Kikimora

"In Slavic mythology, Kikimora is actually a house spirit that appears by making rumbles and producing chaos. It is mostly described as female humanoid, but also very often depicted with bird-like features"

Text and Image Source

Listening to: Donovan - Season of the Witch

Good song to groggily start your morning to.

Sculptures by Bill Skrips

 

More of his work on Instagram

Mr. Macklin's Jack O'Lantern

by David McCord

Mr. Macklin takes his knife 
And carves the yellow pumpkin face: 
Three holes bring eyes and nose to life, 
The mouth has thirteen teeth in place. 
Then Mr. Macklin just for fun 
Transfers the corn-cob pipe from his 
Wry mouth to Jack’s, and everyone 
Dies laughing! O what fun it is 

Till Mr. Macklin draws the shade 
And lights the candle in Jack’s skull. 
Then all the inside dark is made 
As spooky and as horrorful 
As Halloween, and creepy crawl 
The shadows on the tool-house floor, 
With Jack’s face dancing on the wall. 
O Mr. Macklin! where's the door?

Text Source

Now Watching: "Why Matthew Gray Gubler Lives in a Haunted Tree House"

Been on a Criminal Minds binge recently, and was delighted to discover this video of Matthew Gray Gubler (Spencer Reid) providing a brief tour of his home.  

For the longest time I didn't know much about the actor outside of the show, but this video reveals him to be quite endearing.  He is weird, personable, and hilarious (in kind of a dry way).  I really enjoyed this video (also, check out his personal YouTube channel!)

His home really frames him as a kindred spirit to folks like myself. And needless to say, if I were to decorate my dream house, it would look pretty close to how he decorates his.

Halloween 2021 Sketches

When planning a Halloween display, I doodle any ideas or designs in a little notebook that I try to keep on my person at all times.  Here are some of those sketches from last year's display, Crop of the Faceless Spirit.

On the top right, you can see an unused design of an
upside-down pelvis/spine/ribcage tied to a bindrune (my icon)

I toyed with the idea of the Faceless Spirit having arms and a ribcage.
I hadn't come up with a proper name for the haunt at this point.

Victims beneath the tree were going to be accompanied by "Stubby",
 but I ended up tying him to a tree among the other corpsecrows.

One more corpsecrow design and my concept
for the little tripod lanterns

(As usual, shoutout to Pumpkinrot for a lot of the inspiration for these props and associated fabrication techniques.)

I've begun sketching designs for Halloween 2022, and am testing a few new methods for my props.  Here's hoping it will all come together in time (less than 200 days left!)

Listening to: All I Need

The credits song from Mr. Jones (2013), the movie that finally made me start prop making. When I first started, I would have this song on repeat as I scavenged sticks and bound them with jute.  Right now, I'm listening to it as I plan and prepare for Halloween 2022. 

I think I'll make a standalone Mr. Jones blog post in the future.  Maybe even share some of my early works inspired by the film.

Now Watching: Robert Eggers' "Hansel & Gretel"

A charming and atmospheric silent-film directed by Robert Eggers.  This is an early film of his (2006) almost 10 years before The Witch.  Its fascinating to see Egger's style begin to form here; it's clear to see how the aesthetic experimented with here eventually evolved into his period-horrors like The Witch or The Lighthouse.

Check out the full short below (26 mins)

The Scarecrow Project

 Last year, I stumbled across a rather intriguing Instagram account: 

The Scarecrow Project

There isn't much info or description on the page or its posts, but from what I gather, an individual made these amazing scarecrows and placed them in roadside fields and other rural locations. (Great Pumpkin Project-style)  The posts' dates range from January 6th 2019 to March 2nd 2020.  I haven't seen any activity since.

Some of the descriptions give dates of the placement (as far back as 2016), the location, and the date they were discovered removed or vandalized.

"Date Placed: August 7, 2016
Date Missing: August 8, 2016
Location: Busy Road, Open Space Preserve and Wetland"

When I first encountered the account, my mind immediately jumped to Mr. Jones, a 2013 horror movie featuring a reclusive scarecrow maker who sends his sculptures to seemingly random people around the country.  Many (most? all?) of the scarecrows/totems seen the film were designed and/or constructed by Pumpkinrot (he made 18 in total).  

Indeed, some of The Scarecrow Project's pieces very closely resemble those of Mr. Jones. Just compare the below Scarecrow Project scarecrow (left) with one of Rot's (right):

"Date Placed: November 2, 2018 Date Missing: December 7, 2018 Location: Walking Trail Through Wooded Area."

Polaroid of one of Mr. Jones's scarecrows (Original blogpost by Rot) (Photo by Bean)

Who is/was behind this? Did Pumpkinrot create a cheeky little side project?  Is Mr. Jones real??  The Scarecrow Project remains a mystery. But hey, who doesn't love a good mystery?

More images at @thescarecrowproject

I will also add that I love this idea, and might even contribute to #thescarecrowproject in the future...

Pumpkin Patch painting

Can you spot it?

Art by Vivien Mildenberger (@vvberger)

Halloween 2020

The 2019 Halloween season was... rough.  I was working at a haunted attraction an hour outside of town, and the long hours and miles of late night highway driving was taking a toll.  I'd regularly get home at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, catch a few Z's, then get up and go to my day job.  Between the haunt, my job, and my education, I had no energy left for personal hobbies.  

That year, I didn't make a single Halloween decoration, watch a single spooky movie, or carve a single pumpkin. I bought a pumpkin to carve, but every time I looked at it, I couldn't find the will to give it a face.  Eventually, it just rotted (a depressing poetic metaphor for my mind at the time).  The haunted attraction job, while initially a dream-come-true, had siphoned all of my Halloween spirit.  

Even Pumpkinrot, whose displays I looked forward to each year, had disappeared.  When no new haunt photos appeared on his website or blog, I felt like a kid on Christmas that woke up to find no gifts under the tree.*

I swore that Halloween 2020 would be different.  And it was.  I made time to watch my favorite Halloween media, carve pumpkins, bake some pumpkin bread, and even attended a couple Halloween parties.  But most importantly in my mind, I decorated.

I wanted something simple and nostalgic for myself; A mix of whimsical and spooky.  I cobbled together some simple scarecrows and bought those hokey white spiderwebs, plus a few orange string lights.  

What I created was a display that took me right back to my childhood trick-or-treating days, and simultaneously embraced my "matured" Halloween aesthetic

I don't have many photos from that display, but I'm still pretty happy with it.  

And that's enough.

*I am sure Rot had good reasons for taking his hiatus; Reasons he need not justify to his fans or anyone else.  At the time I feared my biggest Halloween hero was gone, and that disappointment was a twisting of the knife that had already been sunk into my spooky heart. But that isn't Rot's responsibility, and I don't hold any disdain for his disappearance.  I am, of course, simply glad he's back!