It’s Fright Night this week on Alternate Take! Join Liz Warner as she celebrates the Halloween season with festivities late into the witching hour. Liz will share Alternate Take Halloween classics alongside new songs from Detroit and beyond for the occasion.

Just before this week’s edition of Alternate Take is a rebroadcast of Jon Moshier’s award-winning Halloween special, running from 6-8 p.m.

Tune in this Thursday night from 8-10 p.m. for a special Halloween edition of Alternate Take with Liz Warner on 101.9 WDET-FM, wdet.org and the WDET app.

Please note: This show will re-air on Saturday night 10 p.m. to midnight.

George A. Romero’s 1968 film ‘Night of the Living Dead’ featured an invasion of ghouls – mindless cannibals, thriving off the flesh and brains of humans. While not called zombies in the movie, for many people it was their first introduction to these kinds of paranormal beings.

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The term “zombie” is said to come from Haiti, and Haitians used it to describe an enslaved person being controlled by the will of another. And that story tracks, especially knowing Haiti’s history involved with the enslavement of Africans and Natives on the island of Hispaniola. 

To talk about how the term “zombie” transformed from its original meaning to its current one, we were joined by Chera Kee, a Wayne State University assistant professor teaching film and media topics with a focus on the horror genre. Kee is also the author of “Not Your Average Zombie: Re-Humanizing the Zombie from Voodoo to Zombie Walks” and “Corpse Crusaders: The Zombie in American Comics”

Kee says zombies really took off in 1929 when author William Seabrook wrote “The Magic Island” about his travels in Haiti. 

“He had a whole chapter on zombies and he was thoroughly impressed, because he’d never heard of anything like this,” Kee said. “It was completely unique to his experience. And people were like, ‘We can take you to see real zombies,’ and that really blew his mind.”

A quarter century of screams in Pontiac 

While Erebus Haunted House does not have a history as long as zombies, co-owner Edward Terebus and his brother Jim have been in the haunted house business for almost 45 years. They’re celebrating 25 years of making people scream at Erebus Haunted Attraction in Pontiac. 

Edward Terebus spoke to WDET assistant producer Dorothy Jones about the haunted house’s history. In 1981, the Terebus brothers set up their first haunted house in the K-Mart parking lot at 12 Mile Road and Van Dyke. It grew over the years until they founded a permanent haunted home in Pontiac.

At Erebus Haunted Attraction, there’s no age limit, Terebus says. If your kid can’t watch horror movies, the haunted house probably is not for them.

“I’ve seen five year olds make it through the haunted house. I’ve seen 25 year olds pee themselves and faint. So it really depends on the person and the people coming through,” Terebus says. 

Use the media player above to hear the full conversations with Terebus and Kee.

More headlines from The Metro on Halloween 2024: 

• To win the race for president, the Harris campaign needs to win over moderate and swing voters, which likely includes people who often vote republican. That’s why it was significant when Fred Upton endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris last week. Upton served 36 years in the House of Representatives and is the most prominent Republican in Michigan to publicly back the Democratic presidential nominee. Upton joined the show to discuss his decision to support Kamala Harris over Donald Trump and why he thinks other Republicans should also do so.
• It was November 2020 and President Biden had taken the lead in the election. Meanwhile, poll workers in Detroit were sifting through piles of absentee ballots. Dozens of protesters, some of them armed, showed up and claimed there had been election fraud. They were echoing Trump’s false claims and pushing for a recount. WDET senior news editor Quinn Klinefelter spoke with Detroit election officials and poll workers to discover how things have changed ahead of this year’s presidential election.  

The day before Halloween is referred to as Mischief Night in many parts of the country, but in Detroit, it used to be called Devil’s Night.

For decades, that night filled many with fear, as neighborhoods with abandoned homes or businesses prepared themselves for possible arson. City of Detroit Historian Jamon Jordan joined The Metro on Wednesday — the day before Halloween — to share more about the history of Devil’s Night in Detroit and how community members came together with the city to put an end to it.

Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Throughout the U.S. there’s always been pranks connected to Halloween — draping toilet paper on trees, throwing eggs at cars, and other mischief that didn’t cause the most damage. 

In the 1980s there were about 800 fires around Halloween, Jordan said. Community groups and the city took steps to wipe out Devil’s Night, oftentimes doing patrols the day before Halloween and enforcing youth curfews. In the ’90s, the community and city started doing joint patrols and renamed it Angel’s Night. 

“So these things begin to work in concert with one another, and there’s thousands of people who begin to volunteer. By this point, with so many people out on the street with eyes on almost every neighborhood, especially the vacant houses in the neighborhood, it begins to make it have an effect on stopping the fires,” he said. “Within a few years, the fires really go way way down and then eventually we don’t even talk about Devil’s Night…”

Use the media player above to hear the full conversation with Jordan.

More headlines from The Metro on Oct. 30, 2024:

• Yesterday, a poll by The Hill showed Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump by five points. But polling has generally been very tight, and most political scientists believe this election could easily go either way. To discuss why the election is so tight in Michigan and how voters are feeling right now, we were joined by Matt Grossman, head of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research. 
• In the latest spooky episode of CuriosiD, WDET’s Jeff Milo looked into chilling rumors that the Detroit Public Library’s Main Branch on Woodward might be haunted by ghosts. 
• Early voting is underway in Michigan, and we’ve heard from some of you that with more than 20 Detroit Public Schools Community District Board candidates vying for three seats, people are feeling overwhelmed with all the choices. To help us break down the race we’re joined by Chalkbeat Detroit Bureau Chief Lori Higgins.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 11 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

The term “devil’s night” has been dead in Detroit for some years… but I do reference it because it went on for such a long time in this city (hence for the photo for this post). This show was a precursor to Halloween, when I’m really going to dive into music that feels like Halloween without actually being a Halloween song. You helped with these — huge thanks to your voicemails! I’ve noted which tracks are listener picks below.

Check the playlist below and listen to the episode for two weeks after it airs using the player above.

In The Groove with Ryan Patrick Hooper playlist for October 30, 2024

• “Uriel” – Mary Jane Dunphe
• “Method Actor” – Nilüfer Yanya
• “Crossbow” – Tamar Aphek
• “Nothing Can Surprise Me” – Tamar Aphek
• “Svefn-G-Englar” – Sigur Rós *listener pick*
• “Cherry Sunshine” – somesurprises
• “Talk For Hours” – High Vis
• “Mind’s A Lie” – High Vis
• “Crazy for You (Alternative Version – Demo Version)” – Slowdive
• “Suns of Gold” – Leifur James
• “Let Your Hair Down (feat. Hutch the Great)” – Max Sinal
• “Firestarter (Jitwam Remix)” – The O’My’s
• “i ain’t scared of no devil (feat. dj godfrey ho)” – Jitwam
• “Mad Man” – Mike Nyoni and Born Free
• “Coffin Maker” – Chrissy Zebby Tembo & Ngozi Family
• “Lazy Bones” – WITCH
• “Frankenstein” – The Edgar Winter Group *listener pick*
• “7/4 (Shoreline)” – Broken Social Scene
• “New York” – Cat Power
• “Hey” – Pixies
• “All Over The World” – Pixies
• “Somebody Was Watching” – Pop Staples
• “Searching (feat. Sam Gendel)” – Tristan De Liege & Bryony Jarman-Pinto
• “Graucha Max (In The Groove Song of the Week)” – DARKSIDE
• “X Ray Eyes” – LCD Soundsystem
• “100 Yard Dash (Nicky D Remix)” – Derobert & The Half-truths
• “Lucid Girl” – Thee Sacred Souls
• “Hurting Lies (feat. Allysha Joy)” – EX GENERATION
• “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” – Geto Boys *listener pick*
• “Easy Easy” – King Krule
• “Road Head” – Japanese Breakfast
• “Black Cow” – Steely Dan

Listen to In The Groove with host Ryan Patrick Hooper weekdays from noon-3 p.m. ET on 101.9 WDET or stream on-demand at wdet.org.

Happy Halloween, everyone! This week, on MI Local, I dedicated the latter third of the show to play some songs that aren’t conventionally Halloween-themed, lyrically speaking, but they just have a certain vibe about them that feels frightfully fitted to the spooky season.

Leading off that set is the theremin-centric soundscapes of Via Mardot, with a song called “Portals.” This is a slightly older song by the multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer, but you can follow her on Instagram and find more information about her latest album, Higher Higher Burning Fire.

Along with these “eerie-Halloweeny,” or, as I dubbed them, “…music to carve pumpkins to…,” I also played new music from Kalamazoo-based singer/songwriter Elisabeth Pixley-Fink and Detroit-based artist Na Bonsai. We were also to exclusively premiere new tracks from Ypsilanti singer-songwriter Chris DuPont and Detroit-based indie-rock band Speed Circuit, the latter of which has an album release party THIS SATURDAY at Bowlero Lanes Lounge!

I’m off next Tuesday, as NPR presents live coverage of the presidential election, but I’ll have another power-hour showcase of all-local music ready for you on Nov. 12 — Tune in!

See the playlist below and listen to the episode on-demand for two weeks after it airs using the media player above.

This week, we’re going all-in on spooky season, from creepy concerts to canine costume contests.

Plus, a couple events unrelated to Halloween for the faint of heart. Read on to learn more.

Spooky sounds

This Friday, Oct. 25, Jon Moshier’s Rock & Roll Horror Show is coming back from the dead! Now in its second year at Cadieux Cafe, the show will feature live performances from garage rock royalty The 3-D Invisibles and Eastside Elvis & the Motor City Mafia, as well as tarot readings from Moon Club, featuring our own Amanda LeClaire. Join us for a night of spooks and scares, and wear your best costume to be featured on stage as best dressed! This event is 21+ and tickets are $25. For more information, visit our events page.

Then, tune into WDET on Saturday, Oct. 26 from 4-6 p.m. to hear Jon Moshier’s award-winning Halloween special! Featuring vintage novelty music and freaky film trailers, this is the perfect soundtrack for finishing up your costume or carving pumpkins. Plus, catch an encore presentation just in time for trick-or-treating on Halloween night from 6-8 p.m.

Trick-or-treats

Head to Eastern Market on Saturday, Oct. 26 for their third annual Trick or Treat Market. Customers of all ages are encouraged to shop in costume, and the first 500 kids to visit the Welcome Center will receive a free bag of candy. The market will be open from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., and admission is free and open to the public. For more information, visit easternmarket.org.

Then, check out PAL-oween at The Corner Ballpark on Saturday, Oct. 26 from 2-5 p.m. This family-friendly fall festival focuses on safe and fun trick-or-treating, with activities like bounce houses, tug-of-war, crafts, sack races, corn hole, face painting, a photo booth and more. Admission is free and costumes are encouraged. For more information, visit their Eventbrite page.

The 11th annual Grand Circus Dog Park Howl-O-Ween Costume Contest is also on Saturday, Oct. 26 from 2-4 p.m. Residents are encouraged to dress up with their doggos for a pooch parade and costume contest, with prizes for Best Costume, Scariest Costume, Most Creative Costume, and the Best Pet & Parent Combination. This annual event features Halloween-themed games and treats for dogs, a live performance by DJ Skeez, and seasonal delights like Pup’kin Spiced Lattes and “Buddy Bones” for the pups, plus pizza and cider for their parents. For more information, visit downtowndetroit.org.

Creative cocktails

For something more subtly spooky, check out The Upright’s Prohibition Cocktail Experience in the basement of Oak & Reel. On Sunday, Oct. 27, guests will be immersed in the mystique of a bygone era, where dim lighting, haunting melodies and period-inspired cocktails set the stage for a thrilling adventure into Detroit’s clandestine past. During this event, guests will savor cocktails from the secretive speakeasies of Prohibition, and uncover fascinating tales of Detroit’s role in the Prohibition era and its underground bars. Guests are encouraged to dress in their best 1920s attire or come as a specter of the past. Tickets are $100 per person, and include a tasting flight of Prohibition-inspired cocktails with light snacks provided by Chef Jared Gadbaw. For more information, visit their website.

Art exhibits

“Spectrum: A vibrant voyage through color,” is the newest art exhibition showing at the Carr Center. Open now through Nov. 8, the exhibition features works from the Amber Collective, exploring color and light. An artist reception will be held on Friday, Oct. 25 from 6-8 p.m. For more information, visit their Facebook event.