Once again, I’m participating in this year’s Countdown to Halloween. As usual, I’m not sure of the precise form it’ll take, but I imagine that there’ll be a stronger-than-usual haunted house bent, in honor of the October 1 launch of Gardinel’s Real Estate. So prepare yourself for some rambling about spooky houses, the haunted house genre, and Manly Wade Wellman’s gardinels, all in the month of October.

The Countdown site itself is honoring the 60th anniversary of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, which is why all of the Cryptkeeper badges feature the likeness of the gillman, still maybe the greatest monster suit in movie history. I chose the 3D version, because having a 3D gillman head on my sidebar seemed like exactly what I wanted from life.

Creature is pretty far removed from haunted houses, alas, but maybe I’ll watch some of the Black Lagoon movies as part of this Halloween season, and if not, there’s always my annual viewing of Monster Squad to tide us all over.