A Halloween Thing A Day: 18 Haunting Costumes of the Past

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People spend a lot of money these days to put together scary Halloween costumes. From deluxe masks to professional-grade makeup to screen-ready clothing, it’s easy to drop a bundle if you really want to impress the people at your office costume contest or neighborhood block party.

Back in the day, though, costumes were usually homemade, often assembled with little know-how and not much in the way of supplies. And the effect, in many instances, was far scarier than anything you can buy off the rack today.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Do-It-Yourself Scary Skull

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Plastic skulls. Ceramic skulls. Candle holder skulls. Skulls that talk. Skulls that glow when you plug ’em in. Right now, you can find just about any kind of skull you want to add to your Halloween decorations.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Anti-Halloween Propaganda

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I think it’s safe to say that the people coming to this site every day to read 0ur stuff (and thanks to all of you for doing so) love Halloween. But, uh, not everybody does.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Vincent Price Reads “The Raven”

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Edgar Allan Poe is one of the first masters of horror, and, in my opinion, “The Raven” is his masterpiece; for years, it has been captivating and haunting readers with its sense of loss, unease, and mounting dread.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: All Hallows Read

hthing_bannerWe all have our Halloween traditions, whether it’s reading certain books, watching certain scary movies, having friends over for a bonfire, setting up a haunted house in your garage…we all have those things we anticipate each year as the scary season rolls around. A few years back, on his blog, Neil Gaiman proposed people adopt a new Halloween tradition: giving someone a scary book to read.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: The Myers House (North Carolina)

myershousencEach year, fans from all over the country travel to California to visit a small house in Pasadena. It’s an unremarkable house, save for the fact that it’s immortalized on film as the house where six-year-old Michael Myers killed his sister, Judith.

Most fans are content to pose in front of the house for a few photos, maybe going so far as to do so while wearing a Michael Myers mask. Kenny Caperton took things a little farther. Kenny Caperton, a life-long fan of the Halloween franchise, built an exact replica of the Myers house in North Carolina.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: 31 Horror Movies in 31 Days

Welcome to A Halloween Thing A Day! Since we here at Cemetery Dance have a certain fondness for Halloween, we don’t think it’s right to only celebrate it one day out of the month. So, this year we’re celebrating it EVERY day of the month. That’s right—31 days of short films, urban legends, weird facts, spooky stories…everything we could dig up on the most wonderful time of the year. Gather close….take my hand…I have such sights to show you…

Halloween + the Internet = LISTS, all kinds of lists, but especially horror movie lists. Everybody has their recommendations for what spook shows should flicker across your television sets this time of year, and I could easily post 10, 20, a hundred links to such recommendations here. Instead, I went to the two sources I trust the most: Fangoria and Shock Waves.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve read at least one issue of Fangoria. I probably wouldn’t be DOING this if it weren’t for Fangoria, which (along with a guy named King) served as my gateway into this crazy genre. To me, Fangoria is and always will be THE guide to the world of horror films. So, when they put out a list of horror movies to watch during October, it’s an easy bet that it’s one I feel confident in sharing.

The list doesn’t go as “deep cut” as I might’ve expected from Fango, but it does cover a wide range of horror, from classic films like The Abominable Dr. Phibes to comedic takes like Return of the Living Dead to creature features like Pumpkinhead to remakes like The Fly and Tom Savini’s underrated Night of the Living Dead. It’s a great, accessible list you can’t go wrong with!

As much as I love and trust Fango, it’s always good to get a second opinion, and this time I got a second, third AND fourth opinion. Shock Waves is my favorite horror movie podcast going right now, and all three co-hosts recently compiled their individual lists of 31 movies ripe for Halloween: Rebekah McKendry, Rob Galluzzo, and Elric Kane. If you’re looking to challenge your horror palate with a few obscure films, some foreign fare, or some of those “misunderstood classics” that litter the horror genre, you’ll find plenty to choose from in their lists.

Mix and match from these lists, sub in your own favorites, or just watch John Carpenter’s Halloween 31 times in a row—you can’t go wrong! If you’ve got some movies that you want to recommend for the Halloween season, share ’em in the comments!

See you tomorrow with another Halloween Thing!

Blu Gilliand is the managing editor of Cemetery Dance Magazine and Cemetery Dance Online. Some of his “must-see” Halloween horrors include John Carpenter’s HalloweenTrick ‘r TreatFrankenstein and the Monster from Hell, and, of course, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!