Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

Yesterday morning, I decided to finally watch a movie that's been very controversial and divisive among horror fans:  Skinamarink. I won't lie, I really hadn't heard much of anything positive about this movie, but I'd always been curious about it, and my love of anything dreamcore and liminal wouldn't let me leave it alone. When I saw it was finally available to watch on Hulu, I was excited to finally see it, although I wasn't expecting much based on reviews I've seen. I will start this off by saying, I can most definitely understand why people wouldn't like it. It's shot in a very different sort of way, all angles of spaces in the house, with the characters never really being seen or having real dialogues, and I can see how that would be off-putting to viewers. But, as someone who loves eerie imagery, particularly of the liminal and nightmarish variety, I was loving the strange shots.  What I wasn't expecting to love, though, was the movie itsel...

 I had a random memory recently of a strange little story from my childhood; something I hadn’t thought about in many years. I thought it would be interesting to revisit it, as I don’t think I ever gave it too much thought after it initially happened. This could possibly be categorized as a ghost story, though it’s more likely just the tale of two spooky kids messing with each other. Either way, I think it’s kind of interesting. From the time I was about eight or nine years old, through my early teen years, I was best friends with a girl named Samantha. She was the granddaughter of my then next-door neighbors, and we were together pretty much every day during the summer, when she was basically living at her grandparents’ house. She did actually live in the same town, but in a different area, so we didn’t go to the same school and I rarely went to her actual home. Most of the time we hung out at my house, usually in the basement, where the majority of my toys and games and things we...

 Sometimes it’s funny to think about what a walking contradiction I was in childhood. If there was a children’s book written about me when I was young, it would likely be titled something like “The Little Girl Who Was Scared Of Everything But Somehow Loved Halloween”. Perhaps I should write that! But today, I’d like to share just one silly story; an example of my extreme scaredy-cat-ness despite my obsession with Halloween. Our family tradition when I was small, was to spend a long weekend down the Jersey Shore in late summer. Despite my dislike of the heat, I enjoyed the change of scenery, and knowing I’d always be getting a buttload of new toys thanks to my father’s almost eerily perfect claw machine skills. Occasionally, other events would go on on the boardwalk as well, specifically “Family Fun Nights”, which I clearly remember being sponsored by Pepsi back in the day. These nights consisted of all sorts of fun activities, mainly geared toward kids, and culminated in a little b...