A chaotic Halloween

Earlier this year, I decided on one thing: I would embrace the spirit of Halloween all year long. That included indulging in all things horror and spooky. Halloween has been a favorite holiday of mine for a very long time – maybe because a day where the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest is something I can get behind! How cool is it that it's a day where the dead can freely roam the Earth and communicate with others? (Sidenote: I have definitely seen a lot more ghosts in my home than usual at this time of year.) I have been interested in ghosts, spooks, spirits and entities for a long time, and so of course I am obsessed with Halloween. It’s the one day of the year that I can let my “dark side” and “ghosty side” shine in all its glory!

And, you know, I thought all that obsession and planning was going to pay off when Halloween eventually came around. I thought it was gonna be a big event and that we would totally rock Halloween this year.

Well, that’s what I had hoped. It didn’t exactly turn out that way.

The first thing that went wrong is that we didn’t end up with a lot of money to spend on Halloween. Sure, I got Halloween decorations in early October, but not much was left for costumes, food and pumpkins. Not after spending a ton of money on both of our kids’ birthdays. Then our washing machine decided to conk out on us right before Halloween so we had to get a new one!

The second thing that went wrong is that I got sick. I came down with a nasty cold that had me out of commission for a while there. Fortunately, though, I was better by the time Halloween rolled around, but I was unable to leave the house for a couple of days because I was so sick so I was not able to get extra things we needed – like a couple of pumpkins! In fact, I had hoped we would’ve been able to go to Lone Pine Farm to get pumpkins, but Jesse was sick with a terrible cough for a couple of weeks. Then my husband was sick. Then I was sick!

So I had hoped that we could still get pumpkins on Halloween. But guess what? When my husband went to buy them today, they were ALL GONE! So were all the costumes. (Fortunately, we managed to get Jesse a costume earlier in the month.) So, we were pumpkin-less this year. Although I had a fake pumpkin outside (as part of the Halloween decorations) but that’s not the same thing!

And unfortunately, my daughter could not get a costume. So we brainstormed on a whole bunch of ideas for DIY costumes. (As a kid, I often wore a sheet to pass as a ghost on Halloween! One year, I wore my dad’s long-sleeve black shirt and, with my black jeans, I was a Jedi.) She finally settled on something but when her BFF came over on Halloween night, she helped my daughter to customize her costume and make it cooler. Yay!

And oh yeah, we still managed to get some candy. Kinda funny thing about that too: We didn’t get candy for trick-or-treaters until today! (Like I said, sickness had invaded my house this month. My daughter is the only one who didn’t get sick!) Luckily, candy is sold all year long, so my husband was able to score a couple of bags. Unfortunately, he didn’t get home before trick-or-treaters started knocking at our door, so, sadly, I had to turn some away, explaining we had no candy. Luckily, they didn’t egg our house! But I kept all the lights off until we had candy to give out. And, wow, we sure got a lot of trick-or treaters this year! We got trick-or-treaters of all ages, in fact. Some adults showed up costume-less asking for candy.

My husband took the kids and a friend trick-or-treating while I stayed behind to hand out the candy. I watched them heading off … into the rain. It was really pouring tonight. I was thankful for the rain, because we NEED it, but not so happy they were going out into it for trick-or-treating. Of course they returned home all soaking wet, but they had fun!

So despite the chaos of Halloween this year, we still managed to pull it off. 

I was so upset about the money situation because I know of people going ALL OUT on Halloween with decorations and costumes and everything, and we weren’t able to do that this year. We had to have Halloween on the cheap. But seeing all the pictures from friends and family who were able to throw money into celebrating Halloween and celebrating the day in all its glory got me so angry and upset that I was ready to abandon my Halloween fixation. I was ready to give up on Halloween. It’s like you have to be rich to have fun on Halloween! Ditto with horror, since that’s a part of Halloween.

But, later, I realized, you know, I love horror too much. I love Halloween too much. So what if I can't go all out on Halloween? Who says I have to? You don’t need to be rich in order to enjoy Halloween or even celebrate Halloween.

Screw that, anyway! I’m all about being frugal. And I love the whole DIY thing. And, on top of that, I’m not gonna give in to society trying to capitalize off of a holiday, like it always does! To enjoy Halloween, you don’t need to BUY EVERYTHING. You can’t put a price on Halloween. It should be enjoyed in its own way, no matter how rich or poor some people are.

So, yeah, I’m still gonna embrace Halloween like always. And I’ll indulge in horror, too. I don’t need to be rich to do that. And, anyway, despite the chaos of Halloween this year, we still had fun! 

Halloween on the brain

I know it’s not October yet, but I’ve definitely got Halloween on the brain. Last weekend, I was checking out some Halloween-themed recipes to make for the special day. And last week, Jen and I went shopping for Halloween decorations. (Of course, I already have a crate full of Halloween decorations, but I’m always up for checking out the new stuff every year. Plus, it’s fun to see the neat and scary stuff on display in stores.) We usually don’t start decorating for Halloween until it’s officially October, and since we wait for the first weekend in October to do the honors, that means we’ll be decorating the day after Jennifer’s 13th birthday!

Jennifer is excited about her birthday coming up, and not just because she’ll be turning 13. She is a HUGE horror movie buff, so she was thrilled to learn that a horror movie, Annabelle, will be out in theaters on her big day. She is holding out hope that one of her friends and their mom will take her to see the movie on that day – what a great birthday gift THAT would be! (I can’t take her myself because my husband will be working and there isn’t someone else to watch our young son, who is of course not old enough to see such a scary movie!)  She is especially excited because it’s about the haunted doll we were introduced to in the movie, The Conjuring. (Great movie, by the way! And Annabelle was a real haunted doll! Check out this link)(And if haunted dolls are your thing, check out what I wrote about Robert the Doll, a real haunted doll, in the Key West, Florida chapter of my new book, A Ghost on Every Corner.)

So, yeah, I went from talking about Halloween to talking about horror movies. Heh. But, actually, how could we let the Halloween month pass us by without a good dose of scary flicks? Every year, I try to watch a horror movie for every day of October. Unfortunately, we have not succeeded yet. Sigh. But we’re going to try again this year! So Jennifer and I spent some time yesterday putting together a list of horror movies to watch next month. We were aiming for 31 movies, but ended up with a little more than that.

I already had a list of Halloween movies to watch for October up here on the blog at this link. One list was for adults and the other is for kids. Jen checked out both lists and thought they were good selections, but with the new horror flicks that have come out since the adult list was put together, that particular list got a bit of revising this time around. We also included movies that weren’t particularly as scary but still fun to watch for a horror movie month.

This is our new list for adults:

1. The Amityville Horror
2. The Omen
3. The Grudge
4. Nightmare on Elm Street
5. The Woman in Black
6. Poltergeist
7. Saw
8. Saw II
9. The Others
10. Freddy Vs. Jason
11. It
12. The Shining
13. Pumpkinhead
14. The Conjuring
15. The Messengers
16. Insidious
17. Psycho
18. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
19. Creepshow
20. The Changeling
21. 13 Ghosts
22. Puppetmaster
23. Hellraiser
24. The Exorcist
25. World War Z
26. One Missed Call
27. Scream
28. The Ring
29. Night of the Living Dead
30. Carrie
31. Halloween
32. Gothika
33. Scary Movie
34. Children of the Corn
35. A Haunting in Connecticut
36. The Walking Dead
37. Zombie Town
38. Shaun of the Dead
39. Child’s Play
40. Interview with the Vampire

Of course, there are a whole lot of other horror movies we could add to that list. I have plenty more on my Netflix queue. In fact, I spent some time on Netflix yesterday and today arranging my queue to where I had almost all of the horror movies lined up to be sent next – well, with the exception of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, because Jesse REALLY wants to see that movie! (He just saw, and loved, the first one.) Some of those other horror movies are:

Children of the Corn 666
Devil’s Due
Devil’s Knot
Gallowwalkers
Murder Party
Bride of Chucky (Jennifer LOVED Child’s Play)
Seed of Chucky
Sinister
30 Days of Night
Dark Night of the Scarecrow
Intruders
The Innkeepers
The Howling: Reborn

And of course, there are always the sequels to some of the above-mentioned movies.

So it would seem we’re definitely ready for Halloween to get here. Jennifer even has her costume. Jesse doesn’t have a costume YET – he is still undecided – and I’m not entirely sure on whether or not I’ll dress up this year. (One year, I took the kids trick-or-treating as a monster bride.) We’ve got the food figured out, the decorations bought, the movies lined up and our costumes very nearly ready. Now all we’ll need is for Halloween to get here. (And then, of course, we’ll make a last-minute run out to the store to buy the candy!)

Halloween decorating

Yesterday, we decorated the house for a party Jennifer was having with her friends. This morning, those decorations came down. Later in the day, different decorations went up: Halloween decorations. Yay! I LOVE Halloween and I love Halloween decorations even more! Some of them can be neat, spooky and just celebrate the time of the year.

I think we overdid it with the pumpkins, though. But the pumpkins are a good Fall decoration, too.

One of Jen’s friends spent the night so she helped create and put up the decorations. It took me a while to find them all; I had them in two different boxes in two different areas of the garage. Once we had them all, they were all set out. Unfortunately, the witch decoration I had last year broke, so I’m hoping to get another one soon. You can’t have Halloween decorations without a witch! Or even a black cat. And maybe a monster.

But with what we have now, I was pretty satisfied with it. Jennifer likes it, too, but agreed we could use a bit more.

This year, I decided not to do spider webs, even though Jesse has a giant toy spider we could use for that. That might change later, though.

The kids made the ghosts out of paper. I know they could have made them with crepe paper, white bags or even coffee filters, but they really wanted to make them with paper so I told them to go ahead. Jesse also drew ghosts, as well as a pumpkin and a bat. He made a bat wearing a hat!

Just a note: Later, I moved the ghost to the front, under the hanging pumpkin, and in its place I put a pumpkin that Jesse had decorated when he was in preschool.

 Here's a close-up of the mantle.

After the decorations were done, I put on the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas and made hot dogs for lunch. While the food was cooking, I noticed Jennifer walking zombie-like. I asked her if she was practicing her zombie walk. She laughed and said “yes.” To which I replied, “That’s not how you do it. This is how you do it.” Then I started doing the Thriller dance. She and her friend laughed and did the Thriller dance, too.

When it was time to eat, I noticed that one end on one of the hot dog buns looked like it was chopped off. I held it up to the kids, made a scary face and said, “This one got decapitated. Eek!”

Later on, I was looking at pics I took from the party. In the group pic, the face of Jennifer’s friend was blurred. I asked her to look at it. I told her it was creepy and I freaked out because all of a sudden I was thinking of that movie, The Ring. But, of course, there was a logical explanation: Her friend had moved her head when I took the pic.

Jen’s friend left before the movie was over. After that movie, I put on Corpse Bride. One of my favorite scenes in that movie is when the Bonejangles sing the story of the Corpse Bride. Later, I was thinking about the doomed bride's plight, trying to imagine how I would feel if such a thing happened to me. I would probably have a broken heart, too, but then I’d realize something much more worse than being dead: Having to spend the afterlife wearing a dress! NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

31 Spooky movies for adults and kids

Recently, I read this interview with a writer who said she tries to watch one horror movie for every day of October, just to get into the Halloween spirit. Once upon time, I tried to do this, too. I even tried to put together a list of 31 movies for those 31 days, but ended up running out of some REALLY good ones so I moved on to other things.

Seeing that in the interview rekindled my curiosity to see if I could actually put together such a list. And, ta-da! You'll find that list below. I even managed to put one together for kids! Yay!

In the lists below, I have included movie preferences in the event of remakes or other versions of movies which I didn't care for. I also noted one movie in the list for kids that frightened my daughter at the time she saw it so I included a note on a good age group for it -- just my opinion, though.

There are A LOT of good horror movies for adults that didn't make the cut since I could only include 31. These are the 31 I recommend but there are other good ones, too.

Enjoy!

31 Horror/Halloween Movies for Adults

1. The Thing (1982)
2. Friday the 13th
3. The Amityville Horror
4. The Messengers
5. Poltergeist
6. 13 Ghosts
7. The House on Haunted Hill
8. Fingerprints
9. Interview with the Vampire
10. Underworld
11. Gothika
12. The Grudge
13. The Grudge 2
14. Night of the Living Dead
15. The Shining
16. Nightmare on Elm Street
17. It
18. Psycho
19. The Exorcist
20. Dawn of the Dead
21. The Ring
22. Saw
23. Saw II
24. The Omen
25. The Omen II
26. The Omen III
27. The Evil Dead
28. The Changeling (1980)
29. Hellraiser
30. 1408 (Unrated Version)
31. Halloween



31 Horror/Halloween Movies for Kids

1. Corpse Bride
2. The Addams Family
3. The Addams Family Values
4. Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
5. Twitches
6. Twitches, Too
7. Bedknobs & Broomsticks
8. Ghostbusters
9. Hocus Pocus
10. The Nightmare Before Christmas
11. Coraline (not recommended for the under-10 crowd)
12. The Haunted Mansion
13. Halloweentown
14. Monsters, Inc.
15. Gremlins
16. The Worst Witch
17. Scooby-Doo
18. Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
19. The Dog Who Saved Halloween
20. The Canterville Ghost
21. Blackbeard’s Ghost
22. The Little Vampire
23. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
24. The Halloween Tree
25. Spookley: The Square Pumpkin
26. Clifford the Big Red Dog: Clifford’s Big Halloween
27. Scary Godmother: Halloween Spooktacular
28. Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie
29. Casper
30. Monster House
31. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

The weirdos are coming!

Recently, I asked a friend in an e-mail, "What are your plans for Halloween?" Later, I started to kick myself upon realizing that I was asking her about Halloween -- and it wasn't even October yet! But it seems that there are people out there who think so. And maybe even think that since Halloween is on its way, it's all right to dress up and wear all this dark and Goth-like make-up.

Lately, when I have ran errands, I've seen quite a few people dressed up all Goth or like a character out of a Highlander movie, wandering the streets or hanging out at the stores. I've also seen them malling. Instead of hanging out at Hot Topic like these people normally do, they've taken to the streets.

I don't really mind seeing people all dressed up like this -- some of their get-ups are pretty creative and interesting -- but, I mean, COME ON! I think they really SHOULD dress normal if they're going grocery shopping or hanging out at the mall. Once, I was even tempted to walk up to a girl who had her hair all dyed and white and black make-up splattered all over her face and say, "Um, it's not Halloween yet."

It IS fun to dress up and maybe even weird people out with different kinds of costume and make-up ideas, but it just seems to be out of place if they're not at some costume party, or something. But, then again, maybe this is like people who dress all in black all the time or go around wearing bling-bling. Maybe it's just a "clothes thing" and not so much an "attitude" or "lifestyle" thing. It's still kinda weird seeing people all dressed up like this at, say, the local grocery store or bank.

Then again, maybe ALL of the "Halloween craze" the stores are doing is starting to rub off on these people.

As for us, we're not going crazy over costumes yet (although we DO know what we each want to be), but I'm definitely itching to start decorating for Halloween. Something more in that area is my idea of fun!