Episode 3: A Satisfying Likeness to a Decaying Cadaver

Gahan Wilson was primarily known as a cartoonist, one with a macabre, absurd sense of humor that Charles Addams and Edward Gorey were both better known for. His work appeared frequently in Playboy, the New Yorker, and National Lampoon, and his drawing style was both uniquely his own and uniquely unchanging over five decades of publishing.

But Wilson also moonlighted as an author, and the grotesque style and droll, almost stupid sense of humor which drove his single-panel cartoons is equally displayed in his writing. Tonight’s story Yesterday’s Witch leverages those sensibilities on a Trick or Treat tale of childhood phantoms, the kind of suburban legend where old people who live alone must always hide some sinister secret to which all the neighborhood kids are somehow privy.

It’s the kind of Midwestern, midcentury Halloween memory Ray Bradbury would pen (and we’ll hear from him tomorrow). But Ray’s candy apple would contain a razor, where Gahan’s merely hides a worm. So grab your candy and settle in for a story dedicated to anyone who remembers the pinched discomfort of a dime store mask, the embarrassment of wearing a winter coat over your costume, and the bleak frustration of having to wait another year for the Great Pumpkin to return.

Hosted by the Fundertaker

Music by Gothic Husband

21 minutes