Long before kids were killing hookers on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, they were entertained by simpler things. I remember sitting for extensive periods of time just listening to records with nothing but spooky sounds. No lyrics, no instruments, no story, no accompanying comic book... just a bunch of creaking doors and lame screams and moans. Somehow, this held my attention. No, I wasn't a little "slow" - I knew plenty of boys who were doing the same thing. Here's a track from the album called "The Creeper".
I ran across this little ad in one of my horror magazines from 1966. Looks like some inconsequential photo caption book - the farthest thing imaginable from a bestseller. Just for the hell of it, I was curious if this odd little story had been lost forever through the ravages of time. Turns out, it popped up here and there on internet sellers. Evidently, it was written by a Robert Reisner who had written several other photo caption books, a biography of Charlie Parker, and several on graffiti through the ages (this one sounded interesting to me - I'm curious what kind of grafitti was scrawled on the walls of the Pantheon).
Remember Sea Monkeys? The picture made it look like you'd have a thriving colony of aquatic friends coming in the mail. I imagined a clan of mer-folk lounging on rocks, perhaps speaking some sort of language incomprehsible to us humans. Instead , all I got was a small packet of dried Brine Shrimp. I added some salt to some water in a goldfish bowl , they rehydrated, and presto, boring itty bitty shrimp that did nothing.
Comic book ads were famous for preying on the gullibility of children. They were priced low enough so the kids could buy it themselves (again, this is before the days of mom and dad bought their kids anything and everything under the sun) - so the less gullible parents never even got a chance to put the kibosh on the whole transaction.
This next one is from a Horror Monsters magazine from 1962. It's not really Halloween related, but I couldn't resist including it. Ciao, baby.
