Halloween is here! I’ll have one final 2026 Halloween post later today, but here’s a look at the Halloweenish Covers for Marvel’s Simon Garth Zombie in their 1970s series Tales of the Zombie.
TALES OF THE ZOMBIE Vol 1 #1 (July 1973)
Title: Altar of the Damned
Comment: The first Silver Age appearance of the Marvel Comics horror character Simon Garth, a brutal, merciless coffee plantation owner who was killed and brought back to life as a zombie by his Haitian workers.
Garth was not your typical mindless zombie wanting to feed on human beings all the time. His stories provided insight into the still-functioning mind of the man trapped in this horrific fate as he battled assorted supernatural menaces, some drawn from VooDoo lore, others created by Marvel.
Simon Garth could be used against his will at times by people in possession of the Amulet of Damballah which controlled him. Continue reading
This low-key but riveting horror story is fiction but is one of those presented as if it’s true. 
Gaston Leroux’s The Bloody Automaton (1923) and The Machine to Kill (1924) were a lengthy serialized story later published as one novel. Many book sites list 1930s dates for these works, but that was just when they were finally translated into English. 
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ASHLEY GHASTLY – Cyrus Newitt played the phantom Ashley Ghastly, host of the Bad Movie Show Scream Theatre from 1977 or 1978 to 1982. The program aired on Saturday nights/ Sunday mornings at 12:30am on WCSC in Charleston, SC. 
Then, viewers would be greeted by Ashley Ghastly, who spoke with a British accent that sounded a lot like Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank N. Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. As usual, a witty host or hostess showing bad old movies became a hit and Ashley soon had a Phantom “Phan” Club his devotees could join. 
THE SKY FISHERS – Who do these folk creatures from Brazil have to sleep with to get more well known? I’d love to read entire stories about them, not just a paragraph or two referring to these unique monsters who deserve to enter the Halloween tradition. 
The Sky Fishers get blamed when individuals or groups suddenly go missing and are never heard from again. Child victims are used to spice up the legends. Some traditions hold that these creatures only strike on nights of the full moon, or on no-moon nights. 
To clarify, The Law Enforcers was one of the rotating shows featured on The Bold Ones. The Law Enforcers was also known as The Protectors, but I’m using the former title to keep it distinct from the spy show The Protectors. 
PILOT MOVIE: DEADLOCK (Feb 22nd, 1969) – This telefilm filled a 2-hour timeslot with commercials. Back when this was made, television cop shows didn’t bother trying to realistically depict the way law enforcement worked, unlike the countless police procedural programs of today. Think of McMillan and Wife, for instance. NO Police Commissioner (Rock Hudson’s role) personally investigates individual crimes, but the show’s gimmick had McMillan doing that with his wife (Susan St. James). 
TETSUO THE IRON MAN (1989) – Director Shinya Tsukamoto hails from Japan and is noted for his surreal, nightmarish excursions into the darker side of transformative industrial technology … especially any technology that impacts the human anatomy. Long time readers of Balladeer’s Blog may recall that I cite this black & white film as one of my favorite sci-fi horrors ever. 
THE STORY OF THE HAUNTED SHIP (1825) – This tale was written by the German author Wilhelm Hauff, who died in 1827. 
