WWW Site of the Week

My heart's on fire...

Evil lurks in your computer. No, silly, it's not all that porno your floormate downloaded from the Internet. The Night Gallery (http://www.wbm.ca/users/kgreggai) is where you'll be spending this Thursday night! (play evil_laugh.wav here) Yes, visit the site "where it's Halloween 365 days a year." Finally, you may enter the true multimedia experience of the dark side! (play lightning.avi).

Yes, my poor mortals, only at this site can you look upon three skeletons playing Tarot cards at a table and still survive to carry out the rest of your miserable, torturous lives. For, after viewing this page, you will be eternally haunted by spinning skulls, spooky background music, and distorted diabolical symbolism. Even the corny "top 5%" accolades that annoyingly pop up before the best parts of the page illustrate the worst of the seven deadly sins -- hubris. Ah, pride, how trendy thou art!

Anyway, this website isn't grotesque or anything really yucky (play gore.mov), but if you can apply the word "beautiful" to that which is aesthetically scary, then this website is a beauty. Netscape 3.0 and Internet Explorer work the best, but even the features with 2.0 are pretty wicked: frames, a Halloween countdown counter, and a graphics page. You too can download the best in quality scare-o-vision, from crystal balls to laughing skulls to a demonic background. And be sure to check out the screamingly excellent links.

The online newsletter The Night Gallery provides -- filled with historical articles ("Did Edgar Allan Poe die of Rabies?"), ratings of other scary homepages, and choice haunted houses to visit -- makes up for the rest of the verbal pus on the page. Not that I surf the web for content, but the lame parts of the site are the author's personal horror literature and pictures. His love page (play barf.wav), a fartology page (heinous!) and a page plastered with photos from a Halloween party where all his friends got drunk, all add up to one word: gross.

Please, e-mail the bloke to let him know that it's necessary to clear the world's evils of clichés and bad middle-aged angst-induced lifestyles. You can even submit works to the author's page (the devil take ya!).

Otherwise, for a final clencher to get you to sell your soul to this website, here lies a quote from a satisfied customer of The Night Gallery: "Nothing fills me with desire like a fresh bleeding papercut." Or, as a fellow vampire friend once told me, "Mmm mmm, tastes like Halloween." (play bite.mpg).

Please E-mail StreetWeb@dp.upenn.edu with any questions or comments.