In honor of Halloween, this week’s assignment is a guest post from our scariest Weekly Geek: Dark, of It’s Dark in the Dark. (You can see a picture of him, all decked out in his new Halloween cape, here).

First I would like to thank the kind folks behind the Weekly Geeks for inviting me to emcee the Weekly Geeks on Halloween. It’s a real honor.

There’s a particular story about cooking that I’ve heard enough versions of that I think it must be an urban myth. In this story, the victim is, alternatively, a frog, a lobster, or an abalone. The story is that instead of dropping the victim into a pot of boiling water to cook them, you should place them in luke-warm water over a fire and they never notice that the temperature is rising until it’s too late, and then BAM! they’re dinner. I always imagine that if you were cooking two lobsters this way, one would eventually turn to the other and ask, “Is it just me, or is it getting hot in here?”

Fortunately, I’m not going to find myself in a crock pot any time soon (at least not if I can help it) but lately I’ve been finding myself wondering if it isn’t getting a little WEIRD and CREEPY in here. What with books about vampires (Twilight) and orphaned wizards (Harry Potter) in the mainstream, and a book about a child raised by vampires, werewolves, and ghosts (The Graveyard Book) being on the New York Times children’s best seller list for 52 weeks, it seems like maybe I’m right.

At the same time, I’m a real fan of the weird and creepy and I seek it out. So maybe asking me if things are a little weird in here is like asking a fish if the water feels a little wet today. Maybe my barometer is under water.

1) Tell us about something weird, unusual, terrifying, or creepy you’ve read lately.

2) Tell us what you think. Are things getting a little more weird and creepy than usual, or less? If your choice for the answer to question number 1 was written in a different decade, what does it say about that era? Maybe you think that the weird and creepy is status quo. Or maybe we’re all like lobsters in a pot, and we can’t tell if things are getting hot in here.

Happy Halloween!

1) This is easy-peasy!  If you take a look at the books I’ve read in the past two months, they have almost all been weird, unusual or creepy.  This was due mostly to Carl’s RIP Challenge, which allowed forced me to step outside of my comfort zone and read scary books.  Let’s be honest – I enjoyed every minute of it and have tons more that would qualify on my TBR pile!

2)  Are things getting a little more weird and creepy than usual?  Let’s put it this way.  It isn’t that things are getting more weird and creepy so much as creepy and weird is now cool.  Fantasy, paranormal, and the like which used to be on the fringes of society are now mainstream.  Thanks to the Harry Potter phenomenon, the popularity of The Lord of the Rings movies, and now the craziness that is the Twilight Saga, it is not only okay to embrace your inner geek or goth but to share it with others.  All those fans who used to be afraid to admit that they liked the weird or unusual, for fear of being taunted as a Trekkie, are no longer remaining quiet.  The Harry Potter phenomenon made authors and publishers sit up and take notice that fantasy can be popular and have adjusted the types of books being published accordingly.  So, no I don’t think that things are more weird and creepy than usual.  They have always been that way but now it just appears that it is because of the popularity of these genres.

Now I’m curious.  What do you think?  Are things more weird and creepy than ever before?  Am I wrong to think it is more due to popularity than anything else?