayne, thanks to see you. Um. The thing that always bothered
me is when people would smash pumpkinsand thing, because that was another part
of it. You know, they'dgo around and smash up Jack lanterns and
yeah that was a little kid andtrick or treat. Yes, you don't
smash Jack the lantern come on.Um yeah, ODIs says it wasn't the
(21:56):
thing for me either. Every nightwas mischief night. That's good, that's
that's a good time. Yeah.So we did talk a little bit about
um favorite movies. But what whatis your favorite your favorite horror movie.
Favorite horror movie is The Omen easily. Um. I'm not a big church
(22:18):
person, but I love movies aboutreligion. I don't know why, but
The Omen has been one of thosethings that I've loved it since the first
time I saw it. I lovethe music, I love I mean,
a movie with a creepy kids alwaysgood to me, so you know,
and I love all of them,like I own original posters of all four
(22:41):
movies. I even count the fourthone, which nobody even acknowledges, but
you know it fourth one. Yeah, yeah, the fourth one is the
one that nobody ever, you know, wants to talk about. But I
love all of them. Uh,you know, the first one's obviously the
best to me, but I reallylike the way they progressed the story,
(23:02):
and you know, it was reallycreepy, and its just something about it
that got to me. It's like, man, this movie is so good.
Do you have a well, obviouslyThe Omens a little bit different,
but do you have it, likea favorite preferred genre of movie that you
like. I actually grew up watchingold fifties movies with my grandparents. We
used to always have to go tomy grandparents in the summer. So I
(23:26):
grew up watching wrestling and soap operasand whatever TVs showed. So I one
of my favorite actors of all timeis the movies like the Gangster movies.
So I loved James Cagney and Iloved Edward g Robinson and anything that they
were in I would watch and thenyou know, it blew my mind.
(23:48):
When I saw James Cagney in amusical, I was like, man,
this guy's really good actor. LikeI just thought he was just some thub
guy. But he's didn't make themlike that anymore. He's wonderful. But
yeah, I grew up watching allthat old stuff. I love Marilyn Monroe
movies. I love you know,anything fifties. I'll watch interesting. Um
I love the like The Hammer HorrorYears, like, oh yeah, all
(24:12):
that good stuff does look so good. Yeah like that the whole the atmosphere
is just fantastic. Oh yeah,definitely. Um Ray says there seems to
be one house in town that hadcreepy people who acted like the Adams family.
I aspire to be that house intown. That's that's me, that's
(24:33):
my family in our town. Ourhouse is black so black with orange doors.
So we are the Adams family wherein my town? So that brings
me to another question I have foryou. Are you Team Adams or Team
Monster? I like them both.Uh, That's Adams Family because I love
just the characters and I love therelationship that they have with each other.
(24:59):
But the Monsters was always fun forme. But I if I had to
choose, I would be Adam's familyeasy. I just definitely everything about him.
Definitely. It's one of the mostpositive role models for a husband and
wife anything I've ever seen, andlike it doesn't get enough credit for that.
(25:21):
Absolutely. Um, real quick,before we go to break, I'm
gonna just talk about Miranda's question here. What what's your favorite vintage piece you've
collected so far. I've always wantedto own an original copy of Ruth that
Nickelly's book. She wrote the veryfirst book, like full book on Halloween,
and I finally bit the bullet andbought one. And I can't believe
(25:45):
I have it. It's it's,you know, one hundred years old now,
and it's I'm scared to really touchit, but I haven't. Yeah,
I read it. My wife boughtme a copy of like a reprint
of it, because she's like,I know you're not going to read the
one bought, but here's there's thisone. You can at least rate it.
It's exactly the same. I waslike, all right, awesome,
Oh that's cool, that's love.Yeah. Yeah, So we're gonna we're
(26:07):
gonna take a real quick break andwe'll be right back to about about three
minutes, so you've got some timeif you need to get a drink.
All right, we'll be right backo. W LFE Digital Broadcast Network is
(26:52):
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our program and just like that,we're halfway done. That's fast, it
(30:38):
is fast. Um. I justwant to say thank you all you guys
for all of the many, many, many comments that are coming up.
Everyone seems really interested. Um,how dare you try to make someone choose.
I'm using Adams versus Munster. Yeah, that's not fair. I know.
(30:59):
There's nothing like a and running aroundthe house, that's true. Um,
and I mean cousin it. Howcould you not love cousin it?
Yeah, he just passed away theguy that was I know. Um,
have you ever met any of yourlike horror or Halloween idols? Yes,
I've met a few. Um,because what I do for my day job,
(31:22):
I get to meet a lot ofcelebrities, which is fun. Um,
I've met some of the Jason's,Uh, some of the Jason's.
Yeah, there's there's not all ofthem. I've met some of them.
Uh, I've met you know,just I can't name one person that I've
wanted to meet except I was gonnameet Harvey Stevens, who played Damien in
(31:45):
The Omen, But then my wifeand I bought ticket well actually she bought
tickets for me, and then Ifound out she was pregnant, so we
had to cancel the trip. SoI'm not disappointed, but that was probably
the only chance I would have gottento meet him. So every now and
that kind of teaser about it,but you know, it was one of
those things I maybe eventually get tomeet him. But I probably have met
(32:12):
more people than I can remember,which sounds crazy, but it's a lot
of fun. We were at AUMwe were at a convention a bunch of
years ago, and one of myfavorite movies is Hell Razor, And all
of a sudden I hear the voiceand I didn't realize that he was going
(32:35):
to be there, and I gotlike you get like the goosebumps going up
the back of your neck, andI was like, oh, no,
Pinhead's here. He's so nice.He's one of the nicest guys. Yeah,
yeah, he really is crazy.I met Gunner Hansen. I was
I was happy. I met himright before he passed away a leather face
and there all those guys are sonice, Like it's crazy. You just
(32:55):
you know, there's a misconception thatpeople that like the stuff we do or
you know, something's wrong with us. But you couldn't meet the nicer group
of people. That's true and verysupportive, and we all pretty have a
common interest already. Yep, exactly, it's like you're built in friends.
Yep. What do you think itis about Halloween that like kind of draws
(33:15):
people in? I mean, there'sso much about it that you can like.
I mean, some people just likethe history of it, and some
people just like you know, dressingup, some people just like the candy.
I mean, let's be honest.But yeah, I mean there's not
really anything negative about Halloween really.I mean the media tries to bring up
(33:37):
a lot of things that aren't true, but you know, there's not really
anything that you know, bad aboutit, even the stuff they always try
to bring up for so long asyou know, people trying to poison candy
and all that. There's a professorof Joel Best. He's every year he
researches all that, and like noneof it's ever been true, proven true,
(33:57):
Like it's not ever directly related toHalloween, and it's like just the
happenstance. So I just think,I mean, what can you not like
about it? I mean, eventhe colors that are associated with Hallen are
awesome black and orange. So nowwe've likely kind of snuck purple into it
too, which means, oh,yeah, that I'm excited about the purple
edition because it just fits. Yeah, and then like that really cool green
(34:21):
is really yeah, it's like thoseadd a little flavor and royalty, a
little you know, um I was. I was kind of waiting on this
comment, but I figured maybe wecan bring it up now Chris's comment here.
You may mention it later, butcan you tell us about the Preserve
Halloween Festival? Yes, enough timeto talk about that. I decided,
(34:42):
you know, I do conventions fora living, and I've never really done
anything geared towards Halloween, so Ifigured, you know, why not try
it. I've done I've kind ofbuilt up the Preservation Society for the past
few years, and I've wanted todo a you know, an event that's
geared towards Halloween for for a while, but I wanted to wait until I
(35:04):
felt, you know, comfortable aboutit. So why not announce one in
the middle of a pandemic, youknow. So uh, you know,
I picked a place I love.I love visiting Texas, you know,
I love going there. I havefriends there, My daughter goes to book
camp in Texas, so we lovevisiting Texas anyway, and it's I picked
(35:25):
it because it's kind of, youknow, the centralized place, and it's
close to where I live, soit's easier for me to kind of,
you know, I don't want tostart out the first year and be crazy
and try to do too much,because then I'll never do another one.
So I built up a really goodrelationship with a lot of people doing conventions,
and I reached out to some ofpeople I've met through the Halloween stuff
(35:49):
I do, and I've I'm gonnareach out to some of the people I've
met, you know, doing justyou know, comic cons and things like
that. But I can. I'llgo ahead and give you people here listening
the first sneak peek. The firstguest I booked for the festival is Lisa
Morton, who wrote the Halloween Encyclopedia. She's a wonderful author, multiple Bram
(36:10):
Stoker Award winner. She is onif you watch any specials on the History
Channel or anything about Halloween, she'sin it doing an interview. So I'm
really excited about her coming, andall the guests that I'm gonna be bringing
in are going to be, youknow, focused on Halloween in some way
(36:30):
because you know, like like wediscussed, you know, there are horror
shows and I love horror, butthis is gonna be a Halloween centric event.
I really wanted to put out Halloweenhistory and Halloween you know, I'm
even planning on trick or treating atthe event. You know, all the
vendors are Yeah, all the vendorsare gonna get If you sign up to
(36:53):
be a vendor at my show,I'm gonna give you a pumpkin pelling candy
because you're gonna pass out candy.So I want people to come, Yeah,
I want people to come dressed up. I want people to have fun.
I want basically, it's you know, it's three weeks after Halloween,
it's the week before Thanksgiving. Soall of us who are yeah, all
(37:14):
of us who are her, whoare sad about Halloween being over, Let's
do it again and a couple ofweeks later, you know. And the
most important part to me is thatit's over my birthday. So I think
that's a sign. I think Ineed to go. That's awesome. Yeah,
I've heard a few of those it'son my birthday. I'm like,
oh, well, that's why Idid it. A lot of a lot
(37:35):
of us scorpios like Halloween. It'sa m I love. I love that
artwork. It's absolutely beautiful. Yeah, Austin Pardon is a wonderful artist.
I'm working on trying to get himdown there because he he everything he does
is great, Like he designed thatfor me, He's done a couple other
designs for me. Um. Heit is artworks all over a ton of
(37:59):
T shirt that I've seen. Um, it's like everything he does is just
ridiculous. It's so good. Mbrood. Before we get into Miranda's comment,
um, Ted says that you're awesome. Ted is our program manager here.
Oh nice, I love nice tomeet you. So Miranda has a
good question, what type of vendorsare you having? Well, Um,
(38:22):
I know that I'm going to geta lot of applications from vendors, you
know, horror related and things likethat. I'm gonna be I'm gonna be
the one that chooses who vends there. Um. I do want to have
a good variety. I want artists, I want you know, people that
make stuff. I want I'm hopingto get some maskmakers and you know,
I'm trying to pull in every aspectof Halloween that there is, um,
(38:46):
because I want everything there. Imean I literally want you to walk in
and just explode Halloween, you know, like I want it to be like
it's basically like the best place foranybody loves Halloween. That's my goal.
Um. And I'm one of thosepeople that when I go into something,
I'd go into it like ridiculously likeso um, I'm hoping that the guests
(39:13):
are people that you know, everybodywants to meet and talk to. But
I'm also you know, I'm folks. I want to bring in historians and
people that can give history, youknow, talks. They're gonna be panels
about Halloween. And yeah, Ihave some friends that you know are maskmakers.
I'm I'm hoping I can bring themin and kind of go over what
(39:35):
they do mask wise. Uh Andyou know, I'm hoping that I can
get some of the uh um gosh, I just blink, oh, like
historical societies like I'm in talks withthe people who run you know, have
the filiasue with Dennison, and I'mhoping to get you know, maybe Bezel
(39:57):
or you know, some of thetraditional makers of Halloween products. Maybe somebody
I can get from there. AndI plan on doing it again. So
whatever I don't get this year,I'm you know, I'm gonna take notes
and whatever. People tell me,all right, well you're missing this.
It's like it's going in my notebookand yeah, I'm gonna try to do
it again the next time because Iwant this to become an annual thing.
(40:19):
Um Ted says, which is whichis should pay attention to the world,
which is dance should go there?That would be fun. That sounds fun.
Um, well, I was gonnaask you about that. Oh do
plan on always having it in Texasor have you not gotten that far?
Um? I don't know. I'vebeen told like to move it around,
(40:40):
which you know, in theory,I would love to, but there are
a lot of factors that involve movinga convention around. Some places are more
less expensive than others. Some placesare just easier to get people to go
to. One of the other reasonsI chose Dallas is because of flight to
the BFW is it's easy most likeI think, from anywhere in the United
(41:01):
States, it's a straight shot,there's no you know stop. So I
did look at flights today. Iwas like, let me see if I
can go to this. Yeah,that's the first thing I did was like,
all right, I know all thesepeople and this is where they live.
How much is the flight's gonna cost? And it's like, oh,
DFW's pretty good. So um,yeah, because I mean, I'm getting
people from across the country, soI'm I'm hoping it turns out the way
(41:28):
I have it in my head becauseI'm kind of a perfectionist and I want
it to be fun for everybody.And like, I'm gonna be a nervous
direct the whole time hoping that peopleare having fun. Well, I hope
that you that you take some timeto enjoy it. Oh yeah, yeah,
And that's one of the things Igot. A show like this,
there's more time for me to kindof walk around and say hello to everybody.
(41:51):
And you know, I'm I've beento horror shows, and I know
some of the things people love,like karaoke, and you know, I'm
hoping that maybe I can plan amovie screening or you know, just some
after hour stuff that will keep peoplehaving fun, you know, as long
as possible. Um, because Iwant it to be a good event.
I want it to be worth peoplecoming. Um and I wanted, you
(42:15):
know, to I want to givepeople the value for for for being there.
So, um, I've got alot of stuff planned and um one
of the things that I'm trying tofigure out the logistics on is pumpkin carving.
Um, I basically want everybody tobe able to carve a pumpkin and
leave it outside and light them allat once and just take this crazy picture.
(42:37):
Yeah. Yeah, like we weretalking about yesterday. Um, but
you know this this venue is reallyneat. Uh. The exterior of it's
all glass, so like if wedid a pumpkin lighting, you could see
it for you know, pretty far, so that it would be really neat.
Yeah, so local garden clubs orsomething would want to get in on
that. Yeah. I interviewed alady who her name Sarah Fry. She
(43:01):
she owns a farm that puts ormakes they grow the most pumpkins out of
any place in the world. SoI'm going to talk to her and see
it's like, hey, you gotanybody in Dallas I can buy a bunch
of pumpkins from, because like,I want to have a ton of it.
I want to you know, Iwant Like that's the stuff I wanna
do is like traditional things like Harberpumpkin or trigger treating. I mean simple
(43:23):
things like that. There's gonna bekids there that have never trigger treated,
which was and things that things thatwe're kind of losing touch with, Like
you know you have all these youhave all these fake pumpkins. Now you
have like the artificial ones that youcan carve. It's yeah, yeah,
I want you to make a messand get sticky. Yes, and then
give me all the seats because Iwant all the pumpkins in my yard.
(43:44):
And then and then have that burningsmell when you light the candle, that
pumping smell. Yeah. I'm justgonna post up the flyer again real quick
because I think it's just so cool. Oh yeah, Austin's Austin's artwork so
good. Yeah that that it reallyis. It's amazing and it's it's just
reminds me so much of Vinta Challoweenand like traditional it's you know, it's
(44:06):
amazing. Yep. Um, guys. You can see the banner below www
dot preserve Halloween dot com. Pleasego check that out. You can also
find Gregory on Facebook Halloween Preservation Society. Please go there, like follow and
share um, and while you're atit, like following share off on wlfeedb
please um oh yeah, Bob forapples. Oh yeah, I mean anything
(44:30):
that I can do that the securityor the safety people are not gonna tell
me to, Like, no,you can't do that, then I'm gonna,
you know, go, I havea bunch of old party books from
the twenties and thirties. You know, I might even try to do that,
like you can find your significant otherall that weird stuff that you used
to like, do that, youknow. Yep, um Ted says,
(44:51):
we can post that on the website. So we'll post that up for you.
Awesome, that's great, thank you. Legend of the Headless Horseman.
We live not too far from SleepyHollow, New York. We're about an
hour way, and they have anactual Headless Horseman whole event. Yeah.
Yeah. I know a lady namedDanny who lives in Terrytown and she has
amazing knowledge of the history of ofHalloween. Like she's so good, uh,
(45:16):
you know, because she gets tovisit the cemeteries and she knows the
history, and you know, sheshe lives in the town, so it's
like, you know, it's kindof one of those things. And she
loves it too, so you know, it's fun to meet people that are
so into what they like that theywant to share it with other people.
Yep. That's how I feel aboutmy ghost tours. I love, I
(45:37):
love I love scaring people. Ilove sharing it. And the I love
the type of creepiness like that,like um, not the jump scares.
I love like subtle, like getin your brain, kind of weird,
creepy like Tye West creepy, flowburns, yep, um like. I
loved the Blind Manner series. Everyoneeveryone, I thought it was too slow.
(46:00):
I thought it was amazing. Yeah, that's I like that kind of
stuff. Ashley here says the PreserveHalloween podcast is pretty cool too. Do
you want to talk about that fora minute. Yeah, I M I
started a podcast this year because Iwasn't doing any shows, so I needed
something to you know, have anoutlet basically, So I started just a
(46:23):
podcast. And you know, wediscussed this earlier. For someone who hates
the way I sound, a podcastseems like torture, but it gives me
an outlet to do research and kindof share the things I learned, because
sometimes with what us, what wedo, we just assume everybody knows what
we know. But yeah, themore I do this, the more I
realized, like there's so much stuffthat I can share with people that they
(46:45):
may not realize or they may haveforgotten or you know, they may just
want to learn more about So Itry to do it really short. They're
like fifteen twenty minutes, and youknow, you know, it's one of
do it weekly and it's just fun. So it's like this, I just
sit and talk and ramble and youknow, next thing you know, it's
(47:05):
like, oh, I've been talkingfor fifteen minutes. I mean to stop.
It's fun. It's a good outlet. And I think that a lot
of a lot of people being inquarantine and stuff like that has really led
to a lot of different creative Ohdefinitely, I've seen so much creativity.
Ted is our program manager. Tedis saying bring him to WLFEEDB Radio so
we can talk about that later.It's always good when people want you there,
(47:30):
right, Oh hey, that's awesome. It's good to be wanted.
Absolutely. So we do have Gregory'swebsite running on the bottom and that has
links to all of his social media, all of all the upcoming events and
stuff. So that's really like theone stop shop to find out everything,
right, that's it. That's tryingto make it easy. Try to make
(47:52):
it easy, all one stop shopfor Halloween. And you've got memberships for
you people can sign up to bemembers of the Halloween Preservation Society. Yeah,
it sells yearly memberships. Uh thirtyone dollars because you know, thirty
one's a good number. Yeah.Um, And it's it's kind of a
basically it's a community thing. Iwant people to be involved and I want
(48:15):
to hear feedback, and I kindof have a sounding board were like,
hey, I want to try this. What do you guys think? And
I know the people that have signedup love Halloween too, so it's a
good diverse group of people to askquestions and get you know, really good
feedback because you know, I wantto hear what they have to say and
it's good to have that. UmSo. But yeah, that link's also
(48:37):
on the website too. Like likeI said, I try to make the
website be just a hub of everything, Like it's it's where you can go
and get everything you want. Andyou know, if you're on the Facebook
page, there's a link tree thatalso has all the same links. So
I mean, I tried to makeit as easy as possible for people to
find the things that I do becausethere's so much out there you can kind
(49:00):
of get lost. Yeah, andthis is an important thing to get out
there. Yeah, I hope soabsolutely. I don't know if you saw
that last comment, um, Tedwas asking if we can link that on
the website. So we'll cross postall that stuff for you. Awesome if
you want us to. Um yeah, I'll definitely. So we only have
(49:21):
a few more minutes left. Youhave any anything that you want to touch
on that we missed. Um basically, just you know, I want people
not to be afraid to ask mequestions. I always try to make it
be like, you know, Idon't want to come off as any kind
of authority. I'm just a guythat likes Halloween and I happen to.
(49:43):
Hey, you know, there's nota preservation society for this, so I'll
just do it and then you knowthat's what That's where I'm at now.
It's it's you know, I'm doingthis. I love it. I hope
that I can continue to do it. I hope my kids will want to
take over for me when I gettoo old to do it. Um.
I kind of told me have to. I said, you have to.
It's your last name. You kindof have to do this. Like,
(50:06):
yeah, it's not you can't avoidit. It's like you know, you
find out you're going to you know, Hogwarts, you have to do it.
You can't escape it. Yes,you don't have a choice. That's
right, it's your it's your destiny, your destiny. Yep um hi Tom
Hi a little bit. I mean, actually, Halloween is beautiful and needs
to be preserved. I agree.I'm like, I'm like the I go
(50:30):
to the Halloween stores and I'm justlike this, this is it everything I
need. I have to give myselflike a limit or I'll just buy everything
and I'm gonna run out a roomsometime. I mean, I don't know
what I'm Yeah, well then youneed a museum. Yeah, that's that's
the plan. Um. I rememberbeing like, you know, ten to
fifteen years ago, where you hadto buy everything all at once at Halloween
(50:52):
because that was it. Yeah,that was all. Yeah. Now you
can pretty much find stuff all yearround, which is pretty cool. Yeah,
it's great that there's people that dothis all year and you can find
products like handmade and really great stuff. Have you ever done anything like really
spectacular on any Halloween's? Like Iwent to New Orleans one year for Halloween
(51:15):
and that was awesome. Yeah,I because I live so close to New
Orleans, Like it's one of thosethings I like to go when it's not
Halloween because it's basically you know,it's the same all the all year round.
But my favorite place, I reallywant to do a full out haunted
(51:37):
house one year, like get up, get up property and just deck it
out and make it to where youknow people can come because you know,
where we live, there's so muchopen space that there are a lot of
people around here that like turn theirfarms into hall houses and it's so much
room that they could do pretty muchwhatever they want. So yeah, I
(51:58):
really want to do that one year, but so far I haven't. Do
you find that I know I runinto this sometimes that you get so focused
on doing things for Halloween for otherLike for me it's for my ghost tours.
I get so focused on doing allthe tours. I kind of miss
out a little bit on Halloween.Well, to me, it's one of
those gasp things like I start decoratingHalloween all my birthday in August and I
(52:25):
keep everything up until you know,almost Thanksgiving. But Halloween itself kind of
feels almost like a letdown sometimes becauseyou have this crazy build up and then
Halloween comes that there aren't any trickor treaders and there aren't any. But
the good thing is there's so muchonline now you can kind of just hang
out with people you know online andkind of do it yourself. There's always
(52:49):
some kind of event online and nowpeople are doing you know, half halfway
to halloween's a big thing now.And yep, I know I'm gonna say
it wrong, but there's actually areal you know what is it knocked or
something like that where they you know, celebrate Uh well, I don't know
if it's a great celebration because itwas you know, people trying to get
(53:12):
rid of witches, but uh,it's celebrated big time, you know still,
and that's tech. I mean that'sbasically halfway to Halloween. They're doing
that all over the country or allover you know, Europe and things like
that. So, um, thereare a ton of That's one of the
things I do on the podcast.I try to research other places and other
like events that are kind of relatedto Halloween but not really and kind of
(53:36):
you know, relate to how youknow, they come from a lot of
the same backgrounds. Like a lotof stuff is basically you know, religious
people not liking things, so theycreate something and then you know, or
it's you know, the response tothat, or you know, it's Christians
trying to change pagan traditional holidays intosomething they like. So I mean that's
(54:00):
mostly what the history is. Yeah. I love researching all that because I
find this, I find probably twentydifferent answers to the same question, and
it's fun trying to figure out whichone's right or are they all right?
Who knows, because it's whoever wrotethe book says it's right, you know.
So there's never gonna be a definitivehistory of anything because it depends on
(54:23):
how you ask. Yep. It'sall perspective, right. Yeah. So
that's the fun part for me becausethat means I'm never going to stop learning
and I'll never find everything I needto find because there's always something else.
Yep. Do you have really havea few minutes left, but do you
have any special Halloween traditions of yourown that you like to keep alive?
I generally, now lately I've pulledout like old horror stories that you know,
(54:51):
Mr James and things like that thatkind of start Christmas. They became
Christmas like horror stories I guess,but I like reading stuff like that,
and I generally do a sixty Daysto Halloween like movie list where I list
sixty movies you should watch and thereit's really hard for me because, like
I said, I'm really stickler forthis is not a Halloween movie. This
(55:15):
is a horror movie. But I'vekind of let up on that because I
want some of these movies to getwatched. Yeah, Worst Switch is one
of them, actually because that songand Worst Switch is the greatest song ever,
Like it's just amazing. So butyeah, there's stuff like that.
I watched a lot of the samemovies. I try to get a routine.
(55:35):
I carved pumpkins at a certain time, and you know, I last
starting last year, I started growinglong pumpkins. So that's become fard of
a tradition. Like after we didour pumpkin carving party, I threw all
my seeds in the yard and thenthere's pumpkins everywhere, and I'm like,
how did this happen? I didn'tdo anything. So have you ever tried
to carve a turn up? Oh? No, but I carved last year.
(55:59):
I carved a what fruit was it? I carved some kind of fruit
and it turned out awesome, SoI'm gonna do that again. I think
it was a grapefruit. Oh really, Yeah, I carved a grapefruit and
it looked awesome for about a dayand then it just wilted. But yeah,
it was a really neat picture becauseI've carved watermelons, I've carved you
know, any kind of fruit thathas some kind of substance on the outside.
(56:22):
Yeah, it'll hold up decently.But you can't beat a p You
can't, absolutely can't. In Ternsare really hard to scrape out. Yeah,
that just sounds like carving a rock. That's what they started with.
That's something you see use in Ireland. Yeah, so like have fun with
that. Man, it's hard,and I'm like the whole time one thing,
I'm gonna cut my hand off.I'm gonna do something really it scares
(56:43):
me. I'm gonna hurt myself.Yep. Well, we only have like
a minute or two left, soI just want to remind everybody to please
check out Preserve Halloween dot com.I'm gonna put up your flyer again real
quick. Check out um check outPreserve the Preserve Halloween Festival. It's cutting
off on the bottom. Sorry aboutthat, UM, but check out Gregory's
page Facebook page, UM, followhim over there. We're going to cross
(57:07):
post a lot of this stuff overon the Creepy Parlor, so please keep
an eye out and as you postupdates, UM, I'll happily cross post
and let everybody know all about thecause. Also, that's great. UM,
so we're just about it out oftime. Do you have any final
words for us? Like I alwaysin my podcast, I want everyone to
have fun with this and just keeppreserving Halloween. Absolutely. UM, thank
(57:31):
you so much for being here,and thank you all guys for watching.
We had so many great comments andso much good interaction tonight. I really
appreciate it. UM. I hopethat you had as much fun as we
did. I know, I certainlydefinitely. It's already done. Let's keep
going, I know, I knowwe'll have two minutes. UM. Well,
thank you, thank you so much, and thank you everyone for joining
(57:52):
in tonight. UM. Don't forgetto check us out on wlfdashdb dot com.
You can watch us on our TVon our dream TV channel. UM.
You can binge watch us there too, which is pretty cool. UM.
You can also check me out onPSYCHOMANTIM thirteen and Psycho Bunny, DCSUM
and all all those PPD, PBDCTV. I can never say it and
(58:14):
they always laugh at me. Um. Check out. There's a lot of
good content there, and there's alot of great stuff on w LFDB as
well. Stay tuned here. Where'smy stages up next? And just so
you guys know, next week,UM, what's coming up on the Creepy
Parlor. I've got Jason Cottam who'sa fellow w lf e dB host.
We're going to be talking about thehistory of dungeons and dragons and the Satanic
(58:37):
Panic of the eighties, and I'mso excited about that. It's gonna be
so much fun. That's a greatthat's a great story. Yeah, that's
a that's a good time. Um. So with that, I do have
to end for the evening. Um, thank you everyone for joining in tonight,
Thank you Gregory for being here.Everybody, please again check out his
(58:58):
page, check out his website andwe will see you next week. Thank
you for leaving, Thank you forjoining us on the Creepy Barlor. Join
(59:30):
us next Tuesday at seven pm EasterDay for another fantastic show.
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