I bid you Velcome!

Happy Halloween! The day of ghosts, pumpkins and ghouls! I just love the holiday, and do my best to do it up, with my annual pumpkin carve and the making of Cat and Bat cookies, courtesy of a marvelous chocolate pepper recipe by Martha Stewart.

Of course, I never miss watching Dracula with Bela Lagosi. It's so much fun. Among my favorite lines, " I bid you Velcome!" When offered some rare old wine, Dracula tells Mr. Renfield, "I never drink.......wine!" Another while listening to the wolves in the distance, "Children of the night! What music they make!" He's great!

We are all extremely familiar with the adventures of Count Dracula, the most famous or infamous vampire, but way before Bram Stoker put pen to paper, vampire fiction had its beginnings in the "vampire craze" of the early 1700's, culminating in the bizarre exhumations of a couple actual suspected vampires! The suspected "vampires" were Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole of Serbia, during the Hapsburg Monarchy. Paole was thought to become a vampire upon his death, and when a number of deaths were reported shortly after, it was thought that it was the work of Paole. When Austrian authorities got involved, the case became notorious, and people were convinced of the existence of vampires!

One of the first art works to touch on the subject is a German poem entitled "The Vampire", written in 1748 by Heinrich August Ossenfelder. The poem has strong erotic overtones, of course, about a man who is rejected by his love, and then visits her nightly to drink her blood in a seductive revenge. Another poem, "Lenore" by Gottfried Burger (German) was writen in 1773, again tackles the subject of the undead and their penchant for drinking "the red stuff". Finally, "The Bride of Corinth (1797)" written by Goethe, tells about a young woman who returns from the grave to seek her betrothed. Ahh, you gotta love those Germans and their heavy, passionate lore of the taboo subjects.

The English, as well, enjoyed a good vampire thriller, with Robert Southey's monumental work, "Thalaba the Destroyer (1797)" and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Christabel (1797-1801)". It must be the cold, the damp, the foggy weather!

Anyway, I send wishes for a very Happy Halloween! Enjoy the day with a classic flick like Dracula or Frankenstein, or other horror films like House of Wax, Sleepy Hallow, Young Frankenstein, Pit and the Pendulum. I don't like the kind like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, or any of the Freddy Krueger offerings. I like the camp, fun films that allow for a laugh or two!