Ah, October. It’s my favorite month of the year, fiery with autumn leaves and early sunsets, bountiful with the fall harvest, and blissfully cooler, at least at night while the D.C. area embarks on its second summer.

This year October is a wee bit extra special to me, as I’m feeling a pull back to the spooky and creeptastic. During the pandemic lockdowns I lost much of my taste for things frightening or dark. Even though Inigo kept me company—and oh, how I miss him so!—it seemed a little risky in terms of mental health to stare into the abyss while cooped up. Besides, the abyss was already staring back at me, what with the worst of humanity unleashing its lizard brain and throwing tantrums left and right about things like being asked to wear a mask, get vaccinated, and accept the outcome of democratic election.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine, thus pissing off pretty much the entire world, including Russia’s own people. Being an early Gen-Xer, I watched the Berlin Wall come down when I was 22 and then spent the following two decades of post-Cold War thawing working on deprograming myself of all the crap and propaganda I learned as a kid, so I was hoping we’d never come back to brinkmanship again. So much for that.

Then it became undeniable (to rational people at least) that all of humanity’s environmental abuse has come to its full and ugly fruition. Way to go, homo sapiens: The planet is simultaneously burning, flooding, choking, and collapsing.

Well, to me all of that is far more terrifying than any fiction the human mind can dream up. Indeed, vampires, ghosts, werewolves, fallen angels, and other creatures of the night now often strike me as preferable company to human primates, at least in a general sense.

And so here I am, giving Horrordailies a go. This month I’ll be writing about everything from scary movies to myths and legends to cemeteries to misunderstood birds and animals that people often associate with bad luck but really shouldn’t. I’ll probably throw in some photos and vampire poetry, and whatever else grabs me in a moment of nocturnal musing. To borrow the words of a friend and blogger who died a long time ago, thanks for being here.