Good evening. Welcome to my Castle of Horrors. Mouha-- I say, mouhahaha, son!



That's right, the famous Baron von Foghorn Leghorn III, at your service: Have neck, will bite.



Do not be alarmed, son. I am not going to tell you any "groaners" this evening! Mouha-- (That's a JOKE, son!)



Au contraire: I am going to scare you to death! Mouha
I say mouha --



Oh, forget it, son. I just can't seem to scare nobody when I adopt the folksy and good-natured persona of my all-too-lovable grandfather, Foghorn Leghorn I of Warner Bros. fame! From now on, I'm going to talk to you in the haughty and aristocratic fashion of my evil step-cousin Dracula, with a view toward scaring the daylights out of you, ya understand.



That's okay with you, I presume? I mean, this IS Halloween after all.



Now then, be so kind as to follow me into yon formal drawing room, where you may relax before the fire in my upholstered gothic arm-chair of meticulously carved oak -- meticulously carved oak, that is. (Oops, there I go again, slipping back into the linguistic mannerisms of Foghorn Leghorn again. I've got to watch that!)



Now then, allow me to lean dreamily against the fireplace mantel here as I absent-mindedly sweep my mink cape behind my back. Oh, I mean, IMITATION mink, of course! Are you kidding? The animal rights people were all over me when I first came to town in the real McCoy! They even had the bad taste to throw a bucket of (unfortunately) fake blood at me one evening while I was out in my garden harvesting tomatoes. (Hey, there's more to life than biting necks, you know, even for a vampire! One does like to putter about in one's garden, after all, if only by moonlight.)



Of course, one has to laugh, I suppose: The animal dudes have never once protested my penchant for biting the necks of local human beings -- but if I so much as swat a fly on my own heavily taxed property (which reminds me, I should really start biting the necks of our Marxist town council members!), they are on me like a foot fungus.



The wizened old crones down at the local pub are another story, of course. They're far too overwhelmed by the mundane exigencies of daily life to shed a tear for our fine furry friends. In fact, I saw them standing idly by just last week as the village idiot and his apparent band of like-minded sympathizers (every male in town, from what I could see, with the possible exception of the eternally drunken curate) tossed a litter of puppies off the bridge by the old mill -- the sorry specter of which made me seriously consider joining the animal rights group above-mentioned, notwithstanding their feckless attack on my own person in the supposed privacy of my beloved tomato garden. (Of course I never actually did join the group, knowing as I did that the do-gooders would eventually be obliged, if only as a matter of conscientious consistency, to confront my own behavior with respect to human beings. I'm a vampire, after all, and I do bite the occasional human neck. Such a fact cannot be papered over indefinitely, no matter how polite the group is initially willing to be in consideration of our mutual noble purpose: i.e., ending cruelty to non-human animals.)



Now then, relax and get all snuggly-like in that velvety armchair (yes, that IS solid oak, by the way) while I tell you the creepy stories for which you've probably come.



But first, how about a Halloween aperitif. I always find that "red" goes best with the sort of melodramatic fiction that's on tap tonight.



Igor! Yo, Igor! The Moet & Chandon Rose, 1995, if you please, sir!



I know what you're thinking: Moet & Chandon is champagne, right?



Well, in the words of my motion picture namesake played by the estimable Bela Lugosi back in 1931:



"I never drink... wine."



Mouha-- I say mouhaha, son!



Oh, what the heck. We're about to move on to the spooky stories now, so I may as well provide a little comic relief here by lapsing back into my Foghorn Leghorn idiom again.



Why, thank -- I say, thank you, Igor. Now vamoose, before the mere sight of you turns my guest's stomach.



That's a joke, son! A joke!!!!!!



Now looky here, son, it's almost sunrise and I's got to make myself scarce, or else, you understand. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna leave you with the links of some spooky articles posted by that dad-blamed American Egghead, what's his name.... Brian something! Okay, son?



Now you click on the links of your choice and you go on and have yourself a Happy Hallowe -- a Happy Hallowe -- I say, HAVE A HAPPY HALLOWEEN, SON!