Photography by Megan Mumford

At first glance, it’d be reasonable to assume that Kate VanHerp’s downtown Saratoga apartment, while quite pretty, isn’t all that functional. That is, until you get to know Kate.

There’s the perfectly tidy secretary desk with the bright orange rotary phone tucked between books by Martha Stewart and Stephen King. The desk isn’t tidy because she doesn’t work at it (she spends her days editing TV show trailers and other promotional videos), the phone actually works, and the books? Well, let’s just say that if Martha Stewart and Stephen King had a kid, it’d be Kate—a hostess with the mostest whose affinity for scary movies is rivaled only by her affinity for thoughtful gifting.

Then there’s the old Ikea shelving unit she inherited from her parents, which holds a suitcase record player and a collection of old Disney movies on VHS tapes. The record player? Yep, it works—Kate put on an old Abba record to prove it. “Do you have a VCR?” I asked. “Two,” she said. “I got one at a sale at the Saratoga library.”

And then there’s the cathedral-style tabletop radio and vintage console TV, both of which likely date back to a time before the world knew the name Elvis Presley. Both devices Kate has hollowed out and retrofitted with newer models so that she can watch movies and listen to music the way her grandparents did.

With Bewitched playing on the flatscreen TV hidden within the confines of the antique one, it was easy to notice the spooky accents subtly dotting Kate’s apartment, like a headless bride and groom, a Frankenstein planter, and a Creature from the Black Lagoon movie poster hanging above her bed. “I like scary movies all year round, so I don’t just take that stuff out for Halloween,” she says. “But for Halloween, I go all out with cobwebs and crystal balls and pumpkins.”

Of course, every single item that finds its way into Kate’s home has been expertly curated. A Plattsburgh native who, during the pandemic, ran an antique booth with her mom, Kate’s favorite local spots to shop are Waverly Antiques in Ballston Spa and the biannual Washington County Antique Fair. “I go by what strikes an emotion, what speaks to me,” she says of her shopping process. “Then there are things I’ve always wanted, like the vintage Barbie I hunted down. But mostly it’s things I gravitate to for no rhyme or reason. I just go by feeling.”