Haunted Hosue Week: Feverish Tenants

This has nothing to do with Halloween. Just thought I'd say that. This is actually a leftover from Haunted House week, which I nixed because Jeff already had a story set in a skyscraper (we've both been inspired by Poltergeist III).

Like with The Shoppes at Marblehead, Feverish Tenants dips into my years of real estate. Jeff's spent a lot of time skirting the medical field, so his stories have their share of on-the-job know-how gleaned from various medical publications. I was never so hungry for material as to go back into my pulverbatch of college jobs, which were largely making photocopies and shelving the one book a week someone would take out of an office building's internal library. But since I was writing most of these while immersed in real estate, more stories than you'd think hinged on - in this case - the occupancy rates of office buildings. - Sean

P.S. Hours of fun if you look up "pulverbatch".

Halloween Week: What Day Is This?

My costume this year consists of a stovepipe hat, fake beard, an assemble of jackets, vets and pants that I imagine resembes 19th century formal wear, and a big black porthole hanging over my stomach.

What am I? The Lincoln Tunnel. My girlfriend, in a blonde wig, holding tulips, and wearing a matching porthole, is the Holland Tunnel. Why are we dressing up? Well, What Day Is This?

I'll get three wears out of this costume (a costume party at a bar last Friday, a local kids' thing tonight Jen and I are volunteering at, and my school's party tomorrow). I normally consider it luck yot get two wears out of something. If anyone needs a cheap stovepipe hat after tomorrow, email me. - Sean

Haunted House Week: Toys in the Attic

Of the hundreds of teensy horror stories I've written, Toys in the Attic has got to be in my top ten. Hopefully you'll like it as well.

Haunted House Week: Puttyface

Puttyface is based on a photo passed around my former office. It was of two girls that had previously worked there. No one wanted the picture, but no one wanted to throw it out. So this photo was snuck into the photo collection someone with family pictures on their desk, and the time taken to notice the new photo wagered upon. There was no one to give it back to when it was eventually noticed, so the prankee became the pranker, and stuck it in someone else's photo collection. It's on my replacement's desk now, for all I know.

The completely incidental side note that sparked my idea for this story: I didn't recognize either of these girls, but my time there overlapped with both of them. I knew what they looked like, but that particular photo had them both in puttyface, so they didn't look like themselves. Occasionally it becomes permanent: Mark Hamill syndrome.

I should probably apologize for the attempted Michael Caine accent. This is one of the earliest stories I've written. I don't think there's any noticable difference between the older stories and the ones I wrote toward the end of my daily writing - either rock-solid consistency, or a stubborn refusal to get better from practice. I try to alter the voice of these stories, and so for this one added Cockney rhyming slang. Toward the end of these, when Jeff was hatching the podcasting idea, I stayed away from typing any voice I didn't think feasible coming from my mouth. And Puttyface is why. Don't ask me what robin or Mae West means: look it up. It'll be valuable learning in case you actually run into Michael Caine and wish to converse. - Sean

Haunted House Week: The Haunted Radiator

Announcement: Don't look at the tags of The Haunted Radiator if you want the surprise ending intact.

Addendum to announcement: Alfred Hitchcock would have announced that announcement a lot better. So would William Castle, or really anyone with more of a sense of showmanship. I just throw the steak on a garbage plate and douse a Dixie Cup in A1 Sauce.

Haunted House Week: The Family Chiroptera

Sean is, as you will find out from the eight or nine upcoming Cave Weeks we have here, quite the caver. As he'll explain in the upcoming Karst Week, Lava Tube Week, Stalagmite Week, the totally unrelated Stalactites Week, Flowstone Week, Cavern Week, and Monster in a Cave And in the Last Sentence It Jumps Out Weeks, he's been in dozens of them. He's taken me through two or three. We've hardly ever gotten trapped.

One feature of caves, as everyone knows, are bats. I already knew bats were teeny things, and if you disturbed them they'd flap around and waste their body energy and most likely die, because you disturbed their sleep. We went in one cave with bats, and I tried to avoid touching a bat the way I'd avoid touching a house of cards.

But someone else touched them, and bats flashed in and out of my helmet light. They reflected the light enough, and we so small, that I seriously thought they were moths instead of bats. Quite the duhn-duhn-DUUUHN! moment when I found out the insects (or whatever moths are) were really flying rodents (or whatever bats are).

Wait: I know what bats are. They're in the The Family Chiroptera.

Haunted House Week: Ghosts of Lascaux II

No, you didn't miss anything. There is no original Ghosts of Lascaux story, just this one, part II. Or deux, as I'll attempt to pronounce. Not that anyone can be blamed for seeing a Roman numeral and wincing at the idea of another horror spinoff. Every good (and sometimes rightfully forgotten) horror movie is clawing its way out of an untended tomb like a persistent zombie. Was anyone calling for a Wicker Man remake? When a Stranger Calls? Black Christmas? Hands up, horror fans, if if you never even knew about some of the source material that these freshly squeezed turds ruin the good names of? And if for some accidental reason the remake doesn't put people to sleep, then there's a sequel to the remake, The Hills Have Eyes II or another Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I haven't seen the new Halloween yet, but I hope the persistent Zombie behind that one is the exception to prove the rule.

See what I did there? Zombie? Rob Zombie? God, I'm hysterical. Anyhoo, here's Ghosts of Lascaux II, for your emjoyment. If you like it, I'll write a III and IV and a Ghosts of Lascaux II vs. Demonic Toys. - Sean

Haunted House Week: Shuttered

I'm giving myself a bit of a challenge, and hopefully a bit of a guessing game for you folks playing along at home. I'm going to try ot go all week -- me at least, Sean is probably going to be uncreative and actually write about haunted houses -- with twists on the haunted house.

Shuttered, for instance, is a skyscraper. That's one big house. No one's haunted a skyscraper before. (I will clap my hands over my ears and pretend you're not saying "poltergeist 3." Or "The Grudge.") But with Leona Helmsley dying recently, we may have our first case. If you are being haunted by Leona Helmsley, try announcing that your shoes cost less than $50. It'll make her run shrieking ectoplastmic despair for miles.

Haunted House Week: Persistent Reg the Chimney Sweep

Welcome to Haunted House week. Hopefully these seven stores will make you look at the alarm system wired to every window of your house, your big mean dog, and the gun locked in the dresser ... and trade them all in for a crucifix and a deed that's not on Indian burial ground.

I've personally never seen a ghost, but I've looked for them. I've checked mirrors when I'm alone, investigated creaks, and even crawled under the floorboards of a colonial tavern. So far, nada. Zip. Only thing I found was an old 7-Up bottle. If ghosts exists, maybe they only show up to people who really don't want to see them. Never to the guy with the thermal camcorder, always to the six-year-old who saw his first X-Files episode.

We kick the week off with Persistent Reg the Chimney Sweep. Here in New Jersey, the chimney sweeps are aggressive as all hell. They'll call you up regularly, insisting you need this service or that. I live in an apartment, and I still get the calls. When I say that I don't have a fireplace ... they still try to sell me. That's persistence. I can see them building me a chimney, just so I'm now able to use their services. Good thing none of them sell artificial arms. - Sean