Hello again. Welcome back to Staying In, your rickety haunted house of eerie ice-cold content to see you through till Monday morning.

As if you hadn’t already guessed, it’s a Halloween special. You might have plans this weekend – parties, gatherings, movie nights, dinner parties. More fool you, we shall be staying inside. No cobwebs, no poltergeists just a reliable bank of amusement to keep us entertained. Scroll through reels of cursed images, discover Robbie Williams’ sixth sense, let loose to a bloodstained rap mix and get lost in a spiderweb of pop culture conspiracies. Stay alert. Stay woke. Tupac isn’t dead. Stay in.

Robbie Williams and Jon Ronson: Journey to the Other Side

BBC Radio 4

This is always worth revisiting. Back in 2008, Robbie Williams was missing in action. Away from the public eye, he’d escaped to America and become obsessed with a belief in unidentified flying objects. Journalist Jon Ronson went to meet Robbie at a UFO conference in Nevada. Having researched sightings and spoken at length to abductees, Williams’ fixation on the paranormal is really quite something.

The 70 Greatest Conspiracy Theories in Pop-Culture History

Vulture

The Beatles never existed. Stevie Wonder isn’t blind. Blue Ivy is not really Beyoncé’s baby. Emily Brontë didn’t write Wuthering Heights. Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper. Michael Jackson was really the same person as La Toya Jackson. John Lennon was killed by Stephen King. Vulture have taken on the mammoth task of listing the 70 best conspiracy theories in the history of popular culture. They’ve also provided an introduction which sheds some interesting light on the phenomenon of conspiracy theory as a whole. Forget what you thought you knew. The CIA killed Bob Marley. Clear the schedule and read the full list here.

Cursed Images

@cursedimages

From stereotypical spookiness to meat platter horror and truly hellish out-of-context carbs, cursed images is the stuff of nightmares. Each of these definitely, 100% cursed images is defined by a queasy, unidentifiable dread. Cast your eyes over this thread if you dare and help distribute the curse to unsuspecting lurkers by locking into a retweeting frenzy.

FACT Focus 7: Halloween Rap Special

FACT Magazine

From Geto Boys and Three Six Mafia’s lo-fi horror core to Insane Clown Posse and Necro’s deliberately schlocky wretch-rap hip-hop and horror are inextricably linked. Just in time for halloween FACT have compiled a mix of some of the spookiest samples ever used in the genre. Opening with a glaring Shining sample on Project Pat’s Red Rum and taking in everything from Evil Dead to Psycho to Saw along the way it’s the perfect mix to get you in the mood for Monday’s ghastly goings-on.

The Rise of the Modern Female Horror Filmmaker

Rolling Stone

Insights from an impressive array of female horror filmmakers including Karyn Kusama, director of the excellent The Invitation and Ana Lily Amirpour, who made the beautiful A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. Films like these, along with the likes of The Babadook and Jennifer’s Body, have led us to a point where the horror genre can stake a claim at being the premier medium for thought-provoking, female-led storytelling. Spooky too. Read the full piece here.

The John Carpenter Covers

Crimes Of The Future

These tracks from Andy Weatherall’s Convanenza Festival add some chugging Italo fuzz to some of the master of Horror’s most iconic compositions. Sublimely spooky from Scott Fraser and Timothy J Fairplay.

“Lights out, everyone”: 13 old radio shows to creep you out for Halloween

A.V. Club

There’s no hiding behind the covers with these rare radio horror specials. Complete with health precautions for fragile listeners, gloriously kitsch sound effects and heaps of genuinely creepy shit, these radio shows will have your mind running wild with gruesome possibilities. Tread carefully, click here.

Fear Itself

BBC iPlayer

Charlie Lyne is sort of like a younger, cooler (and in this case spookier) version of Adam Curtis. From his hugely lauded blog Ultra Culture he casts a keen eye over pop culture and his documentaries pick apart the tropes and traps of genres with razor sharp wit and deadly insight. Fear Itself is an exploration celebrating over 100 years of terror on celluloid. Using heartstopping footage from over 80 films like The Craft, The Exorcist and Lost Highway it’s a hypnotic exploration of our strange obsession with being scared shitless by cinema. Unpick the nuances of fear itself here.

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