Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

          After three Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Power Rankings articles ( here , here and here ), as well as another post delving into some of his more obscure horror artwork, you can probably tell that the artist Stephen Gammell has a special, terrifying place in my heart. It therefore always brings me great joy when I find Gammell's artwork lurking in the most unexpected of places. Like, say, this book of Thanksgiving poetry. Koala not included.      When I ordered Thanksgiving Poems from Amazon, I had no idea what to expect. Which is funny, given that the title is pretty self-explanatory. This thing is, though...the poems aren't really what I'm here for. they're nice and all, but I'm far more interested in what Gammell is bringing to the Thanksgiving table. Would the book be chock full of grotesque imagery, like reanimated turkey corpses hunting for human giblets, or perhaps gravy bowls oozing bloody tendrils? Unsurprisingly, no. Actually, w

     Point 1: There was a section of the library at Lincoln Elementary School that seemed like it was just for me. Not a section proper, cordoned off with a "Joey Marsilio Only" sign (wonderful though that would have been), but rather a number of books that I am fairly certain no one ever checked out but me. There was a book about the history of the werewolf, for example, that I probably read half a dozen times, and of course it was always on the shelf if I got a hankering to check it out, because who else is going to read something like that? Some other weirdo, probably, but I never met him or her.      Point 2: Largely due to my fascination with the supernatural that lead me to checking out the aforementioned werewolf book, I have always loved Halloween to an unreasonable degree. So much so, in fact, that anything even tangentially related to Halloween would grab my attention as a kid. Scarecrows? Pumpkins? Corn stalks? Sure, let's see what this is all about.