08/17/2026
With last week being so busy and with the loss of Reggie Bannister, we have been quiet about this. So, who wants to hear a fun story? As many of you know, comedian, Matt Rife, was recently in Bangor for his show at the Maine Savings Amphitheater on the Waterfront. After we came home that Saturday night, from seeing Super Troopers 3 at Black Bear Cinemas, we noticed a fair amount of traffic in town from that show getting out.
At the shop the next day, I had a customer ask me if Matt Rife was in our shop the day before, because he was wearing a "Based on the Novel by Stephen King" t-shirt. I thought really quick about the customers and traffic flow in the shop that Saturday, and replied with "I don't think so", and added that that particular shirt design is fairly common and not unique to our inventory. So, I further assured myself that Matt Rife likely got that shirt from another source.
To be clear, Nick and I love comedy, and I, myself, did some stand-up comedy a long time ago. But, we have not kept up with more recent stand-up comics. So, I was not familiar with Matt Rife or what he looks like.
Come the following Monday, one of our part-time employees, Logan asks me, "Hey, was Matt Rife in here over the weekend?", to which I responded, "You're the second person to ask me that. I don't think so." Logan then tells me that he saw, via Facebook, that Matt Rife had been to Portland Pie Company on that Saturday and that Rife was a horror fan. So, he felt like Rife would have certainly come into the shop. It's not until Logan starts to talk about how one thing Rife is known for is how good looking he is, and then it clicks. "Oh wait! We DID have a guy in here who made a purchase (including a Based on the Novel by Stephen King shirt) and the other employee with me at the time and I regarded about how he was SO nice and SO pretty!"
Logan then proceeds to tell me that Rife is one of the guys who bought Ed and Lorraine Warren's house, after Lorraine's passing and runs a Warren Museum of the Home and Haunted Articles that the Warrens collected from their cases. So I, of course, start to worry that I, a horror fan, may have missed something really notable. I then, finally pulled up the Portland Pie Company post, and exclaimed, "Oh Sh*t! That's him! That guy WAS in our shop!"
And on top of that, the shirt in the photos and videos from his show IS INDEED the shirt that we sold to him that Saturday.
So:
1. Comedian Matt Rife, if you see this, we are SO sorry that we didn't catch your identity. But, we at The Emporium Spooky Goods & More LLC hope you still enjoyed your visit and we certainly enjoyed talking to you.
2. For those wondering about what Matt Rife is like in "real life", he is very nice and very pretty.
