My Halloween
October 29:
Bethany and I drove from Melbourne Florida to Orlando to see Universal's Halloween Horror Nights for the first time. Between getting there at 10:00 pm and waiting in long, convoluted lines, we were only able to catch four of the eight haunted houses set up this year, but I'm sure we chose some of the most creative. The first was set up like an insane asylum trashed by escaped patients, not all that exciting, but the second was a tour through what was supposed to be Hades, including armored knights coming to life, a minotaur in a labyrinth and a fantastic-looking Medusa. Next was a burnt, haunted orphanage, undoubtedly the creepiest, full of broken toys and children (actual children, who were no doubt having the time of their lives) in eerie outfits such as dolls, clowns, and partially melted animal masks. The fourth and last one we visited was small and simple, but possibly my favorite; caverns lined with human bones and inhabited primarily by plague doctors who popped out from the shadows to cough, retch, and gesture menacingly. This one was supposed to be a network of catacombs where plague survivors had flourished since the black death, which was pretty original.
None of the haunted houses allowed pictures or videos, but the main park was loaded with spooky sights and I recorded what was easily the oddest (i.e. coolest) thing there:
October 30:
Here in quaintly crummy Melbourne Florida, there's really only one major public event for Halloween: the outdoor costume party sponsored by Meg O' Malley's pub. This means a huge number of sweaty, drunken jerkholes in mostly store-bought, unflattering costumes, but with a grand prize of $1000 for the costume contest, we all knew our friend Dylan would win with his homemade nine-foot costume, Mr. Chiggers:
Dylan as Mr. Chiggers was a tremendous hit, the crowd was screaming for him to win before they even began judging and he was mobbed non-stop for photos. Second prize went to an adorably spot-on Adams Family group, and third place went to an admittedly amazing Master Chief from Halo. I just walked around in my costume of a thousand arthropods in people clothes while Bethany looked really adorable as her original spooky clown, Boogle. Our other friends didn't really dress up, but gave Dylan their literal support - his stilts were tricky, and he could barely see. He also nearly fainted from dehydration! This is how you know it's a truly spirited costume.
October 31:
Our friends Kristy and Katie held a party at Kristy's house that they both put a huge amount of work into, decorating the whole place and preparing two tables worth of spooky food, including a surprise surinam frog cake for my birthday! Most of us repeated the costumes from the night before, while Kristy was an alien and Katie was a lumberjack. If you knew them personally, you would be either intrigued or disturbed by these choices.
They also had a couple of contests, including a Spider Hunt which Bethany won by finding one of the fake spiders as well as an actual jumping spider, winning this awesomely gruesome trophy Katie made out of a barbie head!
I wound up winning the costume contest, and got this entirely different, also awesome trophy designed by Kristy. I have to say this is much more memorable and interesting to me than winning money at the other contest would have been, even if there's not as much I can "do" with a googly-eyed mutant barbie.
November 02:
Halloween almost felt over too soon, but For the Day of the Dead, Bethany worked over nine hours straight mixing up green slime (water, glue and borax powder) for everyone to play in and making a bunch of great food, including white chocolate eyeball pretzels, last minute ginger chicken, pumpkin spice tea and delicious pot pies using small pumpkins as pie shells! It was fun watching everyone splosh around, fight and blow bubbles in artificial mucus, after which we watched a few episodes of Aaahh!! Real Monsters with the few who could stay later.
I got a lot of nice presents from lots of different people, on and offline, but the most personal and special was this painting by Bethany of one of my top favorite monsters and best imaginary friends. If you don't know who he is, just read my site more; I don't want to make it too easy for you.
This was the most I've ever gotten to do for the Halloween season - and I didn't even remember to carve pumpkins!
Bethany and I drove from Melbourne Florida to Orlando to see Universal's Halloween Horror Nights for the first time. Between getting there at 10:00 pm and waiting in long, convoluted lines, we were only able to catch four of the eight haunted houses set up this year, but I'm sure we chose some of the most creative. The first was set up like an insane asylum trashed by escaped patients, not all that exciting, but the second was a tour through what was supposed to be Hades, including armored knights coming to life, a minotaur in a labyrinth and a fantastic-looking Medusa. Next was a burnt, haunted orphanage, undoubtedly the creepiest, full of broken toys and children (actual children, who were no doubt having the time of their lives) in eerie outfits such as dolls, clowns, and partially melted animal masks. The fourth and last one we visited was small and simple, but possibly my favorite; caverns lined with human bones and inhabited primarily by plague doctors who popped out from the shadows to cough, retch, and gesture menacingly. This one was supposed to be a network of catacombs where plague survivors had flourished since the black death, which was pretty original.
None of the haunted houses allowed pictures or videos, but the main park was loaded with spooky sights and I recorded what was easily the oddest (i.e. coolest) thing there:
October 30:
Here in quaintly crummy Melbourne Florida, there's really only one major public event for Halloween: the outdoor costume party sponsored by Meg O' Malley's pub. This means a huge number of sweaty, drunken jerkholes in mostly store-bought, unflattering costumes, but with a grand prize of $1000 for the costume contest, we all knew our friend Dylan would win with his homemade nine-foot costume, Mr. Chiggers:
Dylan as Mr. Chiggers was a tremendous hit, the crowd was screaming for him to win before they even began judging and he was mobbed non-stop for photos. Second prize went to an adorably spot-on Adams Family group, and third place went to an admittedly amazing Master Chief from Halo. I just walked around in my costume of a thousand arthropods in people clothes while Bethany looked really adorable as her original spooky clown, Boogle. Our other friends didn't really dress up, but gave Dylan their literal support - his stilts were tricky, and he could barely see. He also nearly fainted from dehydration! This is how you know it's a truly spirited costume.
October 31:
Our friends Kristy and Katie held a party at Kristy's house that they both put a huge amount of work into, decorating the whole place and preparing two tables worth of spooky food, including a surprise surinam frog cake for my birthday! Most of us repeated the costumes from the night before, while Kristy was an alien and Katie was a lumberjack. If you knew them personally, you would be either intrigued or disturbed by these choices.
They also had a couple of contests, including a Spider Hunt which Bethany won by finding one of the fake spiders as well as an actual jumping spider, winning this awesomely gruesome trophy Katie made out of a barbie head!
I wound up winning the costume contest, and got this entirely different, also awesome trophy designed by Kristy. I have to say this is much more memorable and interesting to me than winning money at the other contest would have been, even if there's not as much I can "do" with a googly-eyed mutant barbie.
November 02:
Halloween almost felt over too soon, but For the Day of the Dead, Bethany worked over nine hours straight mixing up green slime (water, glue and borax powder) for everyone to play in and making a bunch of great food, including white chocolate eyeball pretzels, last minute ginger chicken, pumpkin spice tea and delicious pot pies using small pumpkins as pie shells! It was fun watching everyone splosh around, fight and blow bubbles in artificial mucus, after which we watched a few episodes of Aaahh!! Real Monsters with the few who could stay later.
I got a lot of nice presents from lots of different people, on and offline, but the most personal and special was this painting by Bethany of one of my top favorite monsters and best imaginary friends. If you don't know who he is, just read my site more; I don't want to make it too easy for you.
This was the most I've ever gotten to do for the Halloween season - and I didn't even remember to carve pumpkins!
posted by Scythemantis at
3:09 AM
5 Comments
