And, as Ray Bradbury wrote, "Then... some idiot turned on the lights."

Ten months before he died, actor Boris Karloff (1887-1969) celebrated “the best friend I ever had.” He viewed his long career in horror roles as a happy accident: “When I was nine, I played the demon king in "Cinderella" and it launched me on a long and happy life of being a monster...You could heave a brick out of the window and hit ten actors who could play my parts. I just happened to be on the right corner at the right time.”

In 1996 he was the only actor to be represented by two of six US Postal Service stamps commemorating the classic horror roles of film.

Mary Shelley and the Gothic horror genre; H.P. Lovecraft’s febrile imagination; a letter written in blood. Those are just a few of the terrors to come Saturday at 2.30 pm EDT on Rare Book Cafe.

So gird your amygdalae! Confine your tinglers to your spines! Grab a bowl of candy and tell us the horror tales you’ve read that stuck in your mind over the years.

And if it all gets too terrifying, we’ll read you something soothing to make it all right.

*****

Rare Book Cafe is streamed by the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair every Saturday from 2.30 to 3.30 pm EDT. We feature interviews, panel discussion and stuff you can learn about book collecting whether you are a regular at Sotheby’s or just someone who likes books.

The program airs live on Rare Book Cafe’s Facebook page, and remain there after the show.

The program’s regular guests include Miami book dealer, appraiser and WDBFRadio.com’s Bucks on the Bookshelf radio show creator Steven Eisenstein, Thorne Donnelley of Liberty Book Store in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida; Lindsay Thompson of Charlotte’s Henry Bemis Books; miniature books expert Edie Eisenstein; ephemera expert Kara Accettola; and program creator/producer T. Allan Smith.

We enjoy the support and encouragement of these booksellers: Little Sages Books in Hollywood, Florida; Liberty Books in Palm Beach Gardens; As Time Goes By, in Marion, Alabama; Quill & Brush in Dickerson, Maryland; Lighthouse Books in St. Petersburg; The Ridge Books in Calhoun, Georgia; and Henry Bemis Books in Charlotte.

Rare Book Cafe program encourages viewer participation via its interactive features and video: if you've got an interesting book, join the panel and show it to us! If you’d like to ask the team a question or join us in the virtually live studio audience for the program, write us at rarebookcafe@gmail.com.