Halloween 2020

[Kisota]

Usually I make the yearly Halloween thread a lot earlier, but given the... everything, I found it hard to be inspired to do so.

Parties and even smaller social gatherings are pretty much right out, at least for me. I've been being exposed to a lot of people at work and don't feel comfortable putting my friends near me except in the best outdoor conditions.

And it snowed six inches here. Not the best "backyard fire" conditions.

But what are you guys planning?

I do have my decorations out. I'm leaning on the larger of my handmade candy corn pillows right now. My recent working on my "project" skulls means there's even more spooky scary skeletons in my living room than usual.

I've also been baking a lot. Several batches of pumpkin bars. Wish I had the ingredients today! I'd make even more. I have to travel next week and I'm thinking of making a pie to drop off for my dad. And I've made some butternut squash soup.

Been watching a lot of movies online with old friends, too. Some horror, some Halloween themed, and then just some other silly ones.

I am not really planning much other than watching more movies, maybe baking more, and taking it easy. Maybe I'll wear my old dragon hoodie around the apartment or something.

What are you guys planning?

And maybe since we are likely limited in our celebration ability, we should reminisce and think about other Halloween things. I will jot down some discussion questions but please feel free to ask your own.

* What was your favorite Halloween costume you ever had growing up? How about as an adult?
* Best Halloween candy? Worst? Do you like or hate candy corn?
* What's the best Halloween special or Halloween-themed movie? Favorite horror movies?
* Do you like haunted houses? Any fun experiences?

[cheetah]

We have two pumpkins and they're both being chewed on by animals on our doorstep. We were going to eat one of them, but it started rotting. Evidently it had been picked too late. So we put it outside. Other than that... honestly I don't know if we'll do anything. I suspect we won't, though ultimately we'll see one way or the other. We'll probably use some pumpkin though.

Far as movies go, the only horror movie I've ever watched was Psycho, which I did like. Hitchcock was truly a master of suspense, and the feeling that something wasn't quite right but not knowing exactly what was pleasant; I like that he went for unease rather than disgust.

Also I dislike candy corn. It doesn't really taste like much of anything except corn syrup, you know? Even the ones allegedly flavored like chocolate are just... chalky. Waxy.

[elinox]

I put our usual decorations outside: blow up pumpkin, ghost and huge Cheshire cat that moves.

I've been watching Halloween movies over the past few weeks too including: Nightmare Before Christmas, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Addams Family, Halloweentown (new for me this year!), Priest, Dracula: Dead & Loving It, Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters 2 & Ghostbusters 3 (all in 1 day too!). I've still got to watch: Van Helsing, Sleepy Hollow, Clue and, of course, Hocus Pocus. I'll be watching Hocus Pocus tomorrow night after attending Bette Midler's online Hulaween event "In Search of the Sanderson Sisters". I'm super excited for that!

On Saturday, we had planned on going to the Ren Faire but due to Covid risk being on the (ridiculous) rise here in PA, we aren't and thought maybe we'd do Hershey Park in the Dark instead. But again, due to Covid, we scrapped that idea too. So Plan C is to carve pumpkins and have a bonfire, in costume, of course!

And tonight is supposed to be trick-or-treat but I assume it will either be cancelled or moved due to the rain. If we have it, we have small bags of candy for kids to pick up on a table. Plus hand sanitizer!

* What was your favorite Halloween costume you ever had growing up? How about as an adult?
Two favorites as a kid: my family went as the Wizard of Oz one year and I was the lion. And also my Mom made me a hand-painted zebra costume one year.
As an adult: Probably a wolf because I get to wear my tail and ears in public. But I really love ALL my Halloween costumes: Belle, Doc Brown, werewolf, Maid Marian, #13 from Doctor Who, pirate.

* Best Halloween candy? Worst? Do you like or hate candy corn?
Best: Hershey's milk chocolate bars (I once got a full-sized one!)
Worst: Milk Duds or Whoppers
Candy Corn Status: I enjoy candy corn as long as it's still fresh and soft. Once it gets hard and stale, pass.

* What's the best Halloween special or Halloween-themed movie? Favorite horror movies?
See my movie list above. I suppose my all-time favorite Halloween-themed movie is Hocus Pocus. As far as horror movie goes, Sleepy Hollow.

* Do you like haunted houses? Any fun experiences?
I've only ever gone to King's Dominion's Halloween Haunt and that was a few years ago. I walked through the haunted corn maze confidently and laughed at the people getting scared because I have an excellent spot check and usually roll high on my d20 checks.

No matter how you celebrate this here, have a safe and happy Howloween everyone!!!

[Coyote Jones]

Happy Halloween!

So I wondered if you can order autopsy equipment. You can. Or at least you can rent it. I landed on a site with realistic tortured and maimed women that went WAY too far and now I feel like playing Goat Simulator. I can handle gory props, but that was too disturbing even for me, which is saying something. I'm a horror fan, but I have no stomach for torture or anything too reminiscent of real-life murder scenes. (Eli Roth can burn in hell.) Only a fucked-up sadist would order any of those.

Steam has a Halloween sale going on! I ordered $500 worth of psychological horror games. They're currently a fraction of the normal price, so I saved a thousand dollars, at the very least. I might play Visage tonight. Haven't played computer games in a long time. I want to get used to the controls on my new gaming mouse and gaming keyboard. If you're into that kind of stuff, check it out! The sale's on until November 2nd. Aside from an earlier shopping spree at Michaels, this was my big Halloween expenditure for 2020.

It's all about gaming this year. Someone sent me a copy of PT (Wikipedia link), which I've been trying to find since 2014. His playthrough on YouTube was hilarious; he had to verbally coach himself through every move. He was scared to death. He gets props for playing it at 3 am in the dark, though, if that's really what he did.

Many of my nightmares take place in Silent Hill. I'm planning to play every Silent Hill game over the next few months. Because the consoles aren't backwards compatible, I had to buy a PS2 and a PS3.

I currently have exactly $0.25 in my bank account. Literally. It was worth it.

There's some new decor from Michaels in my bedroom. An animated miniature haunted house and some little black cats, a large, beautiful, and heavy crow perching among roses and a second crow to keep it company, a black skull holding succulents, a haunted train, elixer bottles, a skeleton lounging on a couch with a book, an hourglass held by a skeletal hand (like this, but with only one hand), a massive 25" 3-framed X-ray skeleton wall hanging... quite a haul, expensive purchases. They're staying up all year!

If it weren't for money and Covid, I'd really go all out. It's the only holiday I love. I've been meaning to visit the Halloween Haunt at Canada's Wonderland and various haunted houses for the 18+ crowd. I'd like to play one of the monsters, too, as a volunteer. I've been a professional zombie before, during a film shoot for Call of Duty: Black Ops, and I'd do it again.

I've gotta admit that I'm not nearly as inventive with Halloween costumes as I'd like to be. As a kid, I led our school's Halloween march every year. My parents weren't big into the holiday, so I was always a witch or a cat, and I was okay with that. I'm still pretty indifferent to costumes as an adult. I almost dressed up as a drowning victim one year, with all of the SFX tech and research that would involve, but I didn't go through with it for various reasons. Maybe next year. I did go as a plague doctor once. If I do that costume again, I want to make the mask out of leather instead of papier-mâché.

When I was a kid, my favourite candy included Twix, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Kit Kat, and generally any chocolate bar. Worst? Plain potato chips, raisins (why did people give those out?), and lollipops. I didn't ever get candy corn, but I wasn't missing much. My favourite Halloween candy as an adult? Pop Rocks, sour ribbon rolls, and Popeye candy sticks. Those candy sticks used to be 'cigarettes'. They're satisfyingly crunchy tiny bones made of sugar. I snap them between my fingers. Normally I don't eat much candy, but I make an exception for this time of year. I enjoy the occasional candy apple.

If you haven't watched the movie Trick 'r Treat, do it! (I need to buy this action figure sometime.) It's my favourite Halloween-themed movie, hands down. I like the idea of an ominous child-aged entity who punishes people who don't celebrate or decorate. It captures facets of the Halloween experience through different ages. It's spooky, scary, and whimsical. You won't be let down.

I don't know if they're my all-time favourite horror movies, but I'm especially fond of Candyman, Get Out, Us, Hereditary, the Child's Play series, The Ring, and The Exorcist. Edit: I still haven't seen Ringu! Everyone knows that Asian horror is on a whole different level. While I'm editing this post, I want to include this ridiculously fun Twitter rabbit hole of stories from Southeast Asians on the real ghosts they encounter all the time:

@weisizhui southeast asia apparently being such a haunted region as a whole that seasians are so used to it will never stop being funny to me like. Why. what goes on


@weisizhui - also the lady who flies around w/ her organs exposed is EVERYWHERE

- some houses are just. casually haunted. like ppl just coexist w/ the ghost/s in their house bc they're usually just chill

- SO MANY schools and hospitals were built near or on top of cemeteries/mass graves

What an incredible, incompatible difference between Eastern and Western cultures. I read it all and now I want to start collecting the True Singapore Ghost Stories book series. I also want to watch more Asian horror, needless to say. This particular cultural divide explains why their movies are so much scarier.

Every day is Halloween. People call me a goth. Meh; I haven't been actively involved in that subculture in a long time.

As for attending haunted houses, well... I want to build one or be in one, but I haven't visited one in over a decade because I'm honestly afraid of the way I'll react. I tend to underestimate how much jump scares actually do scare me. I'll stride ahead confidently and then the lights will go out and I'll tell my friend they can go first. I'm kind of conflicted; I want to visit places that are professionally run, but I'm already really tense and jumpy at baseline because of my posttraumatic stress disorder. All it takes to make me leap backwards is a sudden loud YouTube ad when I've been browsing the internet quietly. Or an ambulance siren. Or someone yelling. I'd like to explore a place that really goes all out on props and special effects to create inventive scenes or to cultivate an atmosphere without necessarily involving actors who jump out at me. I'm legitimately afraid that I'll instinctively strike at them. I won't know until I try, I suppose....

I wanted a bonfire in my fire pit, but I can't find the kindling, so that's postponed until tomorrow.

I've got some baking to do with my sugar pie pumpkins. Out of the sprawling mess my pumpkin plants created, only two tiny pumpkins grew. One is white. The other is orange, but it was green when I harvested it. No carving knife means no jack-o-lanterns this year. I'm definitely looking forward to making squares and cookies with seasonal spices, though.

Fun thread! I didn't realize how long this was getting, haha.

[Kerguelen]

I'm in dalmatian makeup. https://i.imgur.com/oyj9aRo.jpg
I went out and got corn dogs and ice cream at Sonic. I gave the Sonic workers candy. World's smallest Halloween celebration, but a Halloween celebration nonetheless.

[Koba]

It has never felt like Halloween in FL as long as I have been here, ever. It is literally like missing all the aspects I really enjoyed about the holiday aside from the general spirit of it. Ha! See what I did there. :P

Missing orange and yellow trees. The crisp night 'winter' air. The cider. Jack-o-lanterns everywhere. Ugh and meh. Like the whole atmosphere is wrong to me, normally we just do a small get together or go out to a party with some friends, hopefully next year we'll do something more exciting.


The short answer is work Lol. My SO and I had intended to do Furloween but with the pandemic raging we figured not even bother trying to take any time off. Plan being to enjoy it tomorrow or today, making a roast. There will be drinking and playing some 7 Days and food. I mean, can't complain.



* What was your favorite Halloween costume you ever had growing up?

Oscar the Grouch



* Best Halloween candy? Worst? Do you like or hate candy corn?

Reese's Cups all the way!

Candy Corn, I'm not sure who invented it or why, but they must have been sadistic. I don't even consider it candy, it's like the chalky valentine hearts of Halloween, everyone gets some for some reasons and no one wants any. At least I've ever seen. Who the heck keeps making it anyway? xD



* What's the best Halloween special or Halloween-themed movie? Favorite horror movies?

I actually thought Hocus Pocus was a good suggestion

Horror movies in general. Aliens, AVP, Silent Hill a couple good ones, drawing a bit of a blank as I'm not much into horror movies, I also kind of find them very disturbing, I'm not really sure what the appeal is for things like Hostel or uhm.... Saw. They make me a bit ill.



* Do you like haunted houses? Any fun experiences?

Not really. I don't find haunted houses very scary.

Fun experiences, erh, quite a few. Notably one year attended a private rave was rather adult themed. The guy had piranhas in his pool for some reason too, so... It wasn't for swimming ? idk. I never got the whole story on that. Great music and food though. ^-^

[TopBrass]

The Silent Hill series was really good back in the day. I only really cared much for the first three. Think the last one I actually played was Shattered Memories on the PSP like a decade ago. It was pretty crap. The game that was being developed by Hideo Kojima with Norman Reedus and Guillermo del Toro looked dope. I was able to play the demo for that years ago. Still pissed off that Konami screwed it up. We did get Death Stranding, but I didn't really care for it much.

There's really no need to spend a lot of money getting vintage hardware and old discs. Any modern computer should be able to emulate those old games pretty well, and it's absolutely free. Or rather it would be, hypothetically speaking, because actually doing that is technically illegal.

With movies, I feel like I like the *idea* of horror movies more than I like actually existing horror movies. Seems that almost all of them rely entirely on jump scares or are too campy to take seriously. The only one I've ever really liked much is The Shining. It was one of those rare cases where the movie is better than the source material it was based on. You know, I never really considered Psycho to be a horror movie, but that really was excellent. Most of Hitchcock's movies are.

I've never considered Romero's zombie movies to be horror either, but most of those are pretty good. I think Day of the Dead is criminally underrated. Lori Cardille did an excellent job and her performance in the movie reminds me of Sigourney Weaver's in Alien.

[Kisota]

Haha, I never got around to posting here. Thanks to those who did. I'll go ahead and respond now. November is continuing to be pretty scary, at least in the US, so we may as well proceed with more spookum talk, huh?

With movies, I feel like I like the *idea* of horror movies more than I like actually existing horror movies. Seems that almost all of them rely entirely on jump scares or are too campy to take seriously.

AGREED; horror movies have a well deserved reputation for mostly being trash. I am not a fan of jump scares. I agree The Shining is a good one. I am much more into disturbing, psychological types of horror films than gorey, jump-scare fests. The Ring is one that stands out as far as more recent films.

The ultimate one for me is probably The Exorcist, but that's largely because I saw it when I was far too young, after having been told lots of scary stories about how famously disturbing it was and all the chaos it created when it released. Plus, I knew my older brother was creeped out by it, so I was primed to think of it as something worthy of terror.

Really psychological films that are more of suspense/thrillers than horror films tend to get to me more. Shutter Island is a good example.

We've started to have much better horror films in recent years, though. It Follows, Hereditary, Get Out and so on... maybe less traditionally "horror" films, but definitely good stuff.

I'm also a bit soft for somewhat older films with practical effects, like Hellraiser. There's something so much more interesting and visceral about the practical effects. They also age better.

As far as other Halloween type movies... yeah, Hocus Pocus is an old favorite. And the Will Vinton Halloween special is always fun, too. Claymation has nostalgia power in spades.

I also kind of like comedy horror films. Tucker and Dale vs Evil, Cabin in the Woods, What We Do in the Shadows, that kind of thing.

* Best Halloween candy? Worst? Do you like or hate candy corn?

Reese's Cups all the way!

Totally! I like the holiday ones best. The pumpkins / trees / Easter eggs have the best chocolate to peanut butter distribution.

When I was a kid, my dad would buy a mixed bag of candy to distribute to trick-or-treaters. It seems like he had to continually buy shittier candy, because my brother and I would sense out the bowl and come over to gulp down any Reese's cups like Komodo dragons.

As for candy corn... not a big fan. If there's some around, I usually taste a little. It has nostalgia factor and when fresh, kind of a pleasant chew. Better than Valentine's Day's traditional Shitty Candy - conversation hearts. Blech. Rather eat Tums.

CJ, it sounds like you have an indulgent Halloween!! I did a little spooky videogaming. Some old friends got online and we all played Dead By Daylight together. A grad-school-era friend joined my college friends and I had a blast seeing them get to know each other while also playing a murder game. It's about the hardest I'd laughed in months. One of my friends was really good at playing keep-away around tables and the killer had to chase him fruitlessly for about five minutes straight while the rest of us just howled in laughter. Later, when he was spotted, he muttered threateningly on voice chat, "don't make me find a table!!!" It brought back good high school memories of playing Left 4 Dead as well.

My favorite Halloween costumes... hmmm. Probably the dragon from fourth grade. Also the hedgehog from second was pretty cool. As an adult, I've had fun with various werewolf costumes, including one I used while participating in a dorm haunted house thing.

I learned I prefer to work the haunt than go through it myself. What a riot. My mask wasn't particularly scary to look at, and I'm small, but I was popping out from behind furniture in relative darkness, and people were often absolutely paralyzed in fear... I'd have to go back to hiding before they'd continue on.