Werewolf Radar: I’m Dreaming Of A Fright Christmas by Nate Balding

Werewolf Radar: I’m Dreaming Of A Fright Christmas
By Nate Balding
Published Issue 128, August 2024

Deck the halls with blood and bodies, fa la la la la, Saws one through five.

That’s right, we’re only two months out from Hallowe’en, aka Spooky Christmas — but never, EVER, Nightmare Before Christmas. You’re an adult. Your choices are 1) stay home and be Candy Santa or 2) go out and be slutty Candy Santa. Yes, Hallowe’en is the other time of year where gifting, lest ye be tricked, plays a pivotal role in our shared cultural celebration of debauchery against the backdrop of the ghost lights illuminating the thinning veil between ours and the plane of the least restful dead. And, like Christmas, two to 15 months out is the appropriate time to begin worrying about the gifts you’ll impart. Or bequeath if you’re a real one.

So consider this the official Werewolf Radar first annual All Saints’ Eve Recommended Benefactions List. This year there’s exactly one: Ghost Express.

Ghost Express is the brainchild of probable creeps and urban explorers Matt Jakubowski, who goes by Jaku, and Johnny Christmas. Real name; no guff. They met while doing white person B & E (it gets knocked down to trespassing but it’s fully breaking and entering and we all know it) in Chicago in the 90s. How they haven’t been arrested in the Windy City after posting video evidence of their exploits is a question best left unanswered. They bonded over their shared love of climbing into dank spaces and unquestionably committing other crimes. Nothing says party like a swampy abandoned sewer tunnel.

Side note: It’s extremely hypocritical of me to identify everything they’re doing as somehow not “really fucking cool.”

Invariably they found themselves in the company of ghost hunters. But not like those cowards traipsing quietly through crumbling sanitariums and dilapidated cemeteries looking for cold spots and erotic encounters with the undead (100 percent true: Every ghost hunter’s earliest sexual awakening was that scene in Ghostbusters where Dan Aykroyd experiences post-mortem fellatio). As these explorers rushed head first into mostly those same places seeking adventure and intrigue which started coming to fruition after they started picking up lost trinkets left by the long-passed.

According to a Chicago Reader article they would pick up everything from “old jewelry to children’s toys and even teeth,” with keys fulfilling the greatest share of discarded objets diaboliques. As the collection expanded, frightening, potentially otherworldly, events would randomly occur in their weird-stolen-tchotchke storeroom which — and let me accurately iterate — YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE. Do not keep your haunted goods in one place. Just ask any drunk divorcee with a box of sacred family photos in the same closet as their gun. Eventually it’s going to go very, very badly.

They began to experience the usual kind of poltergeist interactions: things falling off of walls; lights flickering despite an electrical grid that’s ready to go toe-to-toe with the Chi’s winters AND its summers; trees coming to life and blasting through windows to steal and eat Craig T. Nelson’s son while his daughter is sucked into Hell. That sort of thing. With no desire to hire a priest nor any real belief in the supernatural, they instead decided to absolve themselves of the agglomeration through the only true magic in America: Capitalism, baby. In 2018 they founded their company Ghost Express with the purpose of spreading some of their haunting to you. For a price … $9.99 at the time. They won’t take immortal souls. I checked the fine print to make sure.

To make it even more delightful, they expressly made the intention of the business to be a place from whence one can send another a haunted item to literally cause them fear and discomfort for as long as they shall live. The website explicitly gives a list of things your “victim” will receive, including a card detailing the attached spirit’s death date, type, mood, and their likes and dislikes as discovered by contacting the spirit through a ouija board and asking a series of probing questions. So basically Bumble if you’re interested in local specters new to your area. Specifically the area of your house.

So if you’re wondering what to get the person who has everything this Hallowe’en, remember that there’s a very normal business built on a very normal activity with a specialty item that they definitely don’t already have. And, realistically, should not want, from the Ghoul Vault of St. Jimmy Christmas and his elf pal, Jaku. And don’t forget to tell ‘em Werewolf Radar sent ya’. 

Have questions about the paranormal?
Send them to werewolfradarpod@gmail.com or on Twitter: @WerewolfRadar.
It’s a big, weird world. Don’t be scared. Be Prepared.

Nate Balding is a freelance humanoid who occasionally manifests in print and can most likely be seen at Werewolf Radar. Should you wish to hear him manifest audibly you can do so at the aforementioned Werewolf Radar’s associated podcast on Spotify and Apple, and if anything ever becomes humorous again, on a variety of stand up stages around the nation. If you’re truly craving further content there’s always @Exploder on Twitter — even if it is only a form of digital self flagellation at this point. His one thing that he considers actually accomplished was this time he was published in the journal Nature and then later collected into a volume called Futures from Nature, still available in places that have things.

Check out Nate’s July Werewolf Radar install, If I Had A Million Crawlers, or head to our Explore section to see more of his work.