Today is Halloween. I must admit I don’t care anymore. My huge Halloween party was almost a week ago. Even though it went perfectly, I have to tell you that I’m ready for the holiday to pass. I think I spent too much time thinking about the party this year instead of reason for the holiday.

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping? Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven, 1845

There is a large flock of crows at the park nearby my work. I am on my lunch hour, sitting in my car at the park and writing an early Halloween entry with a shiny and bitten No. 2 pencil. I am watching the black birds search the grass for food and listening to their calls. They remind me of a different black bird.

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore; Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven, 1845

I’ve never seen a raven. I may have seen one on television or at an aviary, but I have never seen a raven in the wild. And like most of us, I’ve never had a raven come into my home and say, “Nevermore.” Every time I read that poem, I visualize a crow.

Maybe it’s because I’m a Western girl. I may have been born on the East Coast, but my body belongs to the mountains and the salty water of Utah. Something has agitated the flock of crows and they are all speaking at once. They almost sound like ducks when they argue. Maybe my teenaged mind couldn’t fathom a bird that didn’t frequent the valley of Salt Lake and replaced the raven with a crow. The call of one bird was exchanged with the call of another, neither one sounding like the word, “Nevermore.”

Quoth the raven “Nevermore.” Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven, 1845

Those words can hold so much regret. Never more will I see her smiling face. Never more will I hear his tender voice. Never more will I laugh with them. To hell with regret. Winter is coming. If I brood with regret, I may never see spring.

From now on, those words will mean “Enough! Basta!” Just like the mob boss who stopped the killing, I will say the same to all that is evil in my life. Never more will I allow someone to be mean to me without comment. Never more will I stay quiet while another is unjustly maligned. Never more will I allow my wit or malice to cut another. “Nevermore”

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting? Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven, 1845

The flock of crows have quieted and all I can hear is the call of one bird in the playground. One by one, I’ve watched the individuals of the group leave and fly off. They stopped by my park to remind me of why Halloween is scary. We can honor the dead with a “Nevermore” of determination or a “Nevermore” of regret. The choice is ours and I needed a reminder of which one would work for me.

Today is my Halloween Party. We think about this party all year long. I got the dress for my costume during the summer this year. It took me months to think how to use a green 1960’s dress to make a really cool costume, but at the end of September, I was browsing the movies and saw a review for The Birds.

The lead actress is wearing a green dress almost exactly like mine, so I’m going to be Tippi Hedren. I have the dress, the false eyelashes and most importantly, the birds. You’ll just have to see the post party pictures to understand the greatness of this costume. The only thing I’m worried about is the blonde wig. It’s the perfect color. It looks just like Tippi Hedren’s hair, but I am just a horrible blonde.

How does Gwen Stefani pull it off? She is just as dark as I am, but she looks absolutely fabulous as a platinum blonde and I look washed out. I need to get her stylist on the phone. Of course, Mike says that the problem is that I only spent $35 on the wig. If I spent twice that on a dye job, I would probably look better.

When I called Alina, my hair dresser, about dyeing my hair, she said, “Oh no, sweetie, don’t do that.” I love it when my hair dresser has distinct opinions about what I should and shouldn’t do with my hair. She’s got my back. She won’t let me do something phenomenally stupid like dye my hair platinum blonde for a Halloween costume. After seeing myself in the wig, I’m so glad I didn’t dye my hair.

I’ve been so sick that getting ready for this party has been very difficult. Stacey and Dan have helped me, so I feel so much better about that. If I wasn’t so excited about the party, I would have canceled it. I’m so glad that I didn’t because I’m finally feeling better and I think I’ll be able to completely enjoy the party.

The Halloween Party was a blast! Everything was so spectacular! My costume worked well, as you can see. All the costumes were imaginative and interesting. The people were fun and talkative. The movies were enjoyed. The food was tasty and a good time was had by all. A big and public thank you to Stacey, Dan and Mike for making this year the best party ever. How will we ever top it next year?

When I said Halloween was fabulous this year, I don’t think I fully was able to describe the true fabulousness of all the costumes. Here are the pictures from this year’s party!

Thank you to everyone who came to the party and spent so much time making the party wonderful!

(Continue Reading…)

I just finished reading Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart. It is a fiction book that follows the life of Will “Dead” Kennedy, or “DK” as his family used to call him. He’s an aging punk rocker who can’t get his life in order. Twelve years ago, his pregnant wife left him and he has been floating from one crappy job to another. Oh, and he can see ghosts.

It’s not a great thing for him. He can’t even drive because he confuses ghosts for people walking in the street. He wrecked enough cars dodging ghosts to swear off driving. He rides the bus to pick up his daughter for visitation and gets canned from yet another job. He is moping until he gets a call from a cousin begging him to get rid of the ghost from his garage. His cousin offers him $1000 in cash and he takes the offer.

That day, he learns the bare truth, “Sometimes a guy is haunted for a really good reason.”

I loved this book for all its little details. It’s set in Texas and I feel like a local now. I feel like I could walk into any Texas town and feel right at home. Even better, Will and his family are white trash. Not middle income or bourgeois, WHITE TRASH. I never get to see heros and their families who are dirt poor and trapped. His sisters are unwed mothers. His father went from jobs and get-rich-quick schemes to being unemployed and not rich. His Uncle Billy died in a refinery accident. His cousin AJ was killed by her biker boyfriend. I love his family and their dead-end dreams.

With the opressive heat of Texas, the poverty, the divorce he never got over, and all those dead people walking around, you would think that this book might be a little depressing. It could have been. Will goes to some pretty dark places. Places that are familiar and ugly to an aging punk rocker like me. I saw a glimpse of how my life could have been had I taken two steps to the South.

Check out all the quotations I got from this great book on the Quotations Weblog:

Quotations Weblog – Perfect Circle

Just in time for Halloween, I just finished reading Peeps, by Scott Westerfeld. It is the best vampire book that I have EVER read. I remember liking Interview with a Vampire when I read it, but I didn’t feel the need to force everyone that I know around me to read it. That’s how I feel about Peeps. I feel like telling everyone, “You MUST go to the store right now and get this book and read it. It will take you less than a day or so to read it and you will be SO grateful to me that I forced it upon you!”

The plot centers around Cal. Over a year ago, he had a torrid one-night affair with a girl that he met in a bar. He didn’t even catch her last name, but he did catch something else: a parasite. Like AIDS, this parasite is transmitted sexually and turns its victims into cannibals. Cannibals who tend to fit the profile of vampires. Mirrors, crucifixes, rats, bats, and aversion to daylight are all symptoms of the parasite.

Fortunately for Cal (and unfortunately for his girlfriends), instead of turning into an insane savage, he grew stronger, gained an affinity for raw meat and became a carrier, like Typhoid Mary. Oh yeah, all his girlfriends went nutso crazy within months of meeting him, even that girl he kissed at New Year’s. Can a guy have any worse luck?

Yes, he can. Based on his girlfriend’s changes, the Night Watch was able to track Cal down and finally tell him the bad news. He’s not a vampire, but every girl he ever kisses (or more) will become one. Hey, would you like to help us track down your bloodthirsty ex-girlfriends?

This book is cleverly written. I laughed out loud many times while reading. It is also scary. I had nightmares the night that I stayed up late reading. The story moved along very well and just when I thought I had my finger on the plot of this book everything twisted out from under me for a fantastic ending that really made me want to hold the book in front of the face of all my friends.

Check out the great quotes I gathered from this book:

Quotations Weblog » Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

In honor of the movie “The Corpse Bride,” they have put up a few websites to play with. One of them is called Messages from the Land of the Dead:

• Corpse Bride – Virtual Ouija Board

I asked it the phrase, “Are you proud of me?” and it slowly spelled out the word, “N-O-P-E.”

Damn…

They have another site called Sept23. It’s a freaky video filmed at a graveyard. You have to watch it to understand.

Every time I think that I’m over-doing it for Halloween, I realize that there are others out there who are far more obsessed than I am. Check out this website:

Cockeyed Presents: Incredible Costumes

My favorite quote:

“Normal people don’t buy stuff for their costume at Home Depot.”

My favorite costumes are the huge metallic wings (shown here) and the state of California costume. He also was a walking Jenga game and won a $10K prize for his Paparazzi Costume.

Every year, I am something bizarre for Halloween that involves lots of explaining. This year, I have vowed to be something easy that requires no explanation. I guess I’ll see how well I do this year.

In honor of Halloween, I direct you to the ultra-creepy artwork of Laurie Lipton.

• Laurie Lipton Official Website

Make sure that you scroll down to see all the artwork in the gallery. Enjoy!

Whenever I feel like I go a little overboard, all I need to do is go on the Internet. There is always someone out there who is more obsessed than I am. Check out Britta:

• Britta’s Halloween Page

This Saturday, she is doing a live webcast of her Halloween Party. When I look at the pictures of her Halloweens gone by, I just love the inventiveness of the costumes. They all look so creative and fun.

If you are having a Halloween Party this year, it’s probably tonight. Here is a great website for some last minute ideas.

• Haunted Wisconsin – Party & Decorating Ideas

There are so many good ideas here that I’m hard pressed to choose my favorites. The saddest story this year, however is from Kimberly King’s Website:

• King’s Home Halloween Party Ideas

Their home was destroyed by Katrina this year. They lost everything and the only remaining glimmer of their Halloween decorations survived in pictures on her website. They are starting from scratch next year, because this year, they are just trying to find a place to live.

I SWEAR! Mike and I would never do this. Linda would never stand for it. Sid, the dog, on the other hand…

My inner lower lip is raw and tender from being bitten accidentally all night by the vampire fangs. I don’t know how those Goth kids do it every weekend. Do they learn to talk with those fangs in their mouths? My S’s and Th’s were slurred all night and I didn’t drink a drop… of alcohol, that is…

The Halloween Party this year was a blast! Every year I’m blown away by the meticulous care that everyone puts into their costumes and potluck dishes. For some reason, the test tube shots looked more spectacular this year than all the years before. I think it was the Midori, Aftershock and Blue Curaco that really made them look experimental.

I always have anxiety that no one will come to my party. This year, 7pm rolled around and no one had arrived. I told myself that everyone likes to be fashionably late. At 7:20 pm, my mom showed up. I kept telling myself that if it was just my mom, Reed, Stacey, Dan, Mike and me, that it would be a fun party, but I was scared.

This year, my saviors were Chip and Julieanne. They showed up at 7:35 pm and suddenly, I had a party. I was so grateful when they arrived. Late may be fashionable, but on time is a blessing. The first arrival to my party is held dear to my heart always.

Halloween Music Mix 2005:

• Slipping Away – Moby
• Happy Phantom – Tori Amos
• Danger Zone – Gwen Stefani
• Spin Moon Magic – The Dreamside
• Ghosts – Dirty Vegas
• The Dark of the Matinee – Franz Ferdinand
• The Killing Moon – Echo and the Bunnymen
• Die Another Day – Madonna
• Hurt – Johnny Cash
• The Blood – The Cure
• Cry Little Sister – The Lost Brothers
• Bloodsucker – Paralysed Age
• Vampires – Pet Shop Boys
• The Power of Love – Frankie Goes to Hollywood
• Vikram the Vampire – Talvin Singh
• How to Kill – The Art of Noise

I took a walk this morning, trespassing on lawns and doorsteps. Sometimes I feel like a little kid, distracted by all the interesting things around me. I felt as if I had never seen a Jack-O-Lantern before. Halloween may be over for the rest of you, but for me, every day is Halloween.

I have been waiting all year for this month! I have an entire month of Halloween fun for you! I have been taking pictures, writing entries and scouring the web for fun Halloween things for you…

Okay, that’s a lie, they’re really for me!

This picture is the “theme” for my Halloween party this year. The invitations, party favors and prizes will all have this image on them. Every year I choose a theme from various collections of old pictures from greeting cards. This one is a little on the cute side for me, but I like it.

Welcome to October!

Check out this awesome AT-AT costume.

• gfixler’s AT-AT Costume Halloween 2005 slideshow on Flickr

This is better than anything I’ve ever done on my own!

Waiting 2005
Originally uploaded by laurasmoncur.

Every year, I take pictures at my Halloween parties and I’ve been saving those pictures for years now. I show them all on a slideshow on my computer during the Halloween party. For the first time, you can see what the people at my party see every year.

• Laura Moncur’s Halloween slideshow on Flickr

My favorite Halloween picture so far is this photo that Mike took last year. It feels exactly like what I feel like right before my party. A little shaky and really orange…

Perfect timing for me, they are making a movie out of the video game, American McGee’s Alice, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Alice his the only survivor of an attack on her family. Her mum and dad are dead…

“What’s wrong, Alice?”

“My parents are… gone.”

“What else is wrong, Alice?”

“Something’s broken…”

“What’s broken, Alice?”

“I am…”

She has grown up and has once again entered Wonderland. The only problem is that Wonderland has also changed…

“But I don’t want to go among mad people.”

“Ah, you can’t help that… we’re all mad here.”

Mike, Stacey, Dan and I are going as the cast of Alice in Wonderland. A very merry Un-Halloween to you!

By the way, if you go to the website listed on the video, alice.ea.com, it just takes you to the main EA Sports page. EA was the company that distributed the original game. When I use the game finder to search for alice, it says there are no games with that title. I wonder what EA is thinking. Nothing like following a URL for a creepy movie (or is this the original trailer for the game?) and being assaulted with stupid sports. Somebody dropped the ball on this one…

The easiest Halloween costume is something thrown together from the thrift store. If that is your plan for your costume this year, you need to get to the thrift store NOW! If you wait until two days before Halloween, you will be sorely disappointed because the thrift store will be a picked over shell of what it was earlier in the month.

Even the easiest thing in the world to find (like a suit coat that you don’t mind ripping, tearing and destroying) might be difficult to find in your size because the thrift stores sell a lot of their inventory in the month of October. Your plaid coat for your Used Car Salesman costume went out the door in the early days of October underneath the arm of someone who planned a little more than you did.

So, if you want an easy costume this year, you can do it. You just need to do it NOW instead of a couple days before Halloween. If you need some ideas for easy costumes ideas, here are some links:

• About.com – Make Your Own Halloween Costume – Free Creative Halloween Costume Ideas: Lots of good ideas here.

• Homemade Halloween Costumes – easy and cheap!: Lots of great ideas for costumes made out of thrift store clothing. Mute your computer before you click on the link unless you want to hear Grim Grinning Ghosts on a harpsichord.

• Costume Idea Zone: A very professional site with costume ideas. There are commercials for BuyCostumes.com, but there are also some good ideas here.

All of these sites are desperately in need of pictures to augment their descriptions. It’s a lot easier to see the costume with a picture. Here is a group of pictures of costumes, but they’re not all homemade. It’s great for some ideas, though.

• Flickr: The Halloween Costumes Pool

The funnest part of Halloween is that for one day, you can be whatever you ever wanted to be. If you want to be scary, powerful, sexy or funny, you get to choose. That’s the truth every day of the year, but we tend to forget that. With Halloween, we get to remember what it is we want to be.

I picked up Ghost Hunting by Loyd Auerbach at the library the last time I was there. It looked like a fun book to read for the Halloween season. It is a non-fiction book giving advice to potential ghost hunters out there.

I learned one thing about this book: ghosts don’t exist.

Loyd Auerbach believes ghosts exist, but his admonitions throughout the book tell a different story. Almost every chapter has a sentence or two about fraud. The ghost hunting business is fraught with fraud. Restaurants and hotels desperately want to prove that they have ghosts to increase business. People play pranks on one another. People even subconsciously cause some events because they want a ghost to be in their home so badly. Psychics even give false readings at times and can’t be trusted. With that much fraud going on, the logical conclusion is that there are no ghosts.

Sorry, Loyd, the ghosts that you feel you HAVE found are just frauds that haven’t been uncovered yet.

I was kind of hoping for a bunch of scary stories in this book and would have even been alright with them being fictional, but unfortunately, the more Mr. Auerbach tried to convince me that paranormal activity could be measured, the more he warned me about family dynamics and interpersonal relationships that can cause unstable activity in homes. It’s not about the ghosts. It’s about the living people.

The skeletons that we have in our closets are far more interesting than any ghosts that could be lurking in the woodwork.

With such an eclectic mix of photographs, I could call it nothing short of disturbing. Some photos look obviously staged, but others appear to be a random mix of the ordinary and creepy. See the entire collection here:

• Horror pool slideshow on Flickr

This photo is called bronzed by daphid vandersanden. It’s beautiful and disturbing all at once.

The Halloween Handbook by Bridie Clark and Ashley Dodd is EXACTLY what you need if you are trying to think of a good costume idea. The most important thing you need when you’re trying to think of costume is a list of famous people, historical characters and interesting ideas. The most important thing you need when you’re trying to make your costume are pictures. This book has both. The pictures include famous photographs of celebrities AND costumes made to look like them. It’s a perfect mix of icons and good ideas.

They also advocate the “cheap, do-it-yourself” approach and only recommend typical costume purchases for versatile items such as wings, crowns, animal ears and squirt guns. I’m the kind of girl who usually makes her costume from scratch or hits the thrift store for ideas, so I like the way these people think.

They even have a whole chapter for groups with ideas like a box of crayons, a swarm of bees and a deck of cards. They didn’t mention that a group of girls could all come as Madonna in her variety of incarnations or even Barbie (Malibu Barbie, Roller Derby Barbie, etc.), but they DID mention that a group of guys could come as all the different James Bond characters.

All in all, I LOVE just flipping through this book trying to get ideas. If you are having trouble picking out your costume, get this book from the library and you’ll have MORE than enough ideas to find something that will work for you.

Witches, bats, full moons and an incomprehensible duck. Donald Duck gives Huey, Louie and Dewey a trick instead of a treat and a kind-hearted witch takes it on herself to avenge them. Try to ignore the German Danish subtitles and just enjoy the cartoon. I love how the witch quotes Shakespeare’s witches words and then gives him credit! My favorite is the witch’s broom that makes horses noises and faithfully bonks Donald on the head at the end.

This is the sort of thing I wasn’t allowed to watch as a child. That makes it doubly enjoyable for me to watch as an adult.

I love vintage Halloween items. My Halloween invitations and all the party favors use Halloween images from The Woodriver Gallery. They are the best for me to enjoy. Imagine my surprise when I found this group of photos from people who have uploaded very similar images from other sources.

• Vintage Halloween pool slideshow on Flickr

If you are throwing a Halloween party this year, try using one vintage image as your Halloween theme for the year. Put that image on your invitation, the party favors and the signs directing people to the party. It will add a classic feel to the party and the recurring image will tell people that they’ve come to the right place.

Depending on your knitting speed, you can knit yourself this brightly colored wig for a costume this year.

• knitty.com – Hallowig

I like homemade costumes much more than store-bought ones. There is something completely unique about a homemade costume that you won’t find at a costume shop.

Via: Rocketboom

In honor of Halloween, I present you with Ezzy, the demon cat. Ezzy lived with us for a few years. I snapped this picture back in 2002. I thought I had lost it by accidentally saving over it, but I found it today.

I have talked about Ezzy before:

• Pick Me! » Goodbye, Pedro… and Ezzy…

As an update, Pedro was hit by a car on 2100 South a while ago, so now, we have no black cats in our lives. Ezzy was never a loving cat and this picture summed up her personality perfectly. We fed her and tried to take care of her and this picture and some scars from bites and scratches are all we got for the effort.

They call them “Devilishly Delightful”, but I’m not convinced.

• DisneyShopping.com: Devilishly Delightful Décor

Something feels wrong with these decorations. They look like the Haunted Mansion characters and the tombstone even sounds like the tombstones in the graveyard. I just can’t put my finger on it. Is it because they light up? Is it because they are photographed in bright light? I don’t know.

Maybe it’s because I want the Haunted Mansion characters to stay in the Haunted Mansion. If they are in everyone’s front yard, they’re just rogue ghosts instead of the 999 happy haunts.

Via: Boing Boing: Haunted Mansion-themed Hallowe’en merch

This method uses face paint and latex to make a disgusting and realistic wound.

• Theater Effects: Lacerations

Back in 2003, I was “The Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun” for Halloween. I have looked at the picture of my “wound” so many times that I can’t believe I didn’t post it here. Back then I didn’t work with photos and video much, so I guess that’s why. The wound was pretty realistic and I didn’t use any latex or face paints.

When I did this, I used the directions for the Super Scabs from this website:

• Make Your Own Halloween Make-up

I did a test run a couple of days before the Halloween party. It worked so well that doing it the day of the party was a piece of cake. Using a little corn meal and Jello, you can create a scarier wound and everything came off with a shower.

When you’re planning your Halloween costume this year, don’t stress out about the makeup. Do a test run and enjoy playing with the blood and gore. I sure did!

Via: Boing Boing: HOWTO: Make a realistic, grody wound

The description of this Flickr photo pool is as follows:

“memento mori: a Latin phrase meaning —-> Remember, you must die Please post what reminds you of your mortality!”

There are so many great photos here that I am just linking to the entire slideshow:

• memento mori. pool slideshow on Flickr

I am so happy with all the groups that people have created on Flickr. There is so much interesting stuff out there that I would have never thought of doing on my own. Take this picture from Avant Gardenias, he has gone to so much trouble to create the perfect grave photo. My favorite so far!

As a child, KTVX Channel 4 had a television show on every Friday night at 11:20 pm. It was called Nightmare Theatre. I stayed up late to watch it every weekend. My dad had been a scary movie fan, so I was allowed to stay up as late as I could.

I usually fell asleep fifteen minutes into the program.

We had a host, but I remember NOTHING about him or her. I literally can’t remember if the host was male or female. All I remember is the scary movies. It seems that I was missing out.

The other channels had hosts with charisma who loved the movies or hated the movies. They dressed up in costume. Their exploits are going to be the focus of this new documentary called American Scary.

• American Scary

After watching the footage from their trailers, I said to myself, “Man, I was missing out!”

If you ever watched a television show like Nightmare Theatre as a child, then you probably had a horror host that you loved. Me? I was just trying to stay awake past the first commercial break.

Via: Old Haunts: TV Horror Host documentary

The old style of these photographs made me think of photographers from the turn of the last century trying to capture ghosts on film. He photographs “exhibitions” and Cro-Magnons.

• Stephen Berkman

When I realized that this photographer is alive today and selling his services, I was surprised. Somehow, I had been transported to the past by these photographs. When I saw the phone number on the home page, I was shocked back into the present.

The mark of an excellent artist is the ability to transport the subject to another place, time or emotion. Stephen Berkman does an excellent job of this. Enjoy his post-Victorian side-show.

Via: Boing Boing: Stephen Berkman’s photography

This website shows several Transformer Halloween Costumes that actually transform into cars or airplanes!

• Welcome to MARKSPROJECTS

Everytime I think I’m going overboard on my costume, I only need to look on the Internet and I’ll find someone who is even more dedicated than me.

Via: Neatorama » De Repentigny’s Transformers Suits

Gene rescues film that has been abandoned in cameras. He found this picture in a German Franka Werk Folder camera last February. The full sized version and the others in the set are here:

• Found Film – From a Franka Werk Folder

Film that has stayed in a camera for so long can get damaged, so Gene’s job is a tricky one. The damage on this photo seems to frame Death nicely. I wonder if he got a lot of candy that year or just a bunch of apples. I kinda wish I could go back in time and see what trick-or-treating was like back then. I’m sure the candy is better now, but I wonder about the homemade things.

This postcard is sad to me because I used to pretend to be happy. The truth of the matter is, if you pretend to be happy long enough, you really become happy in the end.

I posted this because it’s a Halloween picture, even though it’s kind of a bummer. Hang on there, anonymous person. Halloween is just around the corner. That’s something fun to look forward to!

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.

Here is a link to a scary story reported about a woman in Italy who was buried alive and the psychic that told the police authorities about her.

• Leicestershire Mercury – The Woman Who Woke Up To Her Own Funeral

The Museum of Hoaxes believes this story to be a hoax, although they can’t prove it yet. Just enjoy it today in the “spirit” of Halloween.

Via: Museum of Hoaxes – Clairvoyant Gets Message From Woman Buried Alive

I kept clicking pictures until he noticed me.

Then I got back into my car and drove away.

Little Leota calls to you at the end of the Haunted Mansion ride,

“Hurry baack… Hurry baaack… Be sure to bring your death certificate…”

Doombuggies.com is happy to accommodate you. Warning: PDF link

• Your Death Certificate from DOOMBUGGIES.COM

You can print up your death certificate, or order one from them signed in BLOOD red ink…

Your choice…

This toy looks so cool. It’s just the kind of “creative” toy that my mom would have gotten for me as a kid. I wonder how I missed out on it.

• X-Entertainment – Silly Vintage Monster Toys – Vincent Price’s Shrunken Head

If you’re feeling left out, this website gives you an idea of how to get started:

• How to make an Apple Doll head

Of course, you will want your shrunken head to be gory and ugly. The Vincent Price set used a series of vinegar dips to give the shrunken head a more leathery and preserved feel, so you might want to substitute vinegar during step six. Don’t forget to sew the lips shut!

Good Luck and Happy Shrinking!

Via: Old Haunts – One of the all-time coolest Christmas gifts I ever got as a kid