COLMA, CALIFORNIA – It’s called the City of the Dead, the City that Always Sleeps, etc. There are roughly one point five million people buried in the many cemeteries which make up Colma.
I sometimes think of it as an unliving Woodstock Concert audience, complete with Arlo Guthrie’s ghost exclaiming “There’s supposed to be about a million and a half dead people here tonight!” But as we’ve established, I’m kind of weird.
Colma is near San Francisco. Fresh graves in San Francisco cemeteries in the 1800s expanded those graveyards so much that around the turn of the century the city banned any additional cemetery space. The overflow began filling what is now Colma.
Eventually, Frisco decided that the existing graveyards in the city were taking up too much valuable real estate, so untold thousands of graves were moved out of San Francisco and reestablished in Colma. The city was officially labeled a necropolis in 1924 and by now the dead are said to outnumber the living in Colma by over a thousand to one. Continue reading
As Halloween Month rolls along, I will take a movie-by-movie look at the opening season of Elvira’s show Movie Macabre (1981-1986). Her massive success kicked off an even greater proliferation of Movie Hosts and Hostesses in the 1980s. I covered 
GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE (1972) – Psychotronic icons Michael Pataki and William Smith starred in this twisted flick about a vampire (Pataki) who rapes a woman (Lyn Peters) who subsequently gives birth to an abnormal infant. The baby will drink only blood and grows up to be James Eastman (Smith). James goes on a quest to kill his father for the pain he brought into his mother’s life. Ultimately he does, but becomes a full vampire himself. (Just go with it.) Aired Sep 26th, 1981.
THE ROOM IN THE TOWER (1912) – This story was written by E.F. Benson. The British narrator has a recurring nightmare in which he visits his friend John Clinton at his family manor. The other family members, including his mother Mrs. Stone, are cold and grim toward him. 
STRANGE HARVEST (2025) – Halloween Month continues with this review of a movie which got previewed in 2024 before its official release in August 2025. Because Balladeer’s Blog covers everything from mild Silent-Era horror films to extreme horror from recent decades I will post my courtesy warning for Strange Harvest:
However, his murders seemed unrelated until detective work recently found the obscure link connecting them. I will go into details about the grotesque murders below. Oddly, despite the grisly nature of the slayings, Strange Harvest otherwise starts out with a slow burn approach reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and other films. 
Anne Coleman was a feared witch in Lanesboro, MA in the 1780s. She was suspected of causing storms that sank ships, bringing on diseases that killed cattle, making food go bad and other malevolent deeds. 
PETER RUGG, THE MISSING MAN (1824) – This short story was written by author William Austin. A ghostly post-chaise horsedrawn carriage is often sighted and/or encountered up and down the East Coast. The carriage is pursued by a supernatural storm and is driven by a man named Peter Rugg with his daughter Jenny as his passenger. 
BLACK NOON (1971) – Roy Thinnes stars as an old west preacher who falls in with a coven of witches in the town of Melas (Salem spelled backwards of course). 
October 1st kicks off Balladeer’s Blog’s usual mixing of horror items in with my usual topics. I review horror films from the silent movie era onward as well as 
SALLY THE ZOMBIE CHEERLEADER – This horror hostess is portrayed by Nicole Galeano aka Nicole M. King aka Nicole M. Brooks. The Zombie Cheerleader started appearing on Public Access Cable around 2001, and in 2005 the undead pom-pom girl launched one of her best-known Movie Hostess programs – The Zombie Cheerleader’s School of Horror. 
The Zombie Cheerleader’s School of Horror lasted into 2007 and the supporting cast consisted of her daughter Genevieve Brooks as Zombette, an underclass and undead cheerleader who assisted the star, as did the monstrous Mr. Hairyhands, played by Daniel Brooks. 
