Wolf's Ridge Brewing - Pumpkin Spice Daybreak Cream Ale

NINE DAYS into October and not ONE pumpkin beer review!? How could I have let this happen? It's way past time to right this wrong!

Every October, I like to pick up a few six packs of whatever seasonal pumpkin beer is on the local grocer's shelves, bring them home and sample them, and then write a detailed review, based on my highly scientific Drunken Jackos Rating Scale. So let's get to it!

First up is Wolf's Ridge Brewing's Pumpkin Spice Daybreak Cream Ale. This is another small brewery out of Columbus, Ohio, so I'm not sure how far out this one is available.

I initially grabbed this six-pack due to it being a Cream Ale, something new and unique to the usual pumpkin beer market. And on first pour I was a bit surprised by the light golden hue capped off by a classic, thick cream ale head, with only a slight earthy, vegetal note.

On first taste, there was a very creamy and smooth texture with the same nutty, vegetal flavor with a strong dry, vanilla coffee flavor that lingered across the tongue after.

Unfortunately, that coffee aftertaste covered any pumpkin or sweet cinnamon flavor described on the can, and overall felt more like I was drinking a milk stout. 

I really don't think this one hits the October pumpkin target, but the silver lining is that I am going to sit on these for a month or two. I think this will make an excellent beer for Thanksgiving and into early winter.

And because of that, Wolf's Ridge Brewing's Pumpkin Spice Daybreak Cream Ale gets 2 out of 5 Drunken Jackos. This one is still recommended, even if only after the Halloween season!

Ashland Hanging Tattered Reaper Prop Upgrade

My second prop of the season is done! I recently picked up an Ashland Hanging Tattered Reaper from Michael's. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with it when I bought it, but I knew that it was a good starting point and that I could make something really cool with it. The only idea I had was to convert it from a flimsy hanging prop into a freestanding piece that would take its place at the front fence of my Cemetery display.

After about two weeks of creating, corpsing, detailing, and fine tuning, I took the finished piece out to a great open field near my house for some epic photos.

My finished piece...

After bringing the original piece home from the store, I got to work disassembling all the parts and building a new t-shaped body frame out of 3/4" PVC piping. I added PVC elbow pieces for the shoulders and neck, and then added extra PVC pieces and elbows to make rigid, bent arms. I next used old packing bubble wrap to bulk out the upper torso. Finally, I hit sections of the main support PVC pipe with a heat gun, bending areas to create a twisted and hunched figure.

I then took the skull and added a screw to the jaw to set it open as if screaming, and did a full, multilayered corpsing with plastic drop cloth and my trusty heat gun. I added a PVC plug into the bottom of the skull, and attached it at an angle to the neck, giving it a contorted, twisted look. And once the head was set, I added a corpsed neck section for added realism and bulk (and to cover the inner PVC frame).

Next, I cut the original, flimsy wire-and-foam arms from the form and stuffed and glued them into the ends of the new PVC arm sections that I had built. Once they were set and dry, I did the same corpsing technique to both arms and hands.

Once the twisted body form was set and fully corpsed, I reattached the original cloak (after a bit of extra tattering, bleach splattering, and a light misting of orange spray paint) to the body. It now had an old, earthy appearance, perfect for the decayed look I was going for. I also ended up leaving the original plastic chain attached, giving it a mist of the orange spray paint to give it an old, rusted look.

After finishing the cloak, the final step was adding a wood stain to the corpsed flesh areas of the body. I concentrated the most detail on the head, adding heavy coats of stain and quickly wiping away the raised areas to create higher contrast around the eyes, nose and mouth.

And that was it! Another new piece ready to be placed into this year's display. A quick and easy upgrade to a store-bought piece that is going to look a thousand times better. I'm SUPER happy with the results and really excited to now start on the next, even bigger prop!

  

Jeff Greinke - "The Moor"

I make no secret of my love of the dark ambient music genre. It sets such a great uneasy mood, and I have always thought that it works really well in haunt settings. With no recognizable patterns or vocals, the audio sits nicely in the background, supporting and heightening the tension of the haunt setting, never becoming a distracting focus.

For years I have been using various dark ambient tracks in my yard haunt, and in the last 4 or 5 I have settled on what I have found to be a perfect track. A wonderful, dark balance of creepiness and eerie foreboding. I absolutely love this track and every time I play it, it instantly takes me into the middle of my yard haunt display...

Enjoy the unofficial haunt soundtrack of Highbury Cemetery, artist Jeff Greinke's 1992 dark ambient masterpiece, The Moor.

  

Halloween Fun At Szalay's Farm

Yes, just yesterday I said that I would be spending the entire weekend in the Cemetery garage, working away on this year's prop list... but sunny skies and 80 degree temperatures in October in Northeast Ohio was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. So we jumped into the car and headed down to Szalay's Farm in the Cuyahoga Valley to experience their annual Halloween festivities: carton after carton of incredible pumpkins, freshly grilled corn on the cob straight from their cornfields, a market full of fresh fall fruits and vegetables, a hayride, various Halloween photo opportunities, their spinning vortex tunnel, and most of all, their annual corn maze!

The weather brought people out from all corners and the entire place was packed, but the Fall and Halloween vibes were in full swing and we still had a blast. I must have been in an extra good mood because I even shelled out for some expensive giant, gnarly pumpkins for this year's display!

The best, of course, was their corn maze, laid out in the shape of a dragon with eight stations set up with different movie-themed scenes. The corn was tall this year so it almost felt like walking through a corn tunnel as we followed the map. 

After walking the entire maze and visiting each scene, we headed home with our goodies. And, I was still able to get back in time to finish up a really great prop for this year's display (I CANNOT WAIT to share this one with you!)

  

Vintage Obscura Halloween Mix [2025] - Side A: The Midnight Monsters Had A Ball

Just a quick post today, as I'm hard at work in the Cemetery garage...

Vintage Obscura has released their first of five weekly October Halloween mixes for 2025, featuring a great collection of 50's and 60's Rockabilly, Novelty, Country, R&B, Religious, and Horror Rock tracks.

A perfect playlist to pipe through the garage while working on your Halloween props and projects. Just like me! Enjoy, and we'll see everyone tomorrow!

(And if you dig this playlist, head over to Spotify and check out the comprehensive playlist of ALL the Vintage Obscura Halloween Mix tracks!)

  

Halloween 'Zines: Haunt

I'm adding a new feature to my October blogging this year: Halloween 'zine reviews!! Growing up as a punk rock kid, I collected many a fanzine through the years. Small, DIY handmade photocopied, low-budget mini magazines that covered all aspects of the music genre, created and produced by the very participants within that scene. There's just something about holding a small magazine that was created and assembled by hand that always felt so tactile and genuine to me. And when I later became a home haunter, I discovered the same medium and immediately began collecting them.

First up is GroovyDoom's Haunt 'zine series. I ended up picking up the entire 10-issue series from the Etsy store and I'm so glad I did. Haunt absolutely nails the Halloween nostalgia in each issue, with pages crammed full of black-and-white Halloween ads, photos and article clippings from the 70's and 80's (my wheelhouse!).

As I flipped through each issue, I was transported back to those magical October days of my youth when I would race home from school and grab the Friday magazine insert from the newspaper, quickly scanning newsprint page after newsprint page of local haunted house ads (which in Northeast Ohio there were tons!) until my fingers were black from the ink. And then at dinner, I would BEG my parents to take me and my friends to each of them.

And while each issue of Haunt is a quick read, there is still enough old Halloween fun to keep me greedily grabbing for the next issue.

The entire Haunt 'zine series is a must-have, with super-cool illustrated covers and loads of old Halloween and haunted house ads. Each issue is a total blast to flip through and is a welcome slice of Halloweens past. And the photocopied black-and-white pages take me back to being a punk rock kid again.

Issue 11 is dropping now and all issues are available at the GroovyDoom Etsy store. Get it now!