ghost run

Not only does Atlas Obscura deliver postcards from the world's curious and esoteric locales, they also have a pretty nifty blog, which is celebrating thirty-one days of Halloween by featuring its creepiest and most haunting places. It is ghoulish--especially the tales of catacombs that ring of urban legend and highlighting the other consecrated sites that have a reciprocal relationship, a ceded and imparted spell-binding, with their visitors--and certainly worth investigating for raising holiday spirits.

jinkies

With Halloween and trick-or-treating fast approaching, I thought it high time for a little holiday roundup.  I thought that this costume idea, from the opening credits of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?--the scary witch-doctor, was very clever and instantly recognizable.  Myself, when I was very little, I can remember, however, wanting to be Velma "Liz" Dinkley.

For those of you still looking for a costume idea, with the democratization of shiny colour-printing and papercraftiness, I defer to the excellent website Superpunch and this collection of downloadable and printable masks (or come up with your own design) for holiday cheer.

great pumpkin

Halloween is a strange sort of holiday, and I bet this one will be the scariest yet with the slow, creeping spread of Swine Flu. It is sort of rather a bump in the road towards the long processing of the holiday season to come, and in Europe at least, transitional since we had the time change and the dark days that make for a zombified sort of week, miserable and staving off everyone else's contagions. I got candy to ward off the reprisal of the neighbourhood kids, but I doubt we'll have many visitors, unless parents can convince their children the hottest costumes are doctors and nurses and Asian tourists (with surgical masks--who's laughing now?), like the cast of Outbreak, Twelve Moneys, the Thaw, etc.

All Hallows' Eve

Halloween causes reflection of the nature of terror, the nature of fear--though they all this ghoulish mimicry is to either appease or confuse what terrorizes us. Considering all the different lenses on what's scary, I doubt anyone wants to emulate the frightening things out there. It's time to play the Pyramid: stubborn stains, having a wash that's not whiter than white, not having the appropriate tool for DiY projects, not having superior supplemental homeowners' insurance, not having the perfect partner, paying too much for anything whatsoever, not having a perfectly-toned body, hay-fever and seasonal allergies, dated ringtones and Handys and PCs! Oh my! And guess what? That's just European tv. Apparently my mother purchased a giant plasma televison to experience larger-than-life pharmaceutical passion-plays in the States. Instead maybe we dress up like those consumers we see in the commercials everyday to appeal or confuse.