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09/11/2004: A random Halloween survey…

X-E’s 2004 Halloween Season is almost upon us, hooray. Been working around the clock to get it ready for launchage very, very soon. My only real concern was keeping the same level of spirit as last year’s foray, while making it more manageable for this year’s version of myself, who has about 1/10th the time to putz around as I did last year. All that said, I’m stoked with the progress. It’s going to be a real test to keep the Halloween Countdown going strong everyday with everything else I got going; fortunately, I love doing this shit jussst enough to not balk and run repeats.

In fact, I’ve already done my part to scour the material world for virtually every Halloween thing I could find — or at least, the stuff I didn’t already write about last year. Sooo happy to see all the stores get down with their spooky selves this early in September. They haven’t exactly gone balls out with the Dracula stuff yet, but there’s more than enough to whet anyone’s satanic whistle. Realizing that I’ve signed on to basically come up with some new Halloween topic for around 45 days straight, I may have spent a little too much dough on plastic werewolves and witch window clings. Got some neat stuff, tho. :)

Big thanks to the several readers who offered to send in videos and other Halloween goodies — your help is most appreciated, even if I didn’t happen to need what you had. I’m still on the lookout for more Halloween goodies, (most critically any kind of Halloween specials/tv episodes/commercials taped off television) so definitely shoot me an e-mail if you’ve got the goods, yo. Get ready to get sick of Halloween long before October rolls around, because we’re getting pretty close to The Big Day.

In the sprit of all that jizz, a very general spooky survey: share some of your Halloween memories. Don’t care what they have to do with — costumes, parties, candy, movies, whatever. Oh, and if you’re usually a lurker, don’t be afraid to speak up. We aren’t exactly elitist around these parts.


Posted by Matt. E-mail me!

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Discussion Thread: 82 comments

I remember one year when my mother was taking my brother and I out trick-or-treating,she was wearing a gold foil hair wig,and some girl thought it was real,where she had it done,and went screaming back to her parents about it. I hope she reality came to her gently.

Ghosted by Overlord @ 09/12/2004 11:11 PM EDT

This story always makes me a little sad…

Anyway, when I was younger, every Hallowe’en, our local radio station, (CKLP 103.3! Go Parry Sound!), would have a contest for all of us little school kiddies.

I sat up listening to the radio after trick or treating, hoping I might get that lucky call telling me I won something.

At like, eleven, I finally went to bed, only to be dragged out of my room ten minutes later by my parents who were telling me that the radio station was on the phone.

After talking with the host for a few minutes, it dawned on me that not only had I won something, but I had won THE something. The grand prize! A brand new bicycle! And coupons! Glorious coupons for every restaurant in my home town. There must’ve been $200 worth of free food. (FREE! Without the Buy one, get one… part)

So you’re probably thinking, why would this make me sad?

Three reasons.
1) They gave me the wrong bike at first. I was like, 9, and the gave me this oversized behemoth of a bike that certain Tour-de-France types would ride.

2)They replaced the bike with one that proceeded to get run over by a truck a month later.

3)The coupons had extremely short expiry dates. I never got to use them.

And such is my tale of woe.

Rob

Ghosted by Rob @ 09/12/2004 11:45 PM EDT

I met my best friend on halloween in sixth grade; I was dressed as Anne of Green Gables, she was Sara Stanley (the Story Girl, from another series of novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery). I was a big nerd, and really unhappy, but then I found out that there were other nerds and we could be nerds together; to my embarrassment now, though, we also noted that there were even NERDIER nerds who could be looked down upon as we had been.

Best costume I ever had was when I dressed up as a wall. Took a side of a refrigerator box and painted it with tempera paint, and my dad helped me hot glue handles on the back. I made a picture frame for my face to stick through, and stuck a trash basket on the front for my candy. It got to be a pain in the ass to carry it around, but I was damn proud of it, and I think I got points for originality.

Ghosted by Rei @ 09/13/2004 12:03 PM EDT

my friends and i would always go around stealing pumpkins in high school and then throw them out of the window while driving on the freeway. they would never smash, though, since october in colorado can be frigid and the pumpkins would always freeze, but dammit we kept trying….

Ghosted by golden shower princess @ 09/13/2004 1:47 AM EDT

I want everyone to know I loved Halloween until last year (click my name). I bought an Ectomobile, and that was bar none the coolest Halloween ever, and everything since then has been a constant turbulent death roll of sadness and pain.

Ghosted by Aaron @ 09/13/2004 1:51 AM EDT

One year my friends and I all dressed up as pieces from a Monopoly set. I was the Boardwalk. The funniest thing was the abundance of soccer moms that thought the two girls going as dice were dominos, apparantly disregarding the Community Chest, thimble, and Monopoly money standing next to them.

Ghosted by Samantha @ 09/13/2004 1:51 AM EDT

Thanks XE for reminding us how important Halloween was to us as children.

As far as memories go….how many people remember spending hours looking through those cheap plastic costumes at the department store. And how many people actually had one that survived the entire night? I always came home with a big split up the crotch of my costume! Ah…those were the days!

Ghosted by Greg @ 09/13/2004 7:17 AM EDT

Once, it was me, Little Brother, and our cousin "Rat". Bro had a kind of Gene Simmons thing going on, Rat was a Legion of Doom motif, and yours truly had a Doctor Doom/robot mask I made out of cardboard with a lower jaw that moved when I talked. (hint: for good sturdy and quick construction, use carboard from pizza boxes. clean piza boxes.) We took turns carrying a big battle axe I made using a real axe handle and a bat-shaped, silver-painted hunk of cardboard. (pizza box) We went to a local Boy Scoout run haunted house. first thing we heard was, "No fair, they look better than us!" At one point, Brother and Rat hunkered down behind me and when one kid jumped out at us, I yelled, opening the mask’s jaw wide, and the other two jumped up and Little brother brandished the axe, pulling from under the army-surplus coat he was wearing. One room was the ol’ "funeral scene" set up. Rat acted like a madman, Little Brother laughed maniacally, and I dropped to my knees by the casket and screamed, "I didn’t know the gun was loaded!" Part of their atmosphere was playing Heavy Metal really loud (misinformed kids, early 90’s, and Bible Belt) and we did a sing along with "Shout at the Devil" as we walked out the door. meanwhile, my uncle (Rat Daddy) was hiding in the bushes. While waiting for us, he was wearing a plastic hockey mask and a raggedy hooded sweatshirt, and would tap on the windows of the house, and generally lurking around scaring kids coming out. It’s fun to outdo the little kids sometimes.

Ghosted by kingklash @ 09/13/2004 12:20 PM EDT

I suppose that "lurker" title fits me, though I have posted a few times before.

I always loved spending tons of time making a costume. And one year my mom took my friend and I to a party after we went trick or treating (mostly boring adults, a few of their kids stuck there too) and we made up a new word. At least new to us, it might have existed before. "Glooshy" describes the texture that mini candy bars take on after melting by a fire…not in the fire, just next to it.

Ghosted by Mara @ 09/13/2004 12:49 PM EDT

My friends and I went to this haunted trail when we were seniors in high school. It startes out innocent enough… walking through a dark trail, people jumping out at you, etc. Then after the trail this guide came out and took you through three little sets, i can’t remember the first two.. but the third one was a car wreck with poorly made up teens lying about and empty beer cans, to warn you about the dangers of drinking and driving. Then they led us over to a little tent and started handing out bibles and preaching to us! We didn’t realize until then we were at some haunted trail ran by the Gideons… who’da thunk it?!

Ghosted by WhiteTrash @ 09/13/2004 9:32 PM EDT

Halloween season is soo much better here on X-E than it has been for me the past 9-10 years. That’s beacuse I’ve worked/managed a damned Party Store since I was 16. Halloween would start in June for me there – ruined it for me! Now, I’m a Postman and can deal with it as I like.

~No one delivers 80%! No one!

Ghosted by Mugzy. . . @ 09/14/2004 12:52 PM EDT

Well, I am usually a lurker, but since Matt encouraged me, I guess I’ll share:

Whenever I think of Halloween, I think of the last one we spent at our old house in Canada, which would be the ‘ween o’ 2000. That day some of my friends were over, and we were mulling over whether or not we would actually go out and trick or treat, so to pass the time we decided to make our own "Spooky Halloween Sounds" tape. I still listen to that tape, whenever I find it…I swear, it’s like an hour long, we used both sides…and all it is is 4 guys making moaning noises, cat noises, wolf noises, occasionally ghost-horse noises, saying ominous things, then at one point we recorded the Saved by the Bell theme for some reason.

Needless to say, it spooked the socks off of everyone within a 10 kilometer radius that night.

Ghosted by Tyler @ 09/14/2004 1:08 AM EDT

I remember way back when i was in fifth grade in the early 80s, all the 5th grade art classes worked for months to turn the art classroom into a haunted house that the littler kids would get to walk through. I was dressed as dracula, and was positioned at the exit of a dark tunnel in our house of horrors. Most of the kids were already crying by the time they got as far as me, and I sure as hell didn’t help much, waving my cape around and baring my fangs at them.
For some reason, that was the first and last year for the haunted house.

Ghosted by Mac @ 09/14/2004 1:45 AM EDT

Lurker? Nah, I just work too much ^_^ Anyway, this will be my first Halloween as an X-E devotee, so that’s all I’ll get to do this year, maybe buy a peeps bat if I can find one =P I haven’t done Halloween in forever, last time I really remember was when I was 13 and I got bag jacked. I was all sad, but when you go to peoples houses and have a sob story (plus it was getting late) they sure do take pity. I think I got what was stolen from me back then some. While I’m thinking of it, I have a question… does anyone remember their candy lasting well into the next year after halloween? All the Snickers and good stuff like that got eaten up within the first few days, but I had dubble bubble up the ass for like the next year and a half. Crappy costumes and (what ended up) stale candy, I think almost everyone had more exciting Halloweens than me.

Ghosted by sailor moon @ 09/14/2004 2:32 AM EDT

Oh yeah, a couple of fun things were doing the haunted house in elementary school, a haunted house in my neighborhood that chose a different theme every year (I tell you, getting chased by "Jason" even if he didn’t have a chain or whatever on his chainsaw scared the hell out of me), a haunted house where people blended in with the walls (wish I did drugs back then, that would have been even more of a trip) and ultimately, when I was about 16 or so me and my mom went to the crappiest haunted house ever and this guy in a costume followed us forever trying to scare us and I think we disappointed him when we ignored him. Oh yeah, Knotts Scary Farm was cool, got to do that one year. Did anyone ever get money when they trick or treated? When I was like 5 this guy gave me a quarter and I thought he was crazy, damn I wish I could get free money now =P And that, loyal X-E blog readers, is the total history of me and halloween. Pretty boring =(

Ghosted by sailor moon @ 09/14/2004 2:42 AM EDT

I remember very clearly the worst halloween of my life.

At the time, my mom and dad were somewhat close to the church we went to back then, and since halloween was falling on a Sunday that year, the priest decided as a "fun" thing for the kids, the kids should all dress up as Biblical figures. Oh yeah… nothin says fun like being someone from the bible.

Anyway, seeing as my family was close to the church, I was made to be an example of the fun spirit etc.. of this event. This did not bode well with me, I complained, They ignored.

I wanted to be Link from legend of Zelda, I had it planned ALL YEAR before the shithead priest ruined everything. Anyway…

My mom and dad decided the very best way to kill my little child soul would be to Dress me up as none other than MOSES… Using the Movie (the 10 commandments) as an example, I was thrown out into the world in a robe, a wig, a beard/moustache combo, a staff, and yes… Stone tablets (made out of styrofoam) with the commandments on them.

Sunday halloween of vile evil came, and it was the coldest rainiest halloween EVER. I got to the church and Big suprise… I WAS THE ONLY KID DRESSED LIKE SOMEONE FROM THE BIBLE…

Every other kid were ghosts and goblins…. princesses and witches… oh and that doofus dressed like moses oh wait.. that was me.

As if all that wasnt bad enough, ask yourself this question… On a cold rainy Halloween, how much candy do you think a kid in a robe with no shoes and 10 commandments gets?

Ghosted by Mechagodzilla @ 09/14/2004 12:15 PM EDT

You could have gone as one of the figures mentioned in Revelations. Biblical, and scary! "And what are you supposed to be, Mecha-G?" "I’m the Whore of Babylon!" Bet you would’ve gotten more than candy.

Ghosted by kingklash with seven crowns @ 09/14/2004 3:09 PM EDT

My mom was a seamstress, and one year she made cute witches matching costumes for me and my best friend and both our Barbie dolls.

It’s really hard to get cool customes to go trick or treating in Canada because they have to fit over your snow suit (it’s usually freezing by the end of October).

I remember going to a bar in a big furry pink bunny costume, and I was BOILING in there. Saw someone at the bar, beautiful gorgeous blonde girl and thought, what a bitch to show up all glammed up, when all us girls are looking like accident victims or giant bunnies. Turned out it was my friend John, I only clued in when he said hello to me as I passed by. He was just the most beautiful girl ever – and drag queens were not fashionable at the time.

The following year at university I decided I was not boiling alive in my costume, but because of schoolwork I had no time to prepare, so I put on my sexiest lingerie, my trench coat, a fedora and one of them plastic fake nose with a mustache and glasses attached. That’s right, the perfect flasher outfit, costing a buck for the fake glasses. When people asked me what I was I just opened the coat… I left the party with several phone numbers in my coat pocket!

Ghosted by Yzziefrog @ 09/14/2004 5:34 PM EDT

My dad used to make really awesome costumes for me (with my assistance) and himself. The best ones:

-One year I was the Terminator. I wasn’t one of those wuss Terminators that just had the slicked back hair and the sunglasses, I had HALF OF MY FACE BLOWN OFF. Tinfoil is freaking magical, dudes.

-The year after that, I was Dracula. It would’ve been awesome had I not had "horrible" leg injuries (I played a few too many games of Jump Off the Picnic Table, I guess). But all was not lost! My parents decked out my red wagon to look like a coffin, and they took turns pulling me around the neighborhood. I was the freaking king of the world.

-My dad’s had some pretty cool costumes, too. One year he was the World’s Worst Rodeo Clown (lots of blood and bones poking out), another year he was Dave McDave, Savage Celtic Attorney (like Braveheart with a tie), and one time he just put on a bunch of random crap & a pair of sunglasses. He was a blind guy XD

Ghosted by Tomas Jefferson @ 09/14/2004 7:07 PM EDT

Oh yeah. Then there was the year that I dressed up as a character I made up, which I will NOT describe to you. I made a paper mache mask and a suit and everything. It ended up being pretty uncomfortable and every asshole in the world decided to ask me just what the hell I was supposed to be. So I spent the evening embarrased AND I had my creative spirit crushed.

And people wonder why I’m such a cynic…

Ghosted by Night_Trekker @ 09/15/2004 12:32 PM EDT

One year, I was the blob from A Boy and his Blob (NES) I wanted to punch the two people who though I was a ghost (Especially that kid who was like "A gwhost? ………… YOH NOT A MONSTUH!!". Regardless to whom that second part was directed at, I still to this day would like to pop him one).

Halloween’s a drag for me now that I live in a bigger neighborhood. Here’s an excerpt from my journal (sorry to be a lazy bastard) concerning last year (which I think I may have already posted here…):
Halloween was pretty much a joke this year. I was handing out candy, and most of the kids either weren’t in costume, or wearing winter gear over their costumes. Then there were the groups going door-to-door in their cars! C’mon you wusses, it friggin’ rained on Halloween in ‘94 but I still kept my costume on and didn’t wear anything over it. I also saw a lot of repeating costumes (I even saw two of the same crappy surgeon costume with painted on pockets) and kids choosing to not wear their mask even when they didn’t look like they screwed with your breathing… The final outrage (worth mentioning) with kids these days: post-kindergarten children with dinky pails that couldn’t hold half of a chocolate dime. Dammit folks, your kids don’t need to be on the freakin’ Atkins diet at age 8, you can EASILY just ration their candy. Two funny honorable mentions, then I’m outta here: 1. Some teenage guy comes to the door wearing just a red Power Ranger mask. 10 minutes later: I try not to laugh as I get a kid dressed as the red-ranger with no mask (although he might’ve just been on the wimp-wagon, the assumption in which that jerk stole his mask is more interesting…). 2. I get the fat girl who is every obese character on kid’s cartoons and kid’s-comming-of-age type movies. ‘Just way she slowly waddled up the stairs in her fairy princess-type costume and then holds out her candy bag that reaches to the floor. Done.

Ghosted by RewolfJ @ 09/15/2004 3:57 AM EDT

If I can find the right items, I might try to make a cheap-ass Master Shake costume. Run around the ‘hood and just be a sarcastic prick all night.

Ghosted by kingklash @ 09/15/2004 2:08 PM EDT

each year I pass out the candy on holloween but last year I had stepped out to talk to my cousin and locked myself out. The only way in was to crawl through a window but just as I was crawling in a trick or treater shows up and I’m in this itty bitty skirt with my butt hanging out for all the world to see!

Ghosted by Michelle @ 09/16/2004 12:14 PM EDT

LOL – bible characters… Lessee: There are the Beasts from Daniel, eg bears with wings, leopards with four heads… also, the Riders of the Apocalypse. Death, Famine, Pestilence, the Antichrist… (um – George Dubya on a white horse, harhar), or maybe, a king of Babylon putting out eyes of captured kings with a spear… oooh, and Whore of Babylon’s funny too (go kingklash). Why go with Charlton Heston in a nightgown? Boring boring. Even Goliath with huge hole in head is more halloweeny.

South Africa doesn’t celebrate Halloween… could be horror of nasty evil satanic subjectmatter, or more probably intrinsic fear of dentists. Coke contains +-10 teaspoons of sugar per glass, and enough phosphoric acid to dissolve the paint on your car (try it). So people wonder why they need root canal. Uuurgh. Too much sugar! Not enough kooky simpsons All Hallows E’en eps! (we get em around May, btw. Just doesn’t work. But "The Shinning" ep was classic. Bart: Don’t you mean the Shining? Scots Janitor: What, boy? you want us to get sued??!.

Me wants some chocolate now. Dammit. Hersh! Send all evil nasty dentists to Hersh!

Ghosted by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Hedgehog @ 09/16/2004 12:10 PM EDT

Living in Wisconsin, I went as a Green Bay Packer for about seven years in a row.

I always got extra candy if a guy answered the door because they’d be all, "Yeah, go Packers!"

Ghosted by Whee @ 09/16/2004 7:25 PM EDT

I lived in the country as a kid, and since houses were few and far between my dad drove us around. This was a bit of a pain since he’d take us only to places he knew, and thus would stand around for what seemed like forever chatting with people. The benefits were great, though. Rural people don’t get a lot of trick-or-treaters, so they give out TONS and TONS of candy. Some years all it would take was eight houses to fill a pillow case. Plus, since you only went to familiar houses any and all yummy homemade candy was fine to eat!

Oh… and since I live in Canada, we usually have snow on Halloween. Having to wear a snowsuit over your costume was a letdown, although it wasn’t necessary every year. ("What are you, an eskimo clown…?")

Ghosted by Vic @ 09/17/2004 12:28 PM EDT

For some reason I always associate FFVII with halloween. I’m sure it only happened once, but I was playing it right before a friend a I went out that year. If the math isn’t adding up for you, it was pretty well after I was too old to TorT. But those were the best years because we would take my friend’s cousins around and be the semi-mean older kids who harrassed the little ones. Maybe it was just me saying stupid sh**. I was an @$$hole then and still am, really. But just verbally.

"Wish I never opened my Mouth Almighty"

simple quote! first to ID it gets my respect.

Ghosted by Knegative @ 09/17/2004 8:18 AM EDT

Uh… is it Bruce Almighty?

Or… some movie with… God in it?

WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT TO HAVE A CURSE!!! O_O

Ghosted by Night_Trekker @ 09/17/2004 9:36 AM EDT

Um…no

Ghosted by Knegative @ 09/17/2004 11:57 AM EDT

I’m not patient enough and I’m not sure if you’re really all that interested in the answer, Night, so I’ll tell ya. I said its simple, so don’t be too harsh. Its from Mouth Almighty by Elvis Costello and the Attractions.

For the record, I was really really disappointed with Bruce Almighty. Laughed like once.

Ghosted by Knegative @ 09/17/2004 12:05 PM EDT

OK, so when I was a kid my mom wouldn’t let me celebrate Halloween the traditional way. Instead, I got to go to costume parties at big church events. It was pretty much the same, you dress up, get tons of candy, play party games…except without the "danger" of Halloween (which I know some of you might argue then completely changes the holiday).

Anyway, my biggest Halloween memory was of this one aforementioned church Halloween event where I saw these two boldfaced punks stealing candy from mentally retarded kids. At first I laughed ’cause it was admittedly funny to see someone being jacked right in front of their face. But then I realized how wrong that was (even if the victims weren’t retarded), so I had to go over and stop it. Mind you, I was like 8 at the time and those thieves were probably like 10, so that was a pretty scary thing to do.

So I guess that despite my mom’s best efforts, Halloween did seriously frighten me after all!

Ghosted by rapsodist @ 09/17/2004 2:46 PM EDT

In my grade school around Halloween, we would always have a pumpkin carving contest. Kids from the school would bring in their pumpkins that they worked on for weeks. For like two years, this one girl would always take first place for having the "most unique" pumpkin, making me cry and run off. Kids pointing and laughing, cruel…

Many years later I actually married that girl, not sure if she can still carve "unique" pumpkins though.

Ghosted by JiveTurkey @ 09/17/2004 4:54 PM EDT

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