Halloween

The Smithsonian Magazine, in it's October issue, has an article on Vampires in New England. You can read it here.

Here are more interesting articles from the Smithsonian Magazine: The Witch of the Hamptons and Witches of Halloween Past.

Here's a clip from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, what I think is a truly great version of the classic. I think this is one of the best scenes from the whole movie.

The Monster has been pressuring Victor to create a mate for him. Victor has resisted and the Monster killed Victor's beloved Elizabeth. In desperation, Victor reanimates the dead Elizabeth.

The Monster thinks that this is his mate. Victor thinks he has brought back his Elizabeth. Helen Bonham Carter in an outstanding performance as Elizabeth begins to understand what has happened to her.



A friend sent me an article about a ghost tour in San Francisco's China Town. An excerpt is below. The whole article may be read here.

Tourist Trapped: Chinatown Ghost Tour

Just in time for Halloween, Melissa and I spent Saturday night on a walking ghost tour of Chinatown. We paid $29 each to meet a group of about 10 or 15 people in the upstairs bar of the Four Seas Restaurant on Grant Street. After taking advantage of some $5 Happy Hour appetizer deals, we were instructed to meet our guide, Rose by walking through the backdoor of the restaurant into an alley.

Rose points to the scene of a crime.

Melissa and I were expecting 90 minutes of gory historical stories about Chinatown, which is certainly what we got. What we were not expecting were actual ghost hunters, folks who had downloaded iPhone apps which could both detect the presence of a spirit as well as provide you with it’s name. And then, of course, Rose had some sort of Ghostbusters-esque device which she held in the air. The device features a line of lights which would flash from green to yellow and all the way up to red, which meant we were in the presence of a ghost.