Halloween: About 31% More Gothic than Normal

Strong Sense of Place | Travel Through Books

Melissa & Dave

Books, Arts

5.0 • 559 Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In no particular order, here is an incomplete list of some awesome things about Spooky Season: bats, witches, vampires, scary ghost stories, sad ghost stories, funny ghost stories, werewolves, dogs in Halloween costumes, tiny candy bars, full-size candy bars, caramel corn, bobbing for apples, a chill in the air, staying up late to watch scary movies, dressing as your alter-ego, dressing as your hero, dressing as your monster, looking at other people’s costumes, shuffling around in crunchy leaves, spooky music, haunted houses, orange things, purple things, black things, and the poem ‘The Raven.’ In this episode, we take a virtual tour around the globe to atmospheric and historic destinations to celebrate Halloween. We find out if coffin races are a real thing, get into the OG New England vampires, and celebrate the history of the largest nighttime gathering in the United States. (Spoiler: There are costumes involved.) Then we recommend five books worthy of adding to your Spooky Season celebration: a cozy story of witchy friendship set in upstate New York, a haunted house story with a heroine who refuses to leave, a modern riff on a classic mystery trope set on Halloween, a horror novel for the Covid era, and a mashup of ghost story, family saga, and travelogue set in Italy. Cackle by Rachel Harrison The September House by Carissa Orlando Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker Diavola by Jennifer Thorne For more on the books we recommend, plus the other cool stuff we talk about, visit show notes. Sign up for our free Substack to connect with us and other lovely readers who are curious about the world. Transcript of Halloween: About 31% More Gothic than Normal Do you enjoy our show? Do you want access to awesome bonus content? Please support our work on Patreon! Strong Sense of Place is an audience-funded endeavor, and we need your support to continue making this show. Get all the info you need right here. Thank you! Parts of the Strong Sense of Place podcast are produced in udio. Some effects are provided by soundly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to Strong Sense of Place.
0:03.3	In each episode, we focus on one destination and discuss what makes it different than any other place on Earth.
0:09.2	Then we recommend five books we love that took us there on the page.
0:12.9	I'm Melissa Jolwan.
0:14.2	I'm David Humphreys.
0:15.5	We're going around the world, one great read at a time.
0:18.8	Thanks for joining us.
0:44.5	Thank you. one great read at a time. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Strong Sense of Place.
0:46.8	Today we get curious about Halloween.
1:03.2	And two truths on a lie, we'll talk about one of the largest nighttime gatherings in the world and the mischievous mind behind it all.
1:06.0	And then we'll talk about five books we love.
1:13.2	I'm recommending a cozy witch story with a friendly spider and homemade blackberry pie.
1:14.7	That sounds nice.
1:15.9	It's pretty nice.
1:21.5	I read two books about women dealing with loss, and the books couldn't be more different.
1:30.1	One mixes horror with a deadpaned sense of humor, and the other takes us through the shadows of the subway and mixes in some ancient Asian ghost rituals. But before we get to any of that, Mel is going
1:37.2	to bring us up to speed with the Halloween 101.
1:42.4	Today, I thought it would be fun to talk about three fantastic places to celebrate Halloween in real life.
1:50.4	As always, it was pretty challenging to narrow it down to just three picks.
1:55.8	Yeah.
1:56.2	For example, if you wanted to go to the biggest Halloween street party in Europe, you could visit Londonderry, Ireland.
2:04.6	Their Halloween festival is called Awakening the Walled City.
	...

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