Season of the witch

T oo soon for Halloween? No way! Not when Costco and Walmart are already jam-packed with Christmas crap on October 1. I wanted to mention a podcast I’ve been enjoying in the run-up to All Hallow’s Eve: “ Spooked .” Every Thursday, the podcast features regular people talking about eerie stuff that has happened to them. You know, spectral visitors and phantom hitchhikers and an assortment of unexplained phenomena. Some of it is obvious bullshit, sure, but I do not discriminate. The best part of the show is host Glynn Washington setting the stage with strange occurences from his own childhood. I love this kind of thing. Yes, I’ll admit that a number of episodes seem suspiciously similar to well-known works of horror fiction. But somehow, hearing the stories narrated by ordinary people makes them more compelling. The episodes remind me of when I was a kid, sitting around listening to the adults in my family talk about eerie occurrences. I had an uncle who subscribed to Fate magazine . He k...