Hey frens! It’s the official start of the best time of year, “The Holiday Season” a catch-all term I just came up with to cover the three greatest months; October, November, and December. It’s a time of year where things slow down, TV gets cozy, and we can shut down that part of our brain still trying to make sense of this dumpster fire of a world. I promised myself I wouldn’t use the phrase “dumpster fire” until at least the second paragraph of this essay, but here we are.
And of course, we start with October, or as the pilgrims originally called it… SPOOKY MONTH‼️
Damn, I love Spooky Month. I love Fall, I love crunchy leaves, I love chowing down on candy and pumpkins and ciders, I love decorating with ghosts and skeletons, I love the cool, crisp air. Gourds? I fucking love them. School has been back in session for a month, we’re getting into our stride, and Summer has faded away as a gentle memory. Things are perfect. Guys, it’s October! Let’s go!
VIBES/DECOR
Ok, I’ll admit this section was originally entitled “décor” before I referenced my Elder-Gen-Xer-to-Zoomer dictionary and landed on “𝕧𝕚𝕓𝕖𝕤.” Honestly, it’s a good fit. October and Spooky Season in general gives me this chill feeling that isn’t just the turn in weather; things are slowing down, getting slightly darker slightly earlier, and finding their own groove. Traditions start unfolding like a ripening crop. Trusty Halloween decorations are coming out of storage and everyone seems on the same somewhat secular page.
Starting off the “Holiday Season” with a more or less less secular holiday is a good call (Thanks, unknowable cosmic causality!) because for those of us not from the Christian Western Tradition, Christmas can be a minefield. Lovely, but slightly othering.
Death, however, is something we can all get behind!
A Harvesttime tradition that celebrates the end of a natural cycle is deeply human and connecting. Plus, creepy stuff is just fun! I’ve gone on record saying that “Spooky” is my favored aesthetic for Halloween. I much prefer vintage Halloween smiling black cats and dancing skeletons to gore, rotten flesh, or jump scares.
We celebrated Halloween early this year for our kid’s birthday party, so I have some pictures of some of my favorite decorations from our cake!
My wife loves to bake the kids special birthday cakes each year, and this year Dean picked a haunted theme cake that was very ambitious. Naturally, Iman did the lion’s share of work, and conscripted recruited me to help with the filler stuff.
I love my little lazy skeleton dude, and that I could work some Dad-jokes into the tombstones across the cake, but the real champion is of course Iman and her Mummy.
I’m sure her Egyptian ancestors are okay with it too.
SNACKS
While I’ve whetted your appetite, let’s get right into the treats! Like previous years, fast-food joints have done good by us creepy freaks. While I love the McDonald’s pails and Wendy’s Frosty Frights, I want to spend a little time on something from the not-so-distant past. Wendy’s Wednesday Meals.
The new season of Wednesday was released a few months ago, but the meals are still available. I remember the nugget sauce being spicy yet still grey and lifeless, but the highlight of the meal was the Raven’s Blood Frosty, a bird-flu inspired black-cherry topping that was tart and sweet and came with a moody-spoon, which was also the name of my high-school The Tick themed Moody Blue’s cover band.
On the candy isle, we have a lot to choose from. Highlights include a KitKat cinnamon toast flavored “Ghost Toast” which was cuter than it was delicious, like a chocolaty CTC cereal bar. Twix ghosts didn’t quite get it right either, but the Snickers Pecan chocolate bar tasted exactly like a pecan pie made by that aunt who couldn’t give a shit about her cholesterol, then drowned in chocolate as a final F-you to your waistline. A bite was more than enough for me, so bring a friend if you want to indulge.
TV
Okay, let’s move onto TV! When I was a kid, Spooky Season meant a rare opportunity to watch Halloween specials and creepy cartoons and horror movies extremely edited down to air on broadcast tv. In today’s climate of on-demand everything, timing is somehow less special, but there are still gems out there if you know where to look.
Have you heard of this new streaming service called Net Flicks?
Haunted Hotel is an adult animated horror comedy series on Netflix from a writer on Rick and Morty that, despite all the words I just used in that sentence, is actually good. Wikipedia defines Haunted Hotel as a series following a woman struggling to run a hotel that is also haunted, but soon gets help from her estranged brother who happens to be a ghost. The voice cast features Will Forte, Eliza Coupe, Skyler Gisondo, Natalie Palamides, and Jimmi Simpson. Hey, SNL Nerds, you guys can review this show!
It’s difficult to articulate why this show is so fun while other attempts and adult animated humor can be more miss than hit, but I guess you paid me to try. For horror fans, there are tons of nods and references and wonderful visuals that are a joy to look at, and for sitcom fans there is a genuinely captivating family at the core of this story. The voiceover work is great, the characterizations are refreshing yet familiar, and there are genuine laughs and even genuine emotional gravitas to the story. The cover poster is nice and all, but it took me awhile to find a screengrab that really captures the show, and I have to say seeing a bunch of ghosts and horror-victims holding hands doing a search for a missing annoying hotel patron is sort of cute.
Plus, the character Ben is wonderful, easily one of my top three Skyler Gisondo portrayals. No notes.
COMICS
Sleep is a new comic from Zander Cannon on Image that’s fantastic. It is a black-and-white (and red) horror comic that follows Jonathan, who awakes to find something horrible has happened in his sleepy town, with everyone now on high alert. Each issue unfolds to rising tension and more clues that this horrible thing that keeps happening is very real, very dangerous, and very much tied into whenever Jonathan sleeps.
The book has been going on since May of this year, and let me tell you, the suspense is killing me. In a good way. Not in a torn to shreds way. Both?
Cannon uses Jonathan’s limited perspective to keep the readers in the dark for as long as possible, and uses a hint of color (bright bold red) to highlight the strangeness and terror. I can’t recommend this series enough, even though there are only five issues out at the time of this article.
NEW INDIE STUFF
Hey, I like major companies as much as the next capitalist goon does, but what’s being put out for Spooky Season by us brain-dead slobs? I’m glad you asked!
Deathbed is an independent publication and newsletter of original, short horror stories by comedy writers launched in September 2025 by Editor-in-Chief, Ritch Duncan. With a free subscription, you get regular emails from professional comedy writers writing professionally about professional-grade horror. It’s all really very professional.
I love comedy and I love horror and I love short fiction and I love feeling smart by reading lots of short fiction and then bragging about it on the internet with my friends/strangers, so this site was made for me. Ritch has a lovely post about why comedy writers would be writing horror over on their site, which frankly does a better job of pitching this than I ever could. But for those too lazy to click the link, the basics are that good comedy writing and good horror writing share the same DNA, namely, a developed sense of timing and an involuntary release from your audience. Gross. But also cool?
If that’s not enough for your click, then NonPro fav Kevin Maher is a Contributing Editor and NonPro nonpartisan Dan McCoy is one two, and already has an post up on the site.
It’s fun, creative, and something scary on the internet that you can actually look forward to.
Ok, that’s it for me, what about you? Why do I have to do all the heavy-lifting in this relationship? Share some interesting things and stuff you are looking forward to for this Spooky Season in the comments below, and share this article why don’t you? You’ll be glad you did.
