They almost come in threes… (thank God)

Just the other day we lost the original Romero zombie, Bill Hinzman, while this morning we woke up to see that Morgan Jones, a character actor in TV and film, died in Tarzana, Calif., on Jan. 13. He was 84. Jones amassed more than 170 television credits, appearing as a series regular in “The Blue Angels” in the early 1960s, “The Twilight Zone” and recurring on Broderick Crawford series “Highway Patrol.” The actor also appeared in more than 25 feature films, including The Giant Claw, Forbidden Planet and the 1957 cult classic Not of This Earth.

In other news, acclaimed horror author/artist/director Clive Barker survived a near-death experience having just awoken from a seven-day-long coma.

15 Days ago Barker hit Twitter with the following message: “Dear Friends, I’ve had some medical issues that have recently forced me away from my beloved desk and into the hospital…” He then vanished for over a week returning to explain that he received “Toxic Shock” from a visit to the dentist that put him into a coma. “In my case the dental work unloaded such a spillage of poisonous bacteria into my blood that my whole system crashed, putting me into a coma. I spent several days in Intensive Care, with a machine breathing for me,” said the relieved artist.

“Later, my Doctors said that they had not anticipated a happy ending until I started to fight, repeatedly pulling out the tubes that I was constantly gagging on. After a few days of nightmarish delusions I woke up to my life again, tired, twenty pounds lighter but happy to be back from a very dark place.”

He later added, “I’ve played down just how close to dying I was, but in truth I was very close.”

I can only imagine what horrible nightmares he had over the course of a week. But we’re thankful that the 60-year-old auteur pulled through to bring us more horrific visions in the coming years. Get well soon!