From the Archives
19: Kinderhook Blob, or “Trick-or-Treating”
My hobby of collecting stories about the hidden world of casters and cryptids is not hidden amongst my own kind, so every so often, someone will pass along a story that merits inclusion in the collection. I cannot say I’m fond of the very end of this story, but that’s a personal bias, not a reflection of the caster’s storytelling ability.
Only 983 tales to go.
Dear Abe,
I was at the tournament and heard from REDACTED that you were putting together stories about cryptids, casters, and mapped cryptids. I don’t know if you want them funny or scary or what, but I have one to add, if you want it.
I mapped the Kinderhook Blob south of Albany, New York, and for two years now, I’ve been nursing an idea. I never thought it would turn into such a fiasco.
When I was a kid, I loved trick-or-treating more than life itself,. Every year, I came up with a new costume, and my enthusiasm grew and grew. I raised the number of houses I’d go to, no matter how far I had to walk to find a hundred porchlights promising free candy. I went in the rain. One Halloween, we had a layer of frost that was almost snow, and I wore my winter coat over my Charlie’s Angels outfit. And the year my parents said I was too old to go out anymore, it was like I’d given up a limb. All the zip went out of the whole Halloween season for me. When classes started in the fall, my mind leaped all the way to Thanksgiving. I couldn’t watch Great Pumpkin or give out candy. I Just thought I’d have to wait until I had my own kids before I could trick-or-treating again, and that seemed years away. But then I discovered I was a caster during my third year at Columbia, and it wasn’t too long before I made my way to Kinderhook to do some cryptid hunting.
The blob, I’m sure you already know, is just that: an amorphous white ball of gelatin that first showed up in the 1960s (which makes it older than my dad. Ha!). It’s about three feet tall and smells like burnt bacon wrapped in filthy socks. It freaked out a bunch of kids back then—they thought it was a ghost, I guess. Once I got to the woods in Kinderhook, it was actually pretty easy to find and even easier to map. I expected it to be much bigger—someone saw it in 2017 and said it was seven feet tall. But it’s actually about the size of a five-year-old girl.
When I was a five-year-old girl, I couldn’t wait to go trick-or-treating as Hannah Montana.
I bet you can guess where I’m going with this.
I went to the Spirit of Halloween store that opened in the strip mall not far from my apartment and looked at their costumes. I couldn’t decide if my mapped Kinderhook Blob was male or female, so I spent a long time looking at ninja costumes, Care Bears, Paw Patrol, as many neutral costumes as I could find. Then, watching a little boy pull a simple “ghost” sheet costume over his head, I thought, Who needs a costume? I saw E.T.—I know what we’ll do.
On Halloween night, I doused Blobby Brown (that’s my nickname for it) in Salt & Stone Body Mist—the Santal & Vetiver scent will cover up freaking skunk, if you use enough of it—got an orange Boo Bucket from McDonald’s, and out we went. It was just after dark, so the fact that Blobby glides without feet across the sidewalk went unnoticed.
At the very first house we went to, the woman who came to the door praised Blobby’s costume for its “perfect trick” of being translucent. When the mini-Snickers bar hit the bottom of our Boo Bucket, I was six years old again. It was an ecstatic feeling.
It wasn’t until about the eighth house and two blocks into the night that Blobby became bitchy. It had noticed that all the other trick-or-treaters were dressed up in costumes, but it wasn’t. This came to a head when a boy dressed as Batman, probably eight years old, snapped at Blobby, “What are you supposed to be?”
Bratman then laughed and pointed.
After that, Blobby defiantly refused to move. If it had had arms, it would have crossed them.
So, I put it back in its card and raced to the Halloween store again. The pickings were slim, of course; there were maybe two hours of Halloween left, so tomorrow, everything would be deeply discounted, and by next week, the store would be shuttered again until next year. All the popular ones—Wednesday Addams, Beetlejuice, various Pokémon—were long gone.
But there it was: the perfect costume. A mask with antennae and big bug-like red eyes, detachable wings, and even long-fingered claws. I dressed Blobby up as Mothman. It wasn’t the best fit, even when Blobby morphed and shifted around to accommodate the costume, but in the end, Blobby was happy again.
So, we hit the trick-or-treat street one more time, knowing the night was almost over. We didn’t have a lot of candy, but I was still having fun, and Blobby was a good sport about it. We had hit almost a dozen more houses before we ran into that same obnoxious Batbrat again.
He’d clearly had a good night—he was using a pillowcase as a trick-or-treat bag, and it was bulging. Even as a clear-minded adult, I was slightly envious. We were the only ones on the block, but the boy filled the sidewalk as we approached; it was as if he didn’t even notice me, the adult with Blobby. Instead, he stepped in front of it and said, “Now what are you supposed to be?”
Blobby’s costume flew in all directions as it suddenly morphed taller, wider, and thinner, stretching out like a translucent blanket. Then it fell on Batman and ate him.
I shrieked, “Blobby!”
I was so embarrassed.
“Spit him out! Right now!”
With great reluctance, Blobby put Batman back on the sidewalk feet-first and retreated a few feet. The boy seemed dazed but otherwise unhurt, and as soon as he looked around and started to complain, I scooped up Blobby and took off down the street. I’m not particularly athletic, but I ran the six blocks home without once pausing or looking back. I kept ahold of our Boo Bucket the whole way, too.
When we were safely back in my apartment with the shades pulled, I finally felt my heartbeat slow down a bit. I’d put Blobby on the futon, and when I looked, I could see Batman’s pillowcase floating around inside it. I insisted Blobby spit that out too.
I learned a great deal that night. First, Blobby made a point of sharing with me the following:
Good tasting: Snickers, Payday, Peanut Butter Cups
Bad tasting: Necco Wafers, Good & Plenty, Milk Duds
Best tasting: Batman
Second, I found and mapped a Snipe last summer, so next Halloween will be a totally different experience. I think I’ll dress it up as Pikachu.