Welcome to 2026's 31 Days of Heistoween, a daily dose of spooky icons, spine-tingling oddities, and — most harrowing of all — memes. Check back every day from now through October 31 for each daily entry!
I have a three-year-old in my house right now, which means watching a lot of stuff on repeat. A lot of parents hate this part of the gig, because some weeks it really is just the same three episodes of Sesame Street on a loop, but as someone who thinks about stories and how they work for a living, I kinda love it. It means I can see these things on a more granular level, and certain things leap out.
For instance, my kid likes Hotel Transylvania quite a lot right now, so I've seen that movie many times over the last six months. And there's one thing I can't get out of my head, a creature so terrifying, so uncanny, that it simply must make its way to Heistoween.
Tremble in fear before the Hotel Transylvania Piss Sponge!
Hang on, let me back up for a second. So, Hotel Transylvania is an animated film directed by the great Genndy Tartakovsky, about a world in which Dracula (Adam Sandler) has turned a sprawling Eastern European castle into a hotel exclusively for monsters, so they can have a vacation without living in fear of humans and their pitchforks and torches. The plot of the movie is largely focused on what happens when a human named Johnny (Andy Samberg) accidentally stumbles upon the hotel, and Dracula's efforts to deal with his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) coming of age. It's a heartwarming family comedy with a Halloween edge, but we're not really here to talk about the plot. We're here to talk about the Piss Sponge.
Because it's a hotel for monsters, Tartakovsky and company have a ball playing with all the various magical elements of the castle. Shrunken heads hang on the doors to each room to serve as sentient Do Not Disturb signs! Animated suits of armor are a combination security system and guest services communication hub! Quasimodo is the chef! And of course, housekeeping is done by a troop of witches, because they already have the broomsticks. Is there something vaguely sexist about this? Maybe, but don't distract me!
Anyway, in an early scene, all the monsters are showing up in the hotel lobby to check in, including Dracula's old friend Wayne (Steve Buscemi), a werewolf who has a veritable army of raucous cubs with his wife (Molly Shannon). The cubs come storming into the place and wreak havoc, tearing up furniture and, as young wolves often do, marking their territory and soaking the carpets in pee.
Dracula rings for housekeeping, the witches swoop in, and when confronted with puddles of pee on the floor, one of them pulls out a sponge. A sponge with eyes, and a mouth, and a voice. She puts the sponge down on one of the wolf cubs' puddles, and it does…well, this:
Watch that again. And again. And again. Do not look away. Do not avert your eyes from the wonders of the Piss Sponge! Look at himmmmmmmmm!
Hotel Transylvania is full of vaguely gross, macabre little details. One of my favorites is Dracula standing on a stool entirely made of toads, and there are dozens more. It's fun to rewatch the movie because you keep finding little visual jokes, but this? I have no explanation for this. It has haunted me since the day I saw it, and yet I cannot look away. I will shush everyone in the room when Piss Sponge emerges just so I can hear that laugh, part childlike wail and part thrilled cackle. Does Piss Sponge react the same way when he gets to soak up other liquids? Is he just really into certain adult water sports, or does he get equally excited when it's water, or wine, or Diet Coke (or I guess, since this is monster world, maybe we call it Diet Croak?)? Is he just really happy to be doing his job as a sponge at a monster hotel where werewolf cubs pee on everything?
We do not know. We cannot know. Piss Sponge, like so much of horror, is unknowable. He is a cosmic cipher from which there is no escape. He is inevitable and eternal.
God, I need to watch a different movie, don't I?
Come knock on our door tomorrow for even more 31 Days of Heistoween treats.
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