Every year I'm on the lookout for the first signs of Halloween. And every year, Halloween makes its initial appearance earlier and earlier. In recent years, Halloween was already here in early August.
But yesterday, on July 31, 2024, at the Pavilions in Santa Monica, Pumpkin Spice products were already on display.
Okay, you might say Pumpkin Spice means Autumn (September), not necessarily Halloween. But I think Halloween and Pumpkin Spice marketing go together.
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Several horror icons whom I admire have died these past several months. I just now learned that David J. Skal (1952 - 2024) died after being hit by a drunk driver in Los Angeles.
I first encountered Skal through his book, The Monster Show. A self-described "cultural history of horror," his book is informative, filled with original insights, and well written; a breezy, entertaining read, mercifully free of academic jargon. The prose is literate yet accessible to lay readers, the way film criticism should be always.
I later read his Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween, as part of my research for a class I taught at The Learning Annex about Halloween haunted houses. It was great preparation for my lecture.
I only met Skal once, in the fall of 2001, at Burbank's Dark Delicacies horror bookstore. Several writers were there for a book-signing, including me and Skal. I had brought The Monster Show for him to sign, which he did. I still prize that book with his inscription.
To my surprise, he bought a copy of my book, Halloween Candy and asked me to sign it. I took it as his way of encouraging a fellow writer and fan who was hardly in his league.
Overall, Skal was a fine historian, a skilled writer, and a gracious man.
