Category: Let's talk
Okay so what do we all think of the crazy day known as Halloween. It is on it's way! I post this because some people have alot of mixed feelings about it. Personally, I think it's strange how some people go all out for it as if it's a holiday. I am a screwge! Lol, no, not really. I just wonder why people go crazy for one day.
I have no thoughts about it, personally. if people wanna go all out, who am I to judge them?
I've never really understood the appeal of Halloween. Even when I was a child, I didn't. I mean, when I was extremely little, and my parents dressed me up, it was something I just kind of did but didn't really understand. By the time I was old enough to start deciding what I wanted to be, I decided I didn't want to be anything. I still don't quite get what everyone is so crazy about, but hey, yummy candy, so that works.
I loved it as a child, and even somewhat as a teenager, though for slightly different reasons. I really don't care about it now, though I'm not a killjoy, either. I'd probably even hand out candy to the little ones if I had the money to do so. I remember how disappointed I used to be when passing by a house that wasn't participating, so I don't want to become one of those disappointments myself. Kids need to learn they can't get free candy from everyone on that day, but there'll be plenty of time for seriousness and tough lesson learning later in life for them. I say let them have fun for the evening.
I just think it's fun.
Ocean dream, I feel the same about halloween. One year I gave out soda instead of candy and the kids loved it! The part I can't stand is when the rude kids come along but that's everywhere. Last year I heard a kid ask, "Mommy, what's wrong with his eyes?" The mother replied, "He has special eyes, honey!" This was all done in front of me and I felt like the neighborhood freak. I guess that's why I question the day. Stupid, I know, but it is what it is.
As a fan of horror fiction I of course love it. Sometimes I'll pop my prosthetics out and leave them at home if I go out somewhere, and tell people to look into my eyes. There was one time at the blind school, my senior year, when us dorm dwellers had a party with all kinds of props. I was lying on the fake operating table with fake blood all over me and one of my friends was pretending to drill holes in me with a real power drill. Unfortunately, the fake electric chair didn't quite work out and it set off the fire alarm and we all had to run outside. The smell of melted metal didn't get out of the building for weeks.
I participated in it as a child as well, and if I had money/if kids actually came to apartment complexes, I'd certainly hand out candy.
oh wow lol brilliant!
I think SisterDawn has expressed my opinion better than I could I think if it were just something fun for kids to do, than I doubt it would rub me the wrong way... but even when I started getting into my teens and seeing how greedy kids got (disappointment over getting mini-chocolate bars instead of big ones, etc.) I started to wonder about it... and the booming industry that is adult Halloween costumes, really?
some adults like to have fun, too, ya know.
Heck. I'll dress up and go to the haunted houses and give out candy and the whole deal. This day has some much tied to it and it is really a strange day, but so be it. I tend to think on the fun side and really dislike the evil that comes out of people due to this day.
I've read the istory, the reasons, the belief factor associated with it, but as a child I loved it, and was excited to do it. As an adult if someone wants to go to a party or invites me to one lets do it. Lol
Its fun. I love it. :)
If I can get my costume made in time, I'm going as the Texas flag.
My sister is having a halloween party, a k a another reason to drink and play poker. lol She's having a costume contest and a spooky snacks contest. It's the weekend before halloween so we'll still be taking the munchkin trick-or-treating.
Like yall, I get annoyed with the rude kids, and the teens who don't even bother to dress up or say trick-or-treat. Oh well, whateryagunnado?
Impricator, best! post! ever! Kutos! That's a wonderful idea.
I myself love candy (especially wn I can be lazy and go buy it) and scary movies. I think it's gotten a lot more slutty than scary, which I'm not a fan of (though admitedly the more baser part of me likes it.) I think it's fun to dress up, though I certainly don't take it very seriously.
I think it is a day meant for having fun. I'm going to a halloween dance tomorrow night not going to wear a costume or anything just wear a nice outfit and some make up, and just going to have some drinks and a good time. :)
Well, I'll give you the general answer and then the more specific one. Halloween is another day to break the workaday routine and do something a little different, even something silly. I feel sad for anyone who has chained up their inner child. For me, it's a special time to watch those classic and not-so-classic old monster movies, and yes, I prefer space monsters and giant bugs and all that sci-fi stuff to any of the assorted psycho killer splatterers. It's also a time to indulge in a bit more chocolate than I'd allow myself. Sabrena likes the scary story records I collected, especially the Vincent Price ones and these others with this crazy-sounding narrator reading Edgar Allan Poe, and she likes decorating the house with various noisy gizmos like talking skulls and such. Not sure if she'll do it this year with her class schedule though, but I still will watch my silly creature films. I've got "Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster" playing as I write this, and I would like some dark chocolate peanut butter cups this year. So yeah, my inner monster kid gets to come out and play for the month of October. I'm not into parties or costumes as such, but that's OK.
I had this really cool Halloween music tape when I was little but it wore out years ago and I have no idea what it was called. If only I could remember and track down a CD copy. All I know is I got it in 1987. I remember that because the family was about to move into our second house at the time.
never really seen much of a point really- but then that's how i feel about all holidays.
it's 1... maybe 2 days- just given a special name. to me it's no diffrent than say today
I had a tape as well. Actually a couple. One was an audio tour through a fictitious haunted musium where in the end, the guy found himself in a room of silence and it drove him so insane that a set off dynomight so it would make noise. The other was just a tape of scarry sounds. As far as chaining up my inner child, that task is almost complete. lol.
Speaking of tapes, I used to try to make a recording of myself talking in a really scary voice, then slow the speed way down and add a bit of reverb to it, or try, anyway. it wasn't really as scary as I used to think it was, but it was just how I tried to get into the spirit of scaring people. Not a bad idea for only having been a little kid, though. haha.
As someone who loves messing with audio I actually think it's a cool idea.
I always thought it was just one of those things that only I as a blind kid found amusing. However, my sighted son is obsessed with playing with the voice changing apps on his ipod.
Used to play music backwards on the old A.P.H. cassette players.
I loved backwards music and used to pretend it was some long lost language. lol.
Oh I did the same. played music backwards and pretend it was some long lost language or a secret code that I had to break. My younger cousins and I would play with my tape player a lot when we were younger. I would make a radio station and they would make the advertisments.
what are some of your fave halloween movies to watch and music to listen to?
I had a tape recorder that could play music or anything backwards for that matter. I used to find that sort of thing interesting. Completely different subject, lol.
I am looking for some good halloween music. I've heard some stuff from way back when halloween was a true holiday. It's hard to find Halloween music but I know it's out there.
The movie White Zombie, from way the hell back in 1932. It's in the public domain, which means the copyright is expired.
Ah, the technological advances that have replaced good old cassette recorders with speed-changers and echo features. lol. My friends, nieces, nephew, and i used to love recording scary stuff on those things. Halloween is my favorite holiday. I pretty much celebrate it all month long. It's the time of year when the weather is great, not too hot and not too cold, the leaves are beautiful, and life is all about pumpkin spice lattes, spooky decorations, lots of scary movies, stories, and music, and candy, candy, and more candy. Also, if you subscribe to Pagan beliefs, then it's a time of resolutions and new beginnings and the time during which the link between the world of the living and the world of the dead is strongest.
I still enjoy dressing up in all sorts of costumes, though admittedly my recent costumes and costume ideas for upcoming Halloweens have been more sexy than scary. Unfortunately, I don't get trick-or-treaters, as I live in an apartment complex as well. Wish I wasn't too old for it myself. lol. I've got three parties on the calendar this year though, and actually none of them are on the day of Halloween, so it may be that all I do on the actual day of Halloween is wear my sexy vampire costume, watch scary movies, and eat candy, which is perfectly fine with me.
My favorite horror movies of all time are the original Halloween series. You just can't top them (with the exception of Halloween: Resurrection, which simply shouldn't have been made). George Romero's Living Dead series comes in at a close second. The Others is a pretty creepy movie as well, especially if you watch it in the dark. I still have most of my spooky tapes from childhood, including all but one of the Goosebumps dramatic audios. Did anyone else ever have the tape that had a short story called "Peter and the Werewolf", followed by a lot of scary sounds? I also tracked down a CD copy of a record that I used to have called "Story of Halloween Horrors". On one side was the story of a guy "voiced by Michael Bell) who inherits a house with a variety of ghost stories associated with it, all of which turn out to be true. Super, super creepy story. On the other side are scary sounds.
Becky
I'm kind of a sound effects gek and love Halloween sound effects CDs and tapes and even the LPs if I can find rips of them. These days you can go to places like Amazon MP3 and find tracks that last an hour or two that are supposed to be scary ambiences. A lot of them, however, tend to take the approach of throwing every scary sound there is at you at once, there's no sense of setting or any kind of plot.
Those of you who like backwards things might want to look around for, well it's on several CDs, but there's a particular Halloween mix where the sounds play forwards in the left channel and backwards in the other channel. Probably called Sounds of Horror or Sounds of Halloween, and there are hour-long and half-hour-long versions of this depending on what company you get it from.
I'll not give up my search.
I haven't participated in Halloweenin quite a few years, though not entirely by coice since I do enjoy the holiday, evenif I do admit it's been rather overcomercialized over the years. But then again what holiday hasn't. But I didn't participate when I moved out to Idaho because I was living with my folks and I don't think they've ever had a trick-or-treater in their neighborhood in the ten years they've been here. And I didn't participate once I moved out either simply because again, trick-or-treaters just don't seem to come to my neighborhood. I think I've gotten maybe one in the five years I've been out on my own, and that one was the first year I was in my apartment. Of course that could be because being blind and on my own I obviously didn't have lights on, so they must just have figured I was never home. Bt with my new GF and her daughter I imagine that's going to change. In fact I think Sandra wants to attend the Halloween party at the bar where we usually sing Karaoke on some Saturday nights. The actual party is I believe next Saturday. I think she wants me to dress up as a woman and her a man LOL.
Margorp, what sort of music you looking for? If you like the kind of rock novelty music from the Fifties and Sixties, look for a couple of comps called "Monster Bop" and "Horror Hop." I know there are a few collections of scary-themed classical music out there, and there might be some CDs of more ambient music if that's your style, although a lot of it is very obviously synthesized. On one blog a long time ago I did find a rip of an LP that had the actual selections of production library music used in the original "Night of the Living Dead." And then of course there are assorted Halloween party CDs with covers of the usual Halloween novelties and movie themes.
Though I haven't dressed up in a few years, I'm not opposed to it, either. I think it's kind of fun to create your own costume. I wouldn't go into a store and buy one, that takes all the fun out of it. But in general, I've always liked the holiday, and yes, it may have become more commercialized, but what holiday hasn't?
Some of the sound tracks from movies from the 70's and 80's, the ones with the squeeling wining violins, are scary to me. There's a clip on youtube of a movie called I Want to Keep My baby, that has some scary ass music. Also the movie, Sibol has some of that same scary violin music.
I don't mean movie soundtrack stuff...I mean classical stuff I guess.
Oh, well, there's a CD put out by Sony called Fright Night that has some Halloween-themed classical music on it, and I think it's one of their budget-line CDs so you won't ahve to pay top dollar for it. I'd imagine there are similar collections from other labels but this is the one I own.
Ah yes, the violin from the shower scene in Psycho. LOL.
The cd you speak of most likely contains such tracks as Mozart's requium or however it's spelled. Perhaps it also contains Bach's fuge in D minor (the Dracula theme) but that's not exactly the stuff I'm talking about. I've heard there are people who exclusively do Halloween music.
The tape I'm after had some kind of organ music I think, followed by screams, followed by ghostly type of sounds.
I think most of them have that stuff.
Yeah, you're fright. Margorp, I wonder if you'd be looking for stuff like the work of a band like Midnight Syndicate. They seem to specialize in that kind of thing.
Exactly. I have heard some of that stuff and I really like it. I do wonder if any songs survived from when it was a holiday?
Post seven? kick ass! I love Halloween. I'm going trick-or-treating this year with my friend, her husband and their fifteen-month-old son. No costume, since i'm not that creative on such short notice, just a pillow case. Bring on the sweets. *smile*
You all seriously need to get in touch with dark industrial if halloween music is your thing. Start by checking out the Doomed - Music for Tortured Souls channel on Soma.FM.
there's a lot of really quality stuff there, from dark ambient to noise forest to straight industrial. Not so much Ministry or Butthole Surfers / Hitting Birth / Smegma type stuff, it's got less of a beat, it's more stuff like Coil and Current 93.
They've got a couple techno trance stations on Soma FM which will give you more of the aforementioned plus stuff like Skinny Puppy and the like.
well, as to what I think of halloween? well, I don't really see much point in it and would probably feel too silly as a college student to go out there and trick-or-treat, plus I live in a dorm and no one does anything on campus.
ah, yes, I dressed up too and loved it. I've always wanted to be one of the marauders especially Sirius and Lupin, but is a bit too embarrassed to since I am not a guy. and, my parents would never buy proper costumes, so I was always the kind of gal. because all my costumes were either cheaply bought or hastily home made. I always wanted to dress up as harry Potter characters for a few years. wait......, maybe I did go out as Remus lupin once I do remember wearing a wig with short hair, and then I was hermione for one year and minerva McGonagall for another and then at 13 or 12 I dressed up as a pastor's wife. and then the other one I remember was at 16 or 17 I haden't dressed up in a few years but our next door neighbor had a halloween party and, I decided to dress up as a businesswoman. I was going to be Dagny Taggart, as at that time I was like really really super obsessed with atlas shrugged. I just remember not being so sure which one I'd want to be Dagny or dominique.
I found some scarry stories that I used to own from this album called "great ghost stories." Also some from another random series I had.
Got the audio for the Disney Haunted Mansion ride here.
interesting.
there used to be this tape of scary stories that I used to borrow from my local library years ago. I can't for the life of me remember what they were called, but I remember one of them was about this guy who was a complete asshole to his family, cheating on his wife, getting drunk all the time, and yet he was a cop. So one night he's on duty and he pulls over this beautiful woman, intending to have sex with her, but it turned out she was actually the devil in disguise, and she or it or whatever burned up his cop car and him and I guess sent them to the lake of fire. Lol, I know it sounds kind of ridiculous now, but it was pretty scary when I listened to it the first time when I was about 10 or so. Another one had to do with a guy who hated his job, hated his life, and then one day he comes across a genie in a bottle. He makes his first two wishes, for money and something else, I forget what. And then the third wish is for him to be taken to a place where the people in his life can never hurt him again. So the genie traps him in the bottle, and he gets stuck there. There were other stories, but the details are vague, so I won't try to describe them. But if anyone recognizes that description, it would be cool if I could find them again.
I'm sure they're up on youtube. lol.
For spooky movies in the so-bad-they're-good genre, a company called Mill Creek Entertainment makes some nice little twelve movie sets. I know they ahve one that is monster movies and another called Gorehouse Greats as well as other compilations. Look around like on amazon.com and some of their older discontinued 20 movie sets like Monsters or Beyond the Grave can be had for anywhere from less than a dollar to two or three bucks used plus shipping. Even one of these sets would be good for the very casual fan.
Margorp, they probably are, but I don't remember the titles of the stories, so I wouldn't know what to search for. The stories were supposed to be scary, but they were more ridiculous than anything. I'd like to find them for a good laugh. The acting was pretty good though. I think they might have been associated with one of the many radio theater production companies, but I'll be damned if I can remember which one.
I found an audio version of the tell tail heart that was verry well done. The guy really sounded insane.
For winamp users: http://173.0.50.184:8000
I'm going to share this story I found from my childhood:
me tie dough
Me and my sister used to laugh so hard at this for some reason.
Margorp, was it the Richard Taylor reading of the Telltale Heart that you found, or is this another one?
Those of you who want to hear some great insane over-the-top acting might want to go find a radio series called Mystery in the Air. I believe there are eight episodes circulating. See if archive.org might have them. Anyhow, these star Peter Lorre, and you know he can do this wonderful dramatic over-the-top insane act if he wants to.
I think it was Richard Taylor, yes.
lol, I totally have that whole album. There are actually a few other Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark albums. I'm thinking about trying to track them down on Amazon in the next few months.
Becky
Yeah, Richard Taylor recorded four albums, all Edgar Allan Poe stories, and I think they were originally sold via mail-order in the back of monster magazines.
There used to be a blog called Scar Stuff, actually the blog exists but he's taken all his download links down, but it was full of wonderful Halloween vinyl. Other blogs might repost them. Look for Vincent Price reading various ghost stories on perhaps four different albums.
This year, I just had white makeup and fake blood painted on my face to look like an operation gone wrong. There was also black marker to represent stitches. came home with a lot of candy, so I'm happy.
We had entirely too much fun last night trick-or-treating with the kids. We went with our new neighbors. Well, they've actually been here a couple of months but I still think of them as new. Their son and mine have become best buds though so they're quickly becoming like family. lol
Anyway, we had a group of 7 kids ranging in age from 3 to 13. The moms took the kids while the dads hung out in our neighbor's driveway which he had all decorated with zombee stuff and a smoke machine. It was awesome.
Then we put the kids in the back of the pick-up and drove to the next neighborhood over. As much fun as he had trick-or-treating, I think the highlight of my son's night was getting to ride in the bed of the truck. lol My husband and I had 2-way radios so he stuck his in the candy bowl and told me when to do a psychotic laugh as people were coming up so that it sounded like the candy bowl had something in it. lol He said itfreaked a few people out.
The kids got a ridiculous amount of candy and the whole night was tons of fun. It was really special for our neighbors because this was their first halloween in the suburbs instead of a very rural area. It was awesome watching all the kids have so much fun.
Needless to say, this morning was not one of our best. lol You couldn't pay me enough to be an elementary teacher on November 1st. lol
Hope everyone else had lots of fun.
Trick-or-treating is put off in New Jersey until Monday. And yes, I used to have the stories to tell in the dark album.