Cauldron Fire Pit

Love this idea.  

Image source.

Fire Goooood

Broke in our new Halloween fire pit last night after work.  

The maiden voyage was a blissful success... and seeing glowing bats and a jacko face smiling fire wasn't too shabby either.

Cauldron Halloween Stake

I swear I haven't gone soft, but this looks really neat.  Imagine it in a garden...near some twisted sticks and branches, with some fake webs (click on the video at the link and ignore the dreadful music).

Witch Burning

In the marketplace they are piling the dry sticks.
A thicket of shadows is a poor coat. I inhabit
The wax image of myself, a doll's body.
Sickness begins here: I am the dartboard for witches.
Only the devil can eat the devil out.
In the month of red leaves I climb to a bed of fire.

- Sylvia Plath

Image from Moaning Acres.

Southwalk Ritual 2023

Always so amazing and unique.  This year is no exception.  

Incredible at night and in daylight.

More images here.

Dead End Cemetery: Halloween 2009

Some wonderful (and nostalgic) photos from Mr. Macabre's 2009 display.  So strange to think of non-digital photographs as a thing from the past.  So grateful so many photograph scans are on this blog.  Halloween looks really neat on real film.  

Love these shots.  Feels dark and spooky and edgy.  Especially with the use of real flame. 

Haunted Attraction: Halloween Nights At Eastern State Penitentiary

Last night we went to the massive and very gloomy Eastern State Penitentiary for their Halloween Nights.  The Philadelphia location is really impressive and the perfect setting for a Haunted Attraction.  The size of the prison allows for multiple haunted houses and various places for food and beverages.  But that same size, I think, makes the Attraction feel a little too spread out inside.  A little sparse in parts.  

I also think Lancaster's Field of Screams is a tough act to follow.  

We had a great time though, enjoying some terrific drinks and food, and making S'mores over a fire while listening to a Ghoul read poetry on stage (that actually happened).

Below are some photos from Friday night...

Field Of Screams

Kicked off the season with an absolutely wonderful [pre]Autumn day.  We saw more pumpkins than any human has a right of seeing and ended the packed day at Field of Screams in Lancaster county.  Review coming soon, but here's a teaser:  It was amazing.

So much flame...

I'd Call The Cops

Click below...

Now Playing: Liquid Fire

By Void Stasis.

Click below...

Bleeding Skull

Hoping a larger version of this shows up on the At Home shelves...  This one is only a couple inches high, but he's really cool.

LED Tiki Torches With Smoke (From A Fog Machine)

Pretty nifty.

Click below to see them in action...

And click here for the how-to.

Dead End Cemetery: Halloween 2013

It'd be an honor to be buried in this cemetery.  I'd want it both ways and request that half of me be buried in a plot and the other half incinerated in the crematorium...  I'd prefer it if my ashes were to settle on the surrounding homes and cars.

Haunts like Mr. Macabre's below were what it was all about when I was trick-or-treating.  You'd see a display like this one and see the amount of work that went into it, and the vastness of the operation, and you'd be scared to even go up for candy (at least that's how I was as a kid).  You'd see multiple creatures roaming the grounds (those were always extra unnerving to me [and I think I always assumed they were evil teens waiting to steal my candy {or worse}]).  I came from a house where anyone past the age of 15 never wore a costume in any shape or form.  But here were adults manning a Haunt and using real fire, and running a crematorium no less - with a smoking chimney.

When you went up there and got your candy, you felt really proud of yourself.  And you definitely felt safer once you reached the sidewalk.  This'll be hard to articulate, but it almost felt like those times where you're lost and suddenly see a landmark or a street name that you recognize, and all is well again.  Haunters create this entire mini world where an ordinary suburban home becomes something peculiar and out-of-place, and unsafe.  Your logic and experience tells you it's just Halloween, but your senses are whispering something else entirely.

Here's to those folks who didn't just hand out candy on a pumpkin-less porch.  Here's to those folks who blared Alice Cooper or a sound effects cassette.  Who sometimes used a real casket from God-knows-where.  Who followed you around dressed as an ugly rubber-faced Witch.  Who made Halloween something better than Christmas.