Written by Jonathan Wojcik

Where Are All The

CREEPY COSTUMES?


HAHA! THAT'S "THE FAMILY GUY!"



   Frightening costumes are supposed to be one of the most fundamental elements of Halloween, but dare ye peek into the average "Halloween" "Party" and you'll get an eyefull of bad celebrity impersonations, internet memes, store-bought "sexy" versions of things and some haphazard "zombies" only marginally distinguishable from an intrusion of grimy vagrants.




   What makes this all the more depressing is that truly weird, unsettling costumes don't even entail that much effort or imagination. The sad truth is, putting almost any nearby object over your head already stands a good chance of looking cooler, more memorable and more terrifying than the vast majority of "Halloween" costumes you'll find at Spencer's this year.




   Before the days of mass-produced, pre-packaged Halloween, most people were happy cutting eyeholes in a piece of garbage, and the results were beautiful. Think about your bedroom door just slowly, quietly creaking open in the wee hours, and one of these painted paper bags peering in through the gap. And it just stays there. Silent. Still. Waiting for something, but you don't know what. Not until it finally leaves, as silently as it appeared, and you feel strangely lighter.

Something is missing.

Something that used to be inside you.

But what?






   Here's another one; an authentic, home-made "Donald Duck" costume at least fifty years old. This wasn't even supposed to be scary, and if it's not up there in at least the top ten to forty scariest things you've ever seen, I'd love to know what kind of meat the ground is made of where you come from. I think it goes without saying that if you try to speak from inside this mask, nothing but flies come out. At least, they kind of look like flies.




   Ever made something with paper mache? No? Think you would only end up with a ragged, malformed mess? Excellent. You are exactly the person who should be making a paper mache Halloween mask as we speak. You've got two months to slap some mush together and paint eyes on it. The ways to mess that up are incredibly narrow. This guy did it, and he never even heard of paper mache. He wasn't even awake at the time. Every time he takes it off, it just sort of "comes back" somehow. How's that for craftsmanship?




   It's possible you saw these guys on one of those "failure" blogs, but I can't imagine why, because I've never seen a more life-like representation of the people who live behind your medicine cabinet, slithering out on their bellies when you're gone to lick all your clotted hair and saliva back out of the sink drain.




   Getting any ideas, yet? You should be. That's why you might be hearing all those soft, little footfalls on your rooftop, interrupted by the occasional gasp of pleasure. They feed on the imagination. It fills their giant, plastic heads with sperm-slugs for the spawning pit.




   Don't even think too hard about it. Don't worry if anyone else will "get it" or not. This is allegedly supposed to be a "germ," and I can totally see that, even if it looks more like the mail lady does during the green-shadow hour. It doesn't matter. It's a piece of cloth with some scribbles on it and it is a masterpiece.




  There are infinite ways to make an absolutely bizarre, even terrifying costume on a shoe-string budget. I'm sure there are even ways to do it with literal shoe strings. The simpler, the sloppier, the cruder, the more fantastic it might be. Hell, even one of those terrible store-bought deals might be just a little bleach and spraypaint away from someone's nightmares.


A couple raw chicken carcasses and this might even really look like "The Family Guy!"




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