Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

 It’s that time again, boils and ghouls. Time to talk about the wild ride that is American Horror Stories. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so conflicted going into anything relating to AHS as I did toward this week’s episode, The Naughty List. I generally don’t like watching Christmas episodes of anything if it’s not actually the Christmas season. I’ve been this way since I was a kid. I’ll watch Halloween-themed anything, any time, but a Christmas episode comes on in the middle of the summer and I’m not going to be into it. And it’s not even about the fact that I don’t really enjoy Christmas anymore. It just feels wrong to me somehow. Christmas just seems like something that should be contained to its particular time of year, to me anyway.  But, this episode also promised me Danny Trejo as Santa Claus, and while Leigh Emerson will always be the Santa of the AHS universe, I have to admit, this was intriguing to me.  This episode starts off in a very crazy way, introducing u...

 As someone who has always dealt with anxiety on some level or another, fear, in many different forms, has always been a part of my life. Some fears can be faced, and others can’t, and no matter the situation, no matter how outlandish they may seem, being afraid of something is always valid. Often times, though, I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit for the fears we overcome. So today, I’d like to talk about mine. On my most recent day off, I was scrolling through Hulu, and saw they had a movie available to watch that I’ve really been wanting to see for the past few years: Arachnophobia. I find the poster for this movie to be the most relaxing, beautiful, serene image. And I was super excited to see the spiders featured in the movie! But it wasn’t always this way.  Before about 2010, a movie that so predominantly featured spiders would have sent me into a massive panic and possibly have made me physically. At one time, I was, quite literally, the very definition of ‘ar...

 As someone who enjoys lost episode/cursed video types of “creepypasta” stories, I was beyond excited for the third episode of American Horror Stories, entitled “Drive-In”, promising us a tale centered around a cursed film. This is the type of thing I’ve always wanted to see portrayed in the AHS universe. It has so much potential, and I knew AHS could take the concept in some crazy directions. So, it saddens me greatly to say, this episode is probably my least favorite thing to come out of the AHS universe to date. Our story starts with teenage couple Chad and Kelley, making out to an old Bob Ross episode, and Kelley walking out after Chad gets pissed that she still won’t have sex with him after six months of dating. It’s typical teen drama and sadly, not especially well-acted.  The next morning at school, Chad is complaining to his friends that he’s going to die a virgin, (and also explaining why he chose a Bob Ross episode, to try and induce ASMR, and, as someone who experie...

 Today I’m going to do something a little different from my usual TV series or movie reviews. Today I would like to talk about a conic series. Toward the end of last year, right around what the layman considers to be the official “Spooky Season” I randomly noticed a comic book, misplaced and standing out amongst rows of Marvel and DC, titled The Autumnal. Based on the title and cover alone, I knew I had to purchase a copy. It was absolutely screaming my name.  The first issue did not disappoint, in storyline or imagery.  It’s hard not to get all the fall feels just looking at some of these pages! I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but this eight-issue series tells a fantastic horror story. It takes us on the journey of Kat Somerville, who receives a call that her long-estranged mother is dead, and decides to make the journey back to her early-childhood town of Comfort Notch, New Hampshire, a town she was sent away from by her mother many years ago. Despite the strang...

 As some of you may know, depending on where else you may know me from, I am absolutely obsessed with American Horror Story. One of the big things I imagined doing when I started this blog was writing reviews of new episodes, but alas, there weren’t any last year due to COVID-19.  But, now that the spinoff series of standalone stories, appropriately titled American Horror Stories, has premiered, I figured it’s a good time to just get right into it. Right now, the series is only available to stream via FX on Hulu. American Horror Stories starts us off in very familiar territory, in the fan-favorite destination, the place that started it all, back in season one, the Murder House.  This time, we start off with sixteen-year-old Scarlett, traveling to the Murder House with her two dads, who have purchased it basically hoping to rent it out as the ultimate haunted house, not believing in any of the lore around it. It’s honestly kind of a fun idea, if we the viewers didn’t know ...

 Let’s talk, for a moment, about cabbages. No, I haven’t suddenly decided to start dedicating this blog to St. Patrick’s Day, despite my Irish heritage. It turns out that cabbages were once a very big part of Halloween tradition and lore. Have you ever wondered about the tradition of pranking on the night before Halloween? I know I’ve had many moments in life when I’ve wondered why, on the night before Halloween, it’s so customary to throw eggs at windows or decorate trees with toilet paper. (Or, if you grew up where I did, partake in actual property damage, in some cases.) I reached a point in my youth where I felt like it was some kind of rite of passage, especially considering how much I loved Halloween and wanted to partake in every tradition relating to it, but I always wondered where it came from.  As it turns out, one of the earliest traditions relating to pre-Halloween pranks is actually rooted in romance...and cabbage. I recently added this vintage postcard, from arou...