Before I put away the orange and green and black lights, and shove my GORZAK suit in a box, I wanted to do a sort of Halloween wrap-up post. I want to share one of my favorite spooky films with you, and give a trip report… to my house, for my Halloween party. Specifically, I wanted to give the winners of our costume contest the minuscule notoriety they deserve.

This was a great Halloween. I came away from it with 15 boxes of monster cereal that will probably never be eaten. I also met lots of nice internet people and fellow bloggers. Most of whom you can find in my blogroll. I have somehow managed to get worse at making youtube videos, and still increased my youtube presence by about a gajazillion percent.

I tried Hershey pumpkin kisses. Too sweet.

I bought a gorilla suit. Too itchy.

I passed out at my own party. Too early.

In other words, while everyone else was posting photos on Instagram of walking on Mars and eating curried jackalope, I was doing nothing of  any consequence whatsoever.

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Costume Contest Winners!

I have requested permission to post these photos, so all two of you who read this, don’t go stalking my peeeeeepppps.

A minute ago, when I plugged my camera into my computer, I was greeted with about 50 photos from Halloween night. I remember a grand total of about 3 of them. I knew I took victory shots of the winners… and of bourbon.

These are the trophies for 1st and 2nd place (l-r) and the Apple Bobbing trophy is all the way on the right. We have this lovely photo framed by mess on the left and La Croix carbonated dog water on the right.

We also had an Apple Bobbing Competition, which I do not remember happening, but someone apparently won it because the trophy is gone. Congratulations, Mystery Mister-or-Miss Hold-Your-Breath-Good!

Presenting our third place winner, dressed as Ralphie from A Christmas Story in the “Aunt Clara Still Thinks I’m 4 Years Old and Girl” Rabbit Pajama Suit Thing:

Around her neck is the 3rd Place prize: a medal that doubles as a bottle opener!

In 2nd place, Wembley Fraggle!!!!

Wembley is the one on the left.

And, in first place, the Grand Prize Winner of the 7th Annual Costume Tournament, the Witch Doctor!!!

Inspired by the Diablo 3 Witch Doctor, my friend here made everything from scratch. Most of the bones are from fish that he roasted himself, in order to extract their skulls for his strange and esoteric rites and rituals. I think I had a hex on me the whole time that caused me to have a mighty hangover the next day that felt like a whole tribe of Witch Doctors were doing a dance around my brain. The skull sippy cup was a nice touch, as Garfield would say.

There was some seriously stiff competition this year. Some good entries that I saw were “Precision & Accuracy” (as an Arts & Leisure sort of chap, I had to get my scientist wife to really explain that one to me), Casey Jones & Da Shredder from TMNT, a couple of Coneheads, and many other strong contestants for those coveted trophies and mile-wide fame!

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“O, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad!”

This last little bit here is rather fitting for a post-Halloween, pre-Christmas blog entry. It is appropriate because it was produced by the BBC in 1968 as part of their “Omnibus” series, which was a predecessor of their incredibly famous (rightfully so) series, “Ghost Stories for Christmas”.

As a little kid, we drove up to my great-grandmother’s house up in the country on Christmas Eve, and my favorite part was always when the adults would tell tales of their encounters with the supernatural. I was both thrilled and terrified, of course, but I attribute these times as one of the main reasons I like spooky stuff today.

The first time I saw, “Whistle, and I’ll Come to You” was at a friend of mine’s house in Dublin. We all gathered ’round and he turned on a projector and we all sat, enraptured, as this incredibly unsettling tale of the supernatural unfolded onto a sheet on the wall (get it?).

I didn’t sleep good that night.

See, I’m not one of those people who goes around beating my chest, proclaiming that nothing can scare me or that I’ve never been scared of a horror movie.

Honestly, I’m in it for the art and imagery of it all, but some of it still gets to me. Especially on nights like tonight when I have the house to myself. I count on Fletch, our cat, to alert me to any unwelcome presences. Although he’s really much more in tune with the backs of his eyelids or knocking something breakable off of a counter somewhere.

Anyway, I get scared at horror movies. Particularly ghost stories. For some reason, ghosts have always been more believable to me than other types of horror. If Jason came through my front door, I might could slow him down enough with my shotgun, or I could at least have him chase me over to the neighbor’s house, bwa ha ha! I figure a fella like Jason wouldn’t mind the ol’ Bait & Switch trick, especially if it netted him a full family of 3 kills, versus a measly one dead overweight, mid-30’s, nerdlinger.

All that written, when all I really wanted to say is that I dare you to watch this with the lights off, the sound turned up, and without any distractions. Seriously. I dare you.

It is slow, creeping horror. It sneaks up on you. It plays dirty, but in a covert, subversive way. Don’t expect The Conjuring, or anything close to a modern horror story. This is something else entirely. It is a descent into madness and hell… in quiet baby steps.

Also, consider yourselves lucky, this film was out of print for forever, and copies of it were super expensive. I used Clip Converter and saved it to my computer, just in case this gets taken down.

Enjoy and you were warned: