Fellow Halloween Fanatics, Show Yourselves!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

You know who you are. Nothing excites you like a sale on zombie dogs. You haunt resale shops year round to find the perfect book to transform into a Necronomicon. You own enough skeleton candles to outlast a nuclear winter. Your life-sized prop figures have names and backstories to shame Tolkien. When you tell friends that you spent the day trying to determine the best way to stuff a disarticulated skeleton into a trunk, no one bats an eye.

Talk to me. Tell me about this year’s plans, and how you’re preparing for the big day.

Personally, I’m running way behind where I should be. My medieval wisewoman-gone-mad costume isn’t assembled yet. I’m still trying to figure out how to thematically group all my “stuff” into a cohesive story. I’m playing with a theme involving my (mad) scientist and magical witch working in harmony to create the ghastly doings that will be happening in the rest of the yard. Last year’s Dead Man’s Party was a cinch by comparison. I’ve been told by one acquaintance that she’s confident I’ll pull off an Extreme Halloween to rival even my neighbor’s locally famous display, but I’m feeling like it’s crunch time. Whichis not a bad feeling, as I work well under deadline pressure. It also gives me an excuse to have the house littered with gruesome stuff. Even the rat cages are lined with theme fleece!

2

I haven’t put up window decorations because I’m worried about fading. I want my 3 foot Chucky doll to last.

I cancelled my original costume idea due to financial concerns.

Instead, I will be wearing my Tomorrow Knight (mark 3.2) to the Philly Geek party, and a variation on my clown outfit to the Henri David ball.

Tomorrow Knight- A helmet made of sheet metal, it covers all but the mouth. The nose is a beak and the eyes have mylar stretched over them so they are mirrored silver from the outside. Mose sheet metal epaulets. The chest piece is squares of shiny aluminum. The front is painted with a purple eagle emblem. The sides feature metal tubing. The bracers (forearm armor) are purple fabric, metal squares, and copper fabric paint. The greaves (shin to knee armor) are purple plastic decorated with metal squares and more fabric paint. For a weapon, I’ll be carrying my lightstaff. The lightstaff is a flourescent bulb protection tube wrapped with frosted contact paper and stuffed with light emitting diodes. The on switch is set in a clear knob on the base, so that striking the staff on the floor turns it on and off.

Clown Decadent- A stove pipe hat and tailcoat I made myself from an old motley bathrobe. The fabric is patterned in squares and very thin rectangles of dark blue, green, brown, and marroon. The buttons on the coat are shaped like hands and balloons. I will wear a double bow tie in black and silver. I will wear a black cummerbund. I made thigh high leggings from an old black and white striped shirt. Hanging from the cummerbund will be the stripped hood of that shirt- I will not be wearing pants or undergarments. I may continue the striped theme by wearing a different black and white striped shirt or I may go shirtless. I will also be carry my lightstaff topped with an orb from a premade staff at Party City. The orb contains spinning, blinking LEDS and makes a suitable headpiece to the staff.

BTW IMO You left out another quality of a halloween fanatic-

Your costumes are now so involved that while you love browsing Halloween stores, nothing in them can help you. For your costumes, you need fabric stores and Home Depot.

3

raises hand

Why yes, my house has been Halloweened-out since August 1st. Don’t judge me! I LOVE Halloween.

Usually, I do a picture tour of my house on my blog, but this year I’m going to do it big- Youtube, baby! Oh yes, I’m movin’ up the technological ladder, my friends! I actually need to get on that, so I do believe I will do so tomorrow. For my tour, I shall wear my sparkly Devil costume and life will be grand.

I have a few super cool things in my house: a pirate ghost that I bought at a KB Toy Store Outlet in Las Vegas (his eyes light up and he says some schpeel about loving Halloween), a gypsy in a big crystal ball that is animated and tells your fortune (I’ve seen cheaper versions in stores, but they don’t look nearly as cool as mine), and my most favorite is a treasure chest from which a skeleton pops out! This is a ghetto lil’ YouTube video of my skeleton in a chest. He’s pretty cool. Yay. I took black poster boards and cut out spiders that are all over my walls, we hung fabric to create creepy drapes, and there are cobwebs everywhere.

The scariest part? We bought a giant Zac Efron poster. TERRIFYING! Ok, it kind of goes with the kitsch theme of our living room- we also have a signed picture of Kevin Federline on year round display because it brings the funnies :). The Zac thing is funny because I know him, so a giant picture of him groping himself on the cover of Rolling Stone is hilarious.

I have two other costumes that I bought this year- Little Miss Muffet (which my ass hangs out of, making it inappropriate for most occasions) and a pirate wench. I’m excited, needless to say!

Oh! Last night I baked ~spooky~ cupcakes- there are vampires, pumpkin patches, and spider webs. Oh, and copious amounts of sprinkles, naturally.

Oh oh oh! And my pumpkin this year? Yeah, it’s going to be Mickey Mouse! I got two lil’ round pumpkins that I’m going to stick on a big round one and it’s going to be adorable. I will win the world. And Halloween. But mostly the world.

Did I mention I love Halloween?

4

I forgot to mention my decorations. My place is pretty much decorated for Halloween every day. I have cardboard busts of the Mummy, Frankenstein and his Bride on the walls. I have a a wooden display case dedicated almost entirely to the Universal Studio monsters. I have a breakfront showing more USM things and other monsters. Atop the breafront are large monster toys and a Big Bad Frankie. I have Rodan hanging from the ceiling in the living room and the dogburster from Alien 4 hiding behind an airconditioning pipe in the living room. A silver skeletal hand, a green zombie hand and two monsters hang from the fixture in the dining room. The refrigerator is adorned with another Frankenstein and a mummy. It also has a magnetic gargoyle on it. One corner of the dining room ceiling is filled with various toy bats. Next to my computer center is another display case. On top is a large gargoyle and a skeletal hand reaching upward and holding a bottle of Bat’s Blood hot sauce. There’s a Creature From The Black Lagoon jigsaw on the wall in my living room. I also have a large box of Monster In My Pocket on the wall.

5

I’m somewhat bummed out, actually. My decoration options are limited because I live in an apartment, but in previous years, I’ve been allowed–even requested–to build small haunted house arrangements at the office for my coworker’s children. It always took lots of improvisation and very fast setup/strike work–the rooms were only available for a single day, so I couldn’t prebuild. This year, some party-pooper in legal got into it and decided there were alleged insurance issues, so we can’t do it this year. Now I have no place to set up my Egyptian tomb set-piece, or the web tunnel, or the “Mistletoe Bough” room. I’ve been thinking of setting a whole haunted house to the “Mistletoe Bough” theme, actually, with perhaps a few touches from P.C. Hodgell’s “A Ballad of the White Plague” (a decidedly macabre Sherlock Holmes story).

My new costume is far from ready. I’ve had to scrap my wing design completely, and I’m not happy with the claws. I also don’t know how well the “stone” finish paint will hold. I’ll probably fall back on my Dead Pirate Sketch outfit this year, which has the virtue of being very simple. My nephew has mentioned some of us going collectively as the Mystery Men, but we haven’t really done anything about it.

On the other hand, I have another Halloween project that’s almost ready to share. It may be a total flop, but at least it won’t take up much space or get greasepaint all over everything. :slight_smile:

6

This looks like the perfect place to ask about how to scare the pants off the little ones.

I have a pumpkin that has a flash pot in it and when I load it with flash paper will, at the flick of a switch, have flames poof out of it. (I love having my pyro ticket)

I have access to a tiny fogger. It can be hidden almost anywhere and is remote control. I have a cannon ball style bomb that it can fit in so it looks like the bomb is smoking.

What else can I do to make the kids scream? This is my first Halloween in my own house and there are plenty of kids in the neighbourhood. The downside is that my fiancé and I have made a deal about decorating. I am allowed 1 bin full of decorations, and that’s it. So the more compact the ideas the better…. Or I can just hide some of the stuff at work.

Teach me oh wise ones.

7

One of the best ways I’ve found to get a scream out of kids is to get them to creep/crawl through a dark tunnel, then put a scare over the exit to the tunnel. You can make a small tunnel pretty easily with a roll or two of black plastic from Home Depot, some duct tape, and twine supported by posts or stakes. You just want to hide the ugly exterior of the tunnel from sight. Good spiderwebs in the tunnel are a plus. (Not those cheesy fluffy ones–I use a sort of fan attachment on a drill that sprays webs of cold vulcanizing fluid. It makes very realistic webs.)

If you don’t have the option of funneling the kids through a tunnel, go for something that grabs at them (but doesn’t come too close, of course). Perhaps a disembodied mechanical hand that pops out of a mailbox or similar hiding place? The key to getting a scream is surprise. The more sudden the motion and the more innocent or unobtrusive the hiding place, the better.

8

How old are your intended victims? How much space do you have to work with? How scared do you want the kids to be?

OTTOMH I have two tips. If the kids are third graders or so have a fake newspaper printed up with an article about a child being killed in a haunted house. Casually leave the paper on a table near the entrance.

Second, if you set off something to make the kids run figure out which direction they’ll run in and have something there. This makes the kids feel they can’t just run back to the entrance and are surrounded by terror.

9

“Props” that change into scare actors are excellent for scaring children of all ages. This will require a really good costume and a dedicated actor. Having someone run interference to distract the marks while the actor prepares to erupt into action is also a great idea. I have made 3rd and 4th graders cry and pee their pants with this technique. :slight_smile:

10

I’m afraid, Miss Bellissima, you’re going to need to provide a cite for that one.

:smiley:

11

My workplace friends and I spent two hours at the office on Saturday morning (with management’s permission) decorating for Halloween. We now have a graveyard in our quad, complete with free-standing tombstones, fallen leaves, and a six-foot cardboard coffin with a decaying arm reaching out. One of my coworkers is married to a forensic science buff, so we also set up a murder scene in one of the vacant cubicles. Oh, and we have a ghoul with a meat cleaver guarding the front entrance.

Apparently word has gotten around to the other departments, because we had a steady stream of tourists all day. We may have to start charging admission. :smiley:

12

And the services of a seamstress who works for the traveling production of The Lion King. Amen!

13

Halloween was so awesome when I was growing up. Our San Diego neighborhood was full of families with kids. In the mid-60s, the evening’s parade went on for hours.

By the time I got to high school, it was still exciting, but the number of TOT’ers had begun to diminish. We had blacklight jack-o’-lanterns and played a mix tape with “The Thrilling Chilling Sounds of the Haunted House” and the intro to "Black Sabbath". In college, Halloween Parties were just an excuse to get f*cked up with a mask on. We had some great parties, but the old-fashioned-fun factor seemed to decline with every 10/31.

Last year I took to walking around my new neighborhood (Willow Glen, San Jose). I got a new sense of wonder when I saw the displays people had set up. This year, the spiders and gravestones are cropping up again, and I’m starting to notice things. Some households have the same stuff, others have upgraded, some are joining in for the first time. Trying to keep up with the Joneses, zombie-style. Can’t let that guy down the street have more skeletons or vampires!

Halloween is starting to be FUN again.

14

I built a few new props for this year, so I can’t wait to try 'em out:

Three eight foot long, six foot tall, sections of faux wrought iron fence; part of my front yard is being converted to a cemetery.

A 6’2" mannequin; just a sort of generic creepy looking ghoul.

In previoius years we’ve had a few kids crying and many refusing to even come in–this year I’m hoping to up the ante!

15

I liked Halloween when Kid Kalhoun was a wee sprout, but these days I don’t get into it much. It’s more of a spectator sport for me. I used to love to do home-made costumes. that was the best part.

We’ll be in Vegas this year for Halloween. Something tells me that city will be enthusiastic. I hope!!

16

Halloween is my favorite holiday, because it’s the only one that gets better as you get older.

Seriously, all the other holidays, including Christmas, get to be kind of a chore as you get older. There are all these obligations. You have to go see family, so you’re traveling all over the place, or you have them visit you, which means lots of crowding and cooking for a small army. And when you get older, you have to do all the cleaning up. Ugh.

But Halloween, you can do exactly as much or as little as you feel like. It’s the one day where you can really cut loose and let your freak flag fly, and no one even bats an eyelash. Well, except for that chick with the bats hanging from her eyelashes. And there’s candy!

Unfortunately, I’m a real awkward fit, and I’m short on funds, so my yearning for a truly great Halloween costume remains unrequited. sigh. But I do think I shall pay a visit with some friends to this haunted attraction, which looks like a gas. That “Freakenstein” costume is way cool.

17

Goth is just so early 2000s. This year my costume is a soon-to-be-dead-person, ie a 1930s test pilot.

18

That’s it, tonight I’m going to hit the halloween shop. I don’t have much of a yard to work with, but I’ll figure something out. I also need a costume for myself. I’ve always wanted to go as the Grim Reaper, but I’m a bit to tall for the costumes they have, they all show my ankles. The little one is going as a duck, though she’s been wearing it around the house every few days.

19

I used to LOVE Halloween. I used to live in a town just west of Salem, Massachusetts, the capital city of Halloweenland. They have a month-long (or longer) Halloween celebration with parades, dozens of haunted houses, street carnival and so on. Plus, lots of really decent bars, many with live music. It was always a lot of fun to go to Salem on or near Halloween for a night (or two), see the crazies, hit some bars, have a good time. Then…

Then I moved. To a town which is east of Salem. Which means I have to drive through Salem to get home. Through the capital of Halloweenland, where they have a month-long (or longer) Halloween celebration with parades, dozens of haunted houses, street carnival and so on. Plus, lots of really decent bars, many with live music. It’s a real pain in the ass getting through the city in October and the first week or so of November. And it’s made me HATE Halloween.

And it’s inexplicably getting worse every year. This year, for the first time, my school is cancelling night classes on the 31st, because it’s too hard for people to get through Salem to get there.

Bah. :wink: