The Vampire and Other Ghosts (1972) is part of a four-book series on the supernatural by Thomas G. Aylesworth (I have two more to share later this year) for young readers—I took this one out of the library a lot as a kid. They are just shy of square-bound and feature big illustrations and snappy interior design. They’re really pleasing to the eye and to the hand.

I enjoy the characterization of vampires as ghosts, which is honestly a better catch-all term than the somewhat ridiculous “undead” (which was coined by Stoker, as UnDead, and meant to evoke the in-between state of the vampire specifically, and has since come to mean any entity that is neither properly alive nor fully dead). I also enjoy Alan E. Cober’s cover art and the way it captures the movement from the grave and the transformation into a bat in many stages simultaneously (you might remember his work from the original edition of The Dark is Rising).

The text is breezy. The vampire section gets right to the old saws: Dracula, Varney, Vlad the Impaler, Elizabeth Bathory. He has an illustration of a bat-winged Native American head which I am pretty sure is meant to be the Ko-nea-rau-neh-neh, a non-vampiric entity from Iroquois folklore. He catalogs a number of vampire legends from around the world, then moves on to zombies and then animal ghosts. It’s sort of a weird mix, but honestly Aylesworth moves so fast I bet most kids never noticed. I didn't!

The title page for the Epilog has an illustration of a tombstone with the inscription, “Good Times & Bad Times & all Times get-over.” It’s been living rent free in my head pretty much my entire life.

I'm a bit all over the place this week, so I thought some links might reflect that state.

First off, my pal Zog has launched the Kickstarter for Return to Crater Valley: Secrets of the Mask, which is the sequel to the very good Blackout in Crater Valley, a DCC funnel tuned to the vibes of 80s and 90s slasher horror. It is one of only two things I intend to back this Zine Month.

The other is Roger Porter's Tabletop Cowboy Quarterly Zine, because I love Roger's previous games (Drunk Cowboy and Drunk Jousting, posts for which will appear on the site this year). I don't know what's gonna be in the Quarterly, and that's OK, I want to be surprised. 

This week's marked a notable uptick in angry music over here (mostly NSFW, probably). The WFMU morning show last week got me started by playing that Billy Bragg tune. It hits different when you just hear it randomly on the radio, you know? Darren shared the Dead Pioneers song "Nazi Teeth" the other day and it's been clarifying to listen to that every morning since. Also digging this track, "Probably it's Capitalism" from Cheap Perfume. I also learned that Peaches remixed "Cuntology 101" by the Lambrini Girls. Finally, new Kneecap video is like a horror movie [complimentary].

Finally, I wanted to say that I keep thinking about a post I saw on Bluesky the other day that argued getting ICE out of Minnesota wasn't enough because "I have neighbors everywhere." And it's true, we do.