IT'S NOT DEAD YET.

  

   By the first days of November, it already becomes difficult to find a decent rubber bat or artificial lighted pumpkin on store shelves, but why let the spirit of the season die so abruptly? I begin Halloween content three months early, and I'm not going to cut it off on October 31st just because 99% of America already stopped caring and most of the rest of the world never even started to. That's why I originally started doing the Creepypasta Cook-off from November to January, and there's still quite a bit of spookocity going on in our popular culture right now that bears commenting on. In fact, one of the greatest Halloween specials of my lifetime premiered only this month, as have several other ghoulish films and games that we may be looking at over the coming weeks. For once, it almost feels like I'm not the only one refusing to let go of Halloween just yet.

So, just how did my Halloween go, I rudely assume you ask?






   I said I'd be making a costume similar to last year's, but without many major events for an introverted non-drinker to take a Halloween costume, I more or less only made one because I "could," and didn't even really finish it. Those eyeball masks from Target came in really handy to give this thing a bigger, more embedded right eye. If I can keep it from falling apart for a year, I'll likely add more stuff to the bottom and some dangling entrails, so it doesn't just abruptly "cut off" and really looks like it's erupting out of someone's body.





   To the excitement of probably nobody, I also finally got to experience a proper Animal Crossing Halloween for the first time since 2001. I remember lamenting that you couldn't wear your own pumpkin mask back then, but these days you have your pick of four varieties, plus over a half-dozen other creepy heads. Better still, Lucky the mummy dog moved to my town right in the heart of the season, and you know I pined for that little bastard as far back as the Nintendo 64.





  

New Leaf is actually the first AC title I've bought since Wild World, marking nine years since I made an incredibly hackneyed but mercifully short "creepy journal" set in my previous town. This was before the term "creepypasta" had even been coined, let alone the trend of basing them on video games gone awry. Animal Crossing was eventually the subject of a more epic, more exciting horror adventure you can read here if you've never done so before.

Yeah, one of the biggest things I have to say about my 31st birthday is about Animal Crossing. That's how I roll.

But there's more!

THINGS I GOT

  

Clock Owls (Wal Mart)

   This year's rivers of Halloween merchandise dried up faster than I've probably ever seen, which on one hand, means I didn't walk away with as much as I expected, but on the other hand, goes to show how much people are appreciating the season again. At least there's a few things I managed to snag at half price or more, and two of those things were the same weirdo owls I saw at Wal-Mart last year and regretted passing up. I was sure they were gone for good, but in the very midst of making my costume, I found a couple stragglers they decided to put out at a Wal Mart I never even normally visit. It was only once they'd escaped me that I really fell in love with these things. I still think there's some intentional "Clockwork Orange" joke in their orange, clockwork faces, but the important thing is that they're weird owls with eyeball cogs who look like their heads have been unzipped.





   Finding "homes" for new additions is one of the challenges of amassing way too many Halloween items and refusing to ever take them down, but it also never stops being fun. I never realized I was collecting so many weird owls lately, until I finally had enough for a weird owl corner. If you're wondering what lives in that tank, it's basically just woodlice. Woodlice breeding and thriving without me ever even really paying attention to them. They'll do that, as long as their container is tight enough to maintain fairly high moisture levels and they never run out of decaying wood. That's all there is to it. Why doesn't everybody keep woodlice? They're the perfect low-maintenance pets.

Scararita Bottle (Target)

   I'd been eyeing this bottle all season and finally got one for about a dollar. I don't have any use for a margarita mix, but a fake plastic wine bottle full of green juice with a rotten skeleton face looks pretty attractive on my shelves. I look forward to whatever curious colors and consistencies it may mutate over the coming years of neglect, though I have some ten year old gummi candy that still looks fairly pristine.

"Scararita," though? What is that? That doesn't work! Why not morgue-arita?





   On a sadder note, I actually did end up asking Target if I could have any of these signs when they were done with them. Their answer? "Sorry, we throw those out." Spoken as though they literally have no choice but to put them in the garbage, and according to the word of a few actual retail workers, that may very well be the case. To think all this beautiful artwork across the country of this happy fly and spider apparently must go in the garbage. What a waste. A heinous disrespect for the fine art of seasonal cardboard banners. My dumb website might very well remain the only substantial artifact of this adorable duo for the forseeable future.

Worm Hat

   This is supposed to be a wool cap, but as my friend Jesse demonstrates, it can also be pulled down over your face, giving you the appearance of a snowboarder whose face is made of bloody worms, or according to Jesse, Cobra Commander with a face made of bloody worms. Maybe it's Cobra Commander at a ski resort with a face made of bloody worms. Or, maybe it's a mass of bloody worms cosplaying Cobra Commander at a ski resort. You can't see out of it this way, of course, so it's not really functional as a mask, unless you mean the kind of the mask you buy off a website that also sells riding crops and blindfolds. Ski Resort Cobra commander, I had no idea you were such a deviant what am I even talking about anymore, I shouldn't be writing this at four in the morning.

Ghost Balloons

   You know what I love? That these ghosts have hands like chicken claws. I don't know why it never occurred to me before that ghosts might have bird feet for arms. That seems like precisely the kind of conclusion I would draw.

Stuff from Erickson

   A person who is both a wonderful artist and winning creepypasta writer sent me a whole big box of things that would take a long time to go through, but among them was a whole stack of drawings, including this depiction of the (still upcoming) Mortasheen role-playing game's player race options!





   In the same box were some Nurgle Plague Toads, which I know cost an arm and a leg, so I'd better learn how to paint them nicely enough. And if I can't do that, I can at least paint them ridiculous and probably with some glow in the dark parts.





   Among the various other treats was this card, a real card you can generate on a greeting-card-generating website loaded with corny stock art. This was a good choice, I'm glad to have anything at all with this haphazard frog-faced stock ghost on it. This is one of the best ghosts I've ever seen. Look at its orange bow.





   Erickson also added an original interpretation of the same ghost, which I couldn't possibly improve upon. I'd go into more details on the other contents, but I don't know how many people care about my Halloween after-party website post, so I'm trying to keep it streamlined-ish.

Stuff from Kiara!

   One of my best friends since forever also sent multiple things, including an adorable homemade Awful Hospital birthday card and this stuffed Grimer I never knew existed. It also looks a little bit like the Little Caesar's mascot if he turned purple and began melting, as blissfully delighted by the ordeal as we always knew he would be. FINALLY.





   Packaged with Grimer were these nightmarish rubber voodoo dolls with oral prolapse action. These same characters have shown up as stretchy toys and eyeball-popping keychains in recent years, but these unsettling editions are completely new to me!

Pickled Eyeballs!

   Margret, whom is not technically but may as well be my wife bought me jars of various animal eyeballs somewhat earlier in the season, which make a great contrast to children's toys and more tanks full of woodlice and cockroaches. If I could afford it, of course, I'd have enough actual body parts in jars to fill an entire room. I'm glad I'm one step closer.

On an entirely unrelated note, Margret has been reading me Animorphs aloud since our trip to Maryland. I completely missed out on it as a pre-teen, so yes, I'm getting into Animorphs now in my thirties. I think we're up to book fourteen or fifteen, I forget. They just met the dog-worshiping androids a couple books back. Haha. The one killed people and got sad.

Sorry if you weren't really enthralled by some loser's post-Halloween article, but over the coming weeks, I hope to do a few more Halloween-flavored features. Like I said, some of the best content only just reared its head. Halloween doesn't die on November 1st. It only just starts rotting.

Halloween 2014 Archive: