The Retroist

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I am returning to my regular format for the October 2026 Monthly Update. On this month’s update I talk about what’s been going on with the site and podcast, but also some other things going on in my life and some random thoughts I have. Subjects include:

• McDonald’s Orange Drink History

• Carnation Breakfast Bars

• Manglors

• Haunted Toys R Us

• Infaceables

• VCR Horror…

While not as common as they used to be here in the United States, for a long time at restaurants you could get a beverage from a moving drink dispenser. Often referred to as bubblers, merchandisers, or dispensers, they came in many forms. Depending on the design, circulation could keep pulp suspended, improve cooling, reduce deposits on the container walls, and help mix the drink. Maybe more importantly the continuously moving liquid allowed people to see the drink in action. This motion both helped to mix the drink, but it also acted as an attractive advertisement for the often colorful beverage.

The idea of using moving fruit juice as a visual attraction appeared by the early 1920s. Leonard Sintzel filed a patent in 1921 for an advertising device that continuously circulated fruit juice through visible glass parts. The device was mainly intended to just simulate the preparation of fresh fruit juice. So it was more of an advertising display than a practical restaurant drink dispenser and it shows that moving fruit juice was already being used to attract customers before the middle of the 1920s.

The first attempt at something more practical, a mixer/dispenser, came from a patent from Harry C Smith and Dean B Gregg filed on May 18, 1925. Their machine used a transparent beverage container with a pump that continuously forced the beverage upward inside the container. There the liquid struck a deflector and fell back into the beverage. Designed to be used with orange juice, the inventors stated that the circulation helped keep pulp and other solid material from settling. Much like with Sintzel’s patent they also pointed out that the moving beverage attracted attention and could increase sales.

The idea turned out to be popular and as you might expect imitators were born and became more elaborate. In 1927, Harry Cleveland Smith filed a patent for the Autodrink Corporation. His machine mixed pulp into the drink while pumping the beverage upward and allowing it to fall through the display in a cascade. Sounds similar to the 1925 design, but this also added lighting to make the flow of the beverage more noticeable. Others would follow with some variation, but they all followed the same idea. That the dispenser was there to help advertise the drink.

In the postwar years of the United States a more modern version of the dispenser made by William H Jacobs began to take shape. His big changes were based around reducing the number of mechanical parts touching the drink. This reduced wear and also made the machine easier to clean. His magnetically driven impeller could pump liquid without a drive shaft passing through the liquid like so many past models. The liquid would be pumped to the top and then would flow down the side. This helped to prevent material from collecting on the side walls. For most people born after the middle of the 20th century, this is the design we are familiar with.

Jacobs’ work became the centerpiece of the company Jet Spray starting in 1953. By the end of that year, demand had grown so much that they expanded production. That company would file multiple trademarks for refrigerated beverage dispensers throughout the decade. One of the company’s advertising lines summed up what they were trying to make, “People Drink What They See.”

A rival of Jet Spray came directly out of the company. Three employees would leave the company and form Crathco in 1962. Crathco is important, not just because they have been making these dispensers for decades, but because they used the term Bubblers for their product. When I worked at an ice cream parlor as a kid, we had two Crathco Bubblers that I filled up every morning. Watching it start to bubble was one of my favorite parts of the day.

Here is a modern video of a Crathco Simplicity Bubbler. As you can see they did away with the excessive movement, which I find a little boring, but they say it reduces foaming. Plus cleanup looks super easy.

Volrath posted a great sales video showing some of their beverage dispensers and the movement on these is just what I like to see.

Lots of other companies made machines and I wanted to talk about two of them. One I have seen, the other I just read about. In Billboard Magazine’s November 1954 issue they mentioned that Tone Products Company was showing a “Kool Aire Animated Raindrop Dispenser.” Instead of just cascading down the side, the Lucite bowl had an animated raindrop effect. I have found photos of other vintage Kool Aire dispensers online, but not an animated one yet. Hopefully someone finds and posts a working one someday.

While stock dispensers are well-known I wanted to talk a little bit about McDonald’s Orange Drink dispensers. These large round glass containers haven’t been used at a McDonald’s in a very long time, but if you have ever seen one, they are very memorable. Here is an example of one from the movie, The Founder.

I also got to see one when I went to the replica of McDonald’s No. 1 Store Museum in Des Plaines, Illinois. It is unfortunately gone now, but I still have my photos.

Most people are more familiar with the Orange Bowl containers that you would see at community events that served McDonald’s Orange Drink. But their drink dispenser was a staple in the early years of the store when they tended to be walk-ups and you had a better view of the prep areas.

I have seen lots of modern dispensers, but its always treat when I spot a vintage one still being used. The photo at the top of this article is from the Triple XXX Rootbeer Drive-in in Issaquah, WA. Unfortunately its now closed, but I am glad I got to see their dispenser in action.

I didn’t live through what looked like a golden age of their development when these dispensers were made in all sorts of form factors and used tricks to draw your attention. Those machines show up from time to time for sale online, but you rarely see them in action. So we lost a lot of the history of something people enjoyed and eventually took for granted. Sadly now, I am not seeing many of the dispensers as often as I used to and I am not sure why. My guess is that it is the changing nature of the drink market. It might be a small thing to most, but I enjoyed watching the colorful liquid splash around and cascade down the sides of these machines. They probably won’t make a major comeback, but hopefully if you see one you can take a moment to appreciate their history and just how beautiful they are.

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In 1987, the ABC news program 20/20 was trying to warn parents about the growing popularity of violent horror movies among kids. Having worked in a video store at the time, I can personally vouch for their popularity at the time. The report called, VCR Horrors, looks at how video tape was giving kids access to thing that adults weren’t comfortable with them watching. Presented by Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters, with reporting by Bob Brown, its a an interesting time capsule that helps capture the time when home video was changing entertainment and creating new concerns about what was entering our living rooms.

By the late eighties, the VCR was becoming pretty common. In early 1987, nearly half of homes in America with televisions had a VCR. The video rental business was booming and more and more films were showing up on shelves. This was a boon to younger viewers who could now see movies at home that they been too young to see in a theater. It was a trend that was only growing. A March 1986 article in the Potomac News described teenagers who preferred video rentals because they were inexpensive and allowed them to watch movies with friends. Unsurprisingly since they make for great group viewing horror films were popular.

For fans of horror, this was all good news. The commercial success of earlier films such as Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre had demonstrated that inexpensive horror productions could attract large audiences. Home video provided another market for these films, while giving smaller productions a way to reach viewers outside traditional theaters.

A year later 20/20 reported on the trend and the segment features interviews with several teenage horror fans. It does a nice job of catching their enthusiasm and nailing down exactly how they said they were watching at home. They describe competing to see who could keep their eyes open during the most frightening scenes and discuss the killings and special effects, treating the violence as something amusing rather than disturbing.

I can picture adults watching 20/20 that night and learning from it that the films these kids were watching were different from the older horror movies they were familiar with. They might expect suspenseful gothic horror only find out about movies like Friday the 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Evil Dead. The report presented this change as evidence that horror movies were becoming increasingly extreme.

Horror critic Chas Balun appears to conform this. Explaining that audiences had developed different expectations. He believed that viewers accustomed to television and music videos wanted things turned up to a notch in modern horror.

The real sticking point and around the fear of the VCR was access. Movie theaters usually enforced the age restrictions associated with R rated films, but video stores did their own thing. While some businesses required a parent’s permission, many allowed kids to rent films on their own with little oversight. To further confound parents, some direct to video releases could reach stores without a familiar theatrical rating. In this 1986 issues of Billboard magazine, they mention that numerous home video releases had never been submitted to the MPAA for classification

An October 1987 article in the Jackson Citizen Patriot examined this problem in their local video stores. They confirmed that policies differed between businesses, with only some stores refusing to rent adult titles to children. Most didn’t want to police what people were renting and said they depended on parents to decide which movies were appropriate. The article is further proof that concerns about children renting horror films were already being discussed outside the television report.

While I often think this sort of reporting is overblown, it does bring up some interesting things, and I like that it encouraged parents to pay attention to what their kids were up to. Several expressed surprise at the amount of graphic violence and they show the parents reacting to various scenes. The narrative moves between the kids and the adult and we see the gulf between how they perceive what they are seeing.

They give extra attention to the way women are treated in horror films and its one of the reports main concerns. If you had never seen a modern horror film, I imagine that pattern could be very shocking. They use examples from various films to illustrate the point. Even the teens seem to question why women were so often portrayed as victims. Actress Linnea Quigley, who has appeared in many horror films, makes an appearance to describe the various situations her characters have experienced.

They take this up a notch by examining actual acts of violence that authorities had tried to connect with horror films. One involved the killing of Texas teenager Theresa Downing following a graduation party where the video Faces of Death had been shown. The report does acknowledge that police believed alcohol was probably more important than the video in this case. These incidents make the program more alarming, but they don’t establish that horror movies had caused any crimes. This is probably the biggest reach of the report.

As expected one group did not agree that horror movies were dangerous. The filmmakers they interviewed thought that the violence was exaggerated enough to be clearly fictional and obviously not actual violence. They also mentioned that horror movies were useful in that they allowed people to experience fear in a controlled setting.

This report is both an argument between generations about how to perceive genre AND moral panic reporting. It also captures a moment when tech was changing how we do something. Which is the type of story that repeats itself time and again as technology continues to change how we view things. As we react to those changes and decide what’s best to do, I think it might help to take a look back and see that we are not confronting these things for the first time.

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I had seen bits and pieces of Dark Shadows when I was growing up, but didn’t take it seriously. Probably because it confused me. It looked and sounded like a soap opera, which wasn’t my thing, but its theme and tone was spooky. In my teens is when I discovered the show for myself and finally started to watch some episodes and the two movies.

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I start the show talking about how a teacher in my school shared her passion for the show with us. Her stories of watching it were right up my alley and it stuck in my brain. So when I had the opportunity to watch any episodes, I did. It wouldn’t be until I was working at Suncoast Video that I started to meet really hardcore fans of the show. After sharing some of this I move onto the show itself. I discuss the history of soap operas, the show, the people in front of an behind the camera, the musics, its reception, and much more.

Dark Shadows is a soap opera. So if you watch it, you should temper your expectations. Still, just think about the idea of daily a horror how on in the middle of the day in the 1960s. Sure it was tame by our horror standards today, but it was doing something very different and for that I think it should be celebrated, rediscovered, and remembered.

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• This is the 374th episode of the Retroist Podcast and episode 27 of Season 18.

• This show was broadcast before I got to watch it and while my teacher put it in my sights, it was at Suncoast where I really met superfans. We didn’t have as man of them as say, Star Trek, but they were maybe even more rabid. It was something to behold.

• Dark Shadows movies is okay. Not my favorite take on the subject matter, but the choice makes sense.

• Barnabas Collins was originally supposed to be a temporary character. Jonathan Frid was hired for what was planned as a 13 week role, with Barnabas eventually being destroyed. His popularity changed those plans rather dramatically.

• For the first 274 numbered episodes, Alexandra Moltke introduced the show as Victoria Winters, usually beginning with the familiar words, My name is Victoria Winters. Starting with episode 275, the narration began rotating among members of the cast and was written in the third person.

• Dark Shadows produced 1,225 episodes, but the final episode was numbered 1245. ABC adjusted the numbering after preemptions so that Friday episodes would continue to end in a five or zero.

• Despite Barnabas being a vampire, the show avoided actually using the word for quite a while. It was not spoken until episode 410, broadcast in January 1968.

• Dark Shadows fans did more than keep conventions and fanzines going after cancellation. Fan groups helped get the series back into syndication during the 1970s and 1980s, and the Television Academy credits their continued campaigning with helping encourage Dan Curtis to revive the series in 1991.

• Seaview Terrace, the real house used for the exterior of Collinwood, is much larger than the television shots suggest. The Newport mansion is about 44,000 square feet, with 29 bedrooms and more than 450 windows. It was completed in 1925.

• Jonathan Frid received an extraordinary amount of mail at the height of the show’s popularity. Accounts from the period put it at as many as 5,000 letters a week. This gives some idea of how quickly Barnabas had turned him into a celebrity.

• I will check out the animated version if it every happens, but boy I wish we lived in a world where they could do another soap opera version of the show.

• Bonus clippings will be over on Patreon soon for Supporters.

• Music on the show is, as always, by Peachy.

Thanks for listening to the show and I hope you have a great weekend.

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Before it was an HBO television series, Tales from the Crypt was a comic book series and a movie. The series was a dark comedy that was a staple of the network for years. It attracted lots of star power with people many film celebrities willing to appear on the show because it wasn’t quite TV (its was HBO.)

Hosted by the Crypt Keeper, the show was a mix…

Lately I have been thinking about all the small toy lines that crossed my path in the eighties that I didn’t have the money to collect. The Infaceables are a perfect example of one such line. Transforming toys were all the rage in the mid eighties and everyone was doing different takes. Infaceables kept it simple, but unique. They use vacuum suction to change the face of your figure from a human fantasy warrior to an animal. This one feature was central to the entire line of toys.

They were made by Galoob, a company that had been around since 1957. Lewis and Barbara Galoob began the company as a small distributor of toys and stationery in San Francisco. Their son David later took over the company in 1970 and pushed it toward developing more products of its own. By the time the Infaceables appeared, Galoob was already selling action figures connected to properties such as The A-Team and Blackstar.

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They are often billed as toys from 1984 due to copyright markings, but I can’t find any evidence that they were sold before 1985. That is also the year that they were prominently featured in Galoob’s dealer catalog. So if you are trying to remember what year you got yours, I have found them being sold overseas as early as April of 1985, but in the United States the earliest newspaper ads are from June of that year.

The coolest part of the figures was how the transformation worked. They called it Magic Vacuum Action. The face of each figure had a flexible outer skin with another sculpt underneath it. Pulling the upper body away from the legs changed the air pressure inside the figure and the flexible face was pulled inward against the hidden sculpt. Sadly, this is also the reason why intact figures can be difficult to find today. The outer face’s material was fragile and it could split, tear, or deteriorate over time. So many surviving figures have lost the feature that originally made them so cool.

In total they made eight figures, four heroes and four villains. Each was about six inches tall, came with its own weapon, and had a short background to explain its transformation. On the side of good you had Iron Lion, Sphinx, War Dog, and Robash. The villains were Brainor, Tembo, Tuskus, and Torto.

In a move that helped elevate the toy line, they also produced three vehicles, the Incredible Thrasher, Horrible Hammer, and Crusher Cruiser. The Incredible Thrasher and Horrible Hammer used a handle to spin a soft weapon around the vehicle. The Crusher Cruiser was a larger vehicle and had large jaws that could bite down and rotate. A lot of these smaller toy runs didn’t get vehicles. Online I read that these vehicles began as products for Galoob’s Blackstar line, but I can’t find any other sources to confirm it. It would explain how a toy line with only eight figures managed to get three vehicles.

Pricing varied depending on when and where you bought them. The figures retailed at $5.99, but they usually went for $3.99 during the first year. I found a lot more variability around the vehicle prices, with prices ranging from $14.99 to as high as $24.99. These might not seem like high prices now, but these were standard toy prices. So this was not a budget toy line.

I did find some media coverage from 1985 and the toys are, of course, compared to other action figure lines such as Transformers, M A S K, and Sectaurs, all of which performed much better. But Infaceables were fun and creative and had some variation. So what went wrong?

Looking online I see the commercial that I remember, but that is all I remember about their promotion. While they might have been a major investment by Galoob, they were not being supported in the same way other more popular toys at the time were being promoted. Properties like Transformers and Masters of the Universe had regular television and print exposure tied to their ongoing release. In a market saturated with toys, that might have been what made the difference between success and failure.

They also might have misread the transforming toy market, which was hot at the time. Transformers and Gobots had made changing from one form into another a major toy feature. The Infaceables used the same basic idea, but only transformed the face with the body remaining the same. That was cool, but even at its best, it was sort of subtle. As a kid, you could easily be sold on what the commercial presented, but I am not sure these would stand up to comparisons with Transformers in the schoolyard.

So when 1986 rolled around, they were not included in Galoob’s 1986 dealer catalog. That doesn’t mean they weren’t still available in stores, but without advertising support their prices started to drop on their march toward the clearance bin. I am still seeing them for sale as late as Christmas of 1987. This, of course, doesn’t mean that Galoob was still making them. They just had a lot of product to move.

They also kept selling them overseas, often under different names. I can find mentions of them in countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, and Italy. It does not appear that they were any more popular there than in the United States, but in all the countries where they were sold, they did find fans who still remember them fondly.

Sadly though, there is a lot about the Infaceables that has not been documented. We don’t know much about their production history or who developed the vacuum face mechanism. We also don’t know how they performed and why Galoob ended the line. Even the question of the Blackstar origin of the vehicles remains unresolved. What we do know, though, is that Galoob took a chance on a novel idea. It might not have succeeded, but for some kids, this was their favorite toy. That is why I wanted to write something about them. Who knows, maybe someone who worked at Galoob will read this and can shed some more light on this wonderful set of toys. I can only hope.

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I was surprised the first time I watched Fade to Black. It was on cable TV and I hadn’t heart of it before seeing it. I was thrilled, thinking I had found some gem and couldn’t wait to get to the video store I worked at. My co-worker was unimpressed having seen it several times already. So we argued about his lack of recommendations and the shallowness of my film knowledge before finally settling down and discussing the film, which is good since its a fun film to talk about.

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This movie is chock full of classic film references and had a great main perfomance and a lot of quirky supporting performances. I start by telling my story of discovery before moving onto the film itself. Then I talk about the films production, cast, plot, release, movie to home video and much more.

Fade to Black is an unusual horror film. It is violent, but sometimes its hard to tell when it supposed to be scary and when its supposed to be funny. This aspect of the film is what I think makes it so revisitable, so if you are looking for a light scary film with fun performances and wonderful costumes and make-up, please give it a try.

You can support the Retroist by joining my Patreon. Supporters will get member-only shows and audio extras associated with the show. Click the giant button below to check out the Patreon Page.

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If you have a moment, please stop by Apple Podcasts or wherever you might download the show and perhaps give the show a quick rating. It is very much appreciated.

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• This is the 373rd episode of the Retroist Podcast and episode 23 of Season 18.

• Eric and Stella’s house was filmed at 302 Market Street in Venice. The house was reportedly still standing and recognizable in 2023.

• Linda Kerridge and Dennis Christopher had dated before the movie was made. According to Christopher’s commentary, Kerridge recommended him for the part of Eric, although their relationship had ended by the time filming began.

• Christopher has said that some of the scenes between Eric and Marilyn were partly improvised. He was already making changes to Eric after accepting the role, and that apparently extended beyond the voices and other character details.

• Christopher needed some convincing before signing on. Besides his concerns about the dialogue, he remembers the producers increasing their offer while trying to get him to accept the role. Good they got him, he is perfect for the role.

• The police station scenes were filmed at the old Venice Jail at 685 Venice Boulevard. Several other Venice locations turn up throughout the movie as well.

• There are a couple of songs in the movie that are easy to overlook next to Craig Safan’s score. Shoes contributed Tomorrow Night, while Sid Terror’s Undead supplied I Was a Teenage Vampire.

• Dennis Christopher was still promoting Breaking Away while Fade to Black was being made. A Washington Post profile published only days after filming wrapped mentions that he had just finished playing a psychotic killer, which must have been quite a change for people who knew him primarily as Dave Stoller.

• Bonus clippings will be over on Patreon soon for Supporters.

• Music on the show is, as always, by Peachy.

Thanks for listening to the show and I hope you have a great weekend.

The Retroist is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I learned about the haunted Toys R Us the same way most other people did. I saw it on the TV show That’s Incredible. It was a show that I liked in general, but when things veered toward the supernatural I was especially interested. With this episode we have a toy store chain that I love where things were moving around on their own. Then they add a psychic to the mix to hold a seance inside the store. Needless to say, it was very memorable and all these years later when I think of the show, this episode really stands out.

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That’s Incredible premiered on March 3, 1980. The hour long show was hosted by John Davidson, Cathy Lee Crosby and Fran Tarkenton. In it they would show stories about unusual people or events, dangerous stunts, and sometimes the unexplained. Shows like Real People and In Search Of had shown that people wanted to watch this type of television and they really took to it. The show finished third in the television ratings for the 1979 to 1980 season.

The episode featuring the haunted Toys R Us was first broadcast on September 8, 1980, although it would appear a week or two later in some markets. As you can see from the full episode description, it was quite an episode. Mount St. Helens was still very fresh in people’s minds and I remember a lot of TV for years afterwards was playing and replaying footage of the eruption. I mostly wanted to put a date to this episode because, despite many people talking about it online, the date of the episode hasn’t been documented fully. The episode description above is taken from the September 6, 1980 edition of the Santa Barbara News Press. It was printed on a Saturday but the listing spans the week and the show was broadcast on Monday.

The full episode is not currently posted online, but here is a segment from a later episode of the show.

The Toys R Us featured on the show was in Sunnyvale, California. It opened in 1970 and was located at 130 East El Camino Real. On the outside it appeared to be like any location of the growing chain, but the history that would become attached to the store went back much further.

The stories about strange things happening inside the store started well before its appearance on television. Employees reported merchandise moving and strange noises inside the building. There were also stories about things happening when few or no customers were around. By 1978 these reports were interesting enough to become a national newspaper story.

The stories are what you would expect from a haunting. Employees reported strange noises and voices, things moving on their own, and my favorite, a story about a talking doll. A customer returned a large talking doll reporting that it didn’t work. When it was tested by the staff, they couldn’t get it working either. Then they put it into its box and it began to make noise. Opening the box though would make it stop. They reportedly tried this several times with the doll and it kept only talking while in the box.

Word spread and a group of psychic researchers eventually spent a night inside the store. One of the people involved was Sylvia Browne, who would later become nationally known. Browne believed that there was a man haunting the store, but who?

Now before I get into more details of the haunting I wanted to touch on the background of where the store was built. The land the store was built on had once been part of a larger ranch owned by Martin Murphy Jr. called Bay View Ranch. The Murphy family became an important part of the early history of the area that would become Sunnyvale and their story would eventually provide the haunting with its story.

Browne identified the ghost as a man usually called John, Jan, Johnny, or Yonny Johnson depending on what story you hear. She said he had worked on the Murphy property during the nineteenth century. He was also described as a preacher who sometimes worked on the ranch. According to Browne, Johnson had fallen in love with Martin Murphy’s daughter Elizabeth.

Unfortunately for Johnson, Elizabeth didn’t have feelings for him, and she eventually met someone else and left with them. John kept working at the ranch and was chopping wood when he badly injured his leg with an axe. He tried to stop the bleeding but couldn’t and eventually died from the injury. Browne believed his feelings for Elizabeth had kept him attached to the property where he died.

This story was perfect for a show like That’s Incredible. So many employees were willing to talk about things they had experienced. Then you had a celebrity psychic and a seance that gave the show something it could actually bring its cameras into the store to cover. People love a good ghost story, but what made it special and memorable was that it was also a Toys R Us story. This was a safe place for me, but I could picture it after dark filled with ghosts running amuck.

It’s such a good story, I am not surprised how durable it is. It returned to national television again in 1991 on Haunted Lives, True Ghost Stories hosted by Leonard Nimoy. This special brought current and former employees together to talk about the store and their stories sounded much like the reports that had appeared more than a decade earlier. I am so glad that they made a nineties version of this same story so that the next generation could hear about it.

If you are skeptically minded you might be wondering if anyone has looked into the history of the location to confirm Browne’s story. They did and the history of the Murphy family does not match the story Sylvia Browne told. Elizabeth Murphy married William Taaffe in 1863, and her husband died in 1869. Elizabeth died in 1875 at the age of 30. So she couldn’t have rejected Johnson during the 1880s like in the story. Even the name Browne said the ghost used for Elizabeth causes a problem, since family records indicate she was known as Lizzie rather than Beth.

Researchers have also been unable to find the Johnson described by Browne. Census records show Swedish farm workers in the area, but none who fit the story. Newspaper searches have not uncovered the supposedly documented axe accident either. None of these are stories being told by the employees in the store. They were just sharing what they claimed to see. Their stories were being reported before That’s Incredible and continued long afterward.

The Toys R Us continued operating in Sunnyvale until 2018. I visited the location about 11 years before that just to shop. I didn’t witness anything paranormal. After the chain closed all its American stores, the building was temporarily and appropriately used by Spirit Halloween. REI eventually took over the location and opened there in 2021.

Because of the internet and people’s TV watching memories, the closing of Toys R Us didn’t end the story. Instead it’s found new life online. The old television segments can still be watched and the story is regularly repeated on paranormal sites and in discussions by people who remember shopping there. While the idea of ghosts and haunting is fascinating, having the haunting be in a toy store dials up the interest level. That is certainly why it stayed with me. I saw plenty of strange stories on That’s Incredible, but none of them stuck with me like this one. Once I knew there was supposed to be a haunted one out in California, I never really forgot about it, and I am glad I got to briefly see it firsthand.

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Over the years a lot of people I have encountered have complained to me about reboots, remakes and continuations of franchises they loved when they were younger. The complaints can be pretty specific, but you can tell their is an often unaddressed emotional component to their complaint.

The thing is, the thing you think is for you, isn’t really for you.…

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Usually on the Monthly Update I talk about what’s been going on with the site and podcast, but also some other things going on in my life and some random thoughts I have. This month I thought I would try something a little different and just start talkingt about Halloween.

Initially this was just going to be about preparing for Halloween, but once you st…