I'm not like other people--I can't stand pain, it hurts me...

It's funny how something can be sort of scary because it's mysterious. Take, for instance, the yeti or mi-go or, in the parlance of the day, the Abominable Snowman. As far as I know, nobody's ever actually claimed the things are hostile or bloodthirsty, and even if they were (assuming for the moment they existed, and that yeti tracks weren't, say for instance, hare footprints that had melted in the sun and refrozen together, which is probable), the odds of anybody who isn't a Sherpa or a semi-suicidal mountain climber ever meeting one are, you know, Slim-to-none-and-Slim-just-left-town.

But I remember old episodes of In Search Of... and books about weird phenomena checked out from the library as a kid being spooky and even scary when they discussed the Abominable Snowman. And I wouldn't say I was unique in that: H.P. Lovecraft borrowed a Tibetan name for ol' Snowy, "mi-go," for a species of weird fungal monstrosities from Pluto who like to live in the thin air of Earth's mountains when they're visiting this planet, sightings of which lead to Tibetan myths, etc. I think I read somewhere that "mi-go" translates as "that thing," but Wikipedia says it translates as "wild man," which I find horribly disappointing: I love the idea of some Westerner asking about a half-seen shadow on the snow that seemed to pause and look back before vanishing behind a snowdrift, and his guide replying, "It's that thing."

Truth be told, while this is a Halloween entry and tendered in that spirit, I'm not sure how Halloweeny this classic bit'o'Chuck Jones is. There are certainly other Warner Bros. cartoons I could have picked with a more explicit Halloween vibe--witches or ghosts or whatever--but this one does have a classic monster, and (after all) who doesn't love that signature line: "I will name him George, and I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him..."?

Chuck Jones, "The Abominable Snow Rabbit," 1961: