New Jersey Native, The Grim Reaper, Is Having a Book Signing in Asbury Park

"What's Up Grim?": Haunted Hayriders in Their Own Words

I think, given the opportunity, we'd all like to face Death on our own terms. Well, if your own terms include facing Death at Asbury Park's Paranormal Books & Curiosities while he signs his new work of nonfiction for you, then you're in luck. Even if those aren't your exact terms, you've still got a rare opportunity for a pressure-free, non-final chat with the Grim Reaper this coming Saturday evening at 6:30pm.

Each October, the Grim Reaper earns a little extra cash by working at a haunted hayride in the town of Marlboro in his home state of New Jersey. He hops aboard a 1970s-era hay wagon to throw a little bit of a seasonal scare into the customers. Over the years, he's accumulated a collection of quotations from the patrons; and his collaborator, Adam Finchler, finally got him to write them all down.

The result is "What's Up Grim?": Haunted Hayriders in Their Own Words, and it contains over 200 of the things that people have decided to say when spooked by the Grim Reaper himself on an October night.

"I love your chest hair, feed it to me for breakfast," exclaimed the girl, merely ten years old, sitting on a hay bale before the embodied image of Death itself. The hay formed a bench upon a large wagon built in the 70's, pulled by a tractor through a field of long dead cornstalks in the brisk Autumn night.

"You got bacon? I'll go with you if you've got bacon," inquired a woman in her early thirties, facing the same dark cloaked figure moments later.

Adam Finchler is a perfect fit to help shepherd this project. His friend and colleague, Don Giovanni Records honcho Joe Steinhardt, says, "Adam Finchler has always had the ability to take the absurd and elevate it to an art. I really don't know anyone else who could make a book like this work..."

Having seen Adam's band, Finchler, play several times, I can vouch for the fact that there is no one else who can take subjects like a freaky painting or an Elvis Presley thermometer and use them to comment so incisively on the human condition.

The Grim Reaper will be signing copies of his collaboration with Adam Finchler, "What's Up Grim?": Haunted Hayriders in Their Own Words, at Asbury Park's Paranormal Books & Curiosities on Saturday, October 24th, at 6:30pm.