'Tis now the very witching time of night
Ah, one of my favorite days and nights of the year--Halloween! This year's link list is below, and you can find all previous years' links list at the Halloween tag.
A Walk in the Dark
Last night, after a delicious dinner at Trace (taking advantage of Seattle Restaurant Week--$30 for three courses at some of the schmanciest places in town), varina8, my friend SA, and I went to see "A Walk in the Dark," a play put on by Seattle Radio Theater at Town Hall. What great fun the show was! Set in 1941 on the night of an air-raid black-out drill, it told the story of Jack Riley, a Philadelphia radio man who lands in Seattle on Halloween to start a new life and a new career as one of the announcers on a local radio station. Riley is in for an . . . interesting, ghost-story-filled adventure. Chock full of Seattle history and starring local on-air personalities (at least two of whom were recognizable to anyone who has lived in Seattle for any length of time--John Curley and Jim Dever), it offered a lovely spookiness perfect for the night before Halloween.
And you can hear what we saw right here online. Turn down the lights, cuddle up with some cheap Canadian whiskey, and enjoy!
I ended up taking my own walk in the dark afterwards. I took a bus that I thought I knew the route for, and ended up walking about a mile home because it didn't stop where I thought it did. Still, it was a lovely evening, dryer than it's been in a while, and I enjoyed the darkness and the quiet.
Traditional Halloween links
This makes the eleventh year I've posted a Halloween links list on LJ. There's always good stuff online for those who know where to look.
National Geographic offers a slide show of the Top 10 Ghost Towns. I've been to Bodie in California, but this list gives me places all over the world to visit.
The American Folklife Center offers an essay on The Fantasy & Folklife of Halloween, a scholarly take on the holiday.
Halloween creeps in where local tradition rules the living and the dead: How Halloween is changing Day of the Dead festivals.
If Jews celebrated Halloween: Brilliant, funny, loving extrapolation on keeping a kosher Halloween.
Five ways Halloween has changed since you were a kid: I knew about most of these, but a couple were new and disappointing to me. Give me a good scare and a good, carved jack-o-lantern any day.
We ain't afraid of no (Chicago) ghosts: From the City of the Big Shoulders, WBEZ in Chicago offers up two ghost stories (article and audio file).
And then there are the ghost stories offered by Snap Judgment, one of my favorite storytelling features on NPR. Check out Spooked V: Innocence Lost for great storytelling and screams in the night....
A good Samhain to all who celebrate, and a happy, fun, spooky Halloween to everyone else! BOO!
A Walk in the Dark
Last night, after a delicious dinner at Trace (taking advantage of Seattle Restaurant Week--$30 for three courses at some of the schmanciest places in town), varina8, my friend SA, and I went to see "A Walk in the Dark," a play put on by Seattle Radio Theater at Town Hall. What great fun the show was! Set in 1941 on the night of an air-raid black-out drill, it told the story of Jack Riley, a Philadelphia radio man who lands in Seattle on Halloween to start a new life and a new career as one of the announcers on a local radio station. Riley is in for an . . . interesting, ghost-story-filled adventure. Chock full of Seattle history and starring local on-air personalities (at least two of whom were recognizable to anyone who has lived in Seattle for any length of time--John Curley and Jim Dever), it offered a lovely spookiness perfect for the night before Halloween.
And you can hear what we saw right here online. Turn down the lights, cuddle up with some cheap Canadian whiskey, and enjoy!
I ended up taking my own walk in the dark afterwards. I took a bus that I thought I knew the route for, and ended up walking about a mile home because it didn't stop where I thought it did. Still, it was a lovely evening, dryer than it's been in a while, and I enjoyed the darkness and the quiet.
Traditional Halloween links
This makes the eleventh year I've posted a Halloween links list on LJ. There's always good stuff online for those who know where to look.
National Geographic offers a slide show of the Top 10 Ghost Towns. I've been to Bodie in California, but this list gives me places all over the world to visit.
The American Folklife Center offers an essay on The Fantasy & Folklife of Halloween, a scholarly take on the holiday.
Halloween creeps in where local tradition rules the living and the dead: How Halloween is changing Day of the Dead festivals.
If Jews celebrated Halloween: Brilliant, funny, loving extrapolation on keeping a kosher Halloween.
Five ways Halloween has changed since you were a kid: I knew about most of these, but a couple were new and disappointing to me. Give me a good scare and a good, carved jack-o-lantern any day.
We ain't afraid of no (Chicago) ghosts: From the City of the Big Shoulders, WBEZ in Chicago offers up two ghost stories (article and audio file).
And then there are the ghost stories offered by Snap Judgment, one of my favorite storytelling features on NPR. Check out Spooked V: Innocence Lost for great storytelling and screams in the night....
A good Samhain to all who celebrate, and a happy, fun, spooky Halloween to everyone else! BOO!