My cousin has a silimar costume. A hood with two red glowing LED eyes, and you see NO face at all. Very creepy.
My cousin is the Master of Halloween. He goes all out every year, and the house is now famous for its Halloween show. We were on the local news and everything.
He used to be a DJ, so he has tons of light and sound equipment. He set up speakers playing loud creepy noises and bloodcurdling screams that you could hear at least 10 blocks away. He used lights and black light to highlight his creepy decorations - spiders, snakes, bats, and miles of cobwebs. He had a dozen smoke machines going, keeping the whole front yard covered in a blanket of billowing cloud. There were dismembered mannequins all over the place, and the “body parts” had bugs and rats and fake blood and gore on them. There were gravestones everywhere, with hands reaching out from the ground, a mummy in a coffin near the door, and then my cousin answered the door in that costume and never said a word, just dropped candy into bags and made creepy sweeping hand movements to show kids which way to go. The kicker was the hanged man in a tree by the path to leave the yard. He strung up a friend who played dead… till every now and then when someone walked by.
We had to send a couple of people to the sidewalk to give candy to the kids who were too scared to go all the way up to the door! The best year was 2 years ago, when they had 2000 people come to the door before they ran out of candy. Even the city buses would stop in front for 2 minutes and the people (and driver!)would get out to look.
I’m going to call him tomorrow and ask for pictures.
Reading this on preview, it doesn’t sound that great… but I swear it is the most awesome Halloween spectacle I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, because it costs so much to put on such a big show, he didn’t do it last year. I’m trying to convince him to try again this year, maybe we can have candy sponsors or something, to bring the cost down. People were SO disappointed last year when he didn’t do it!
Halloween is the biggest holiday of the year in my office, so I always try to go all out. Last year I went as Roxie Hart from Chicago, with a blonde wig, a silver flapper dress and lots of makeup. The year before that I was Rogue from X-Men. Unfortunately I can’t post pics because my scanner isn’t cooperating at the moment. I’ll see if I can get a picture from my work computer tomorrow.
This year I’m going as Elektra from Daredevil. I already bought the sais and the black material for the costume (yes, I’m skipping the red dress – it’s cold in my office!), so now I just have to put the whole thing together.
In the Netherlands we don’t celebrate Halloween. But we do dress up for Mardi Gras, (Carnaval) in february. I understand that a little morbidity is encouraged when dressing up for Halloween. For our Mardi Gras, the emphasis lies more on dressing silly, colorful and cheerful. But we’re rapidly Americanizing, and the two feasts get more and more alike.
Dressing up in Holland, in february (think Seattle) requires warm clothes underneath. That limits the costumes somewhat
“Doormat”.
Fastest costume I ever made. Just 15 minutes with a roll of sturdy white newspaper, lots of clear tape, some black paint and an obliging cat.
“Black Plague Doctor/Crow”
Cheapest and easiest costume I ever made. A large sheet of black plastic from the gardenstore thrown over my coat, to falp in the wind. A storebought hat and mask and my face hidden behind a black stocking. I’ve kept the costume two more years because it was a great costume to offer guests that were a bit hesitant to dress up. “Come on, just put this on! No gooey make-up, dressed up in five minutes and no-one will recognize you!”.
I’m the right person on the pic, and as an extra gimmick I added two fake hands (wire dressed in white latex gloves). It made my arms impossibly long and that added to the something-is-not-quite-right-effect.
bouv: Did you ever get everybody in the room to stop when you pressed the start button on your belt buckle?
I don’t have any good costumes and frankly don’t like Halloween all that much, but if I’d gone with bouv. I’d have gone as, say, King Hippo or the Eggplant Wizard. Or maybe Kid Icarus.
