Happy New Year!

I hope everyone's Halloween and Holiday season was revelatory and joyful! 

I'm back from my Annual Unannounced Unplanned Post-Halloween Hiatus!*  I've been away longer than usual this year. I needed some time away to focus on other work/projects/personal things.  Blogging and working on Halloween stuff had to take a backseat.

I've been thinking about what I want to focus on and accomplish this year, and decided to relay some of that here, as a kind of personal accountability.  So, this year, in no particular order, I'd like to:

Make more props!

I want to practice with new techniques and improve the workflow I currently use.  I want to really up my game when it comes to painting and final touches.  And as much as I love corpsing, I want to try making other décor as well.

Finally open an Etsy store!

I've been considering this for over a year now.  It would serve mainly as an outlet for me to make props/décor without having to worry about space or thematic cohesion. Plus, I won't have to worry as much about material costs if I sell the final product!

Write more Haunt Theory posts!

I have at least two drafts in the works, and an upcoming mini-post about a material I don't see used very often among haunters.  I also want to create "hub" page for Haunt Theory posts written by myself and other haunters.

Photo source (video)

Those are my Halloween "resolutions" for 2025.  More nebulous desires than concrete goals, but workable nonetheless.  I'd love to know what everyone else wants to accomplish this year, so please drop a comment!  

*(AUUPHH ["awf"] for short. I should start calling post-Halloween the awf-season)

Happy October!

A day late to the welcome party, but the sentiment remains! Less than a month to the big night!

Photo is a re-edit from Halloween 2022

Vintage Halloween Schlitz Ads

Came across a couple of ads from the 1950's for Schlitz—a beer from Milwaukee that was once widely popular, now mostly known regionally by folks from the Midwest (e.g. my ghoulfriend's Wisconsinite family).

I just thought these were fun, given the Halloween imagery and my partner's ties to Wisconsin. I grabbed these images from some old eBay listings; they're decently high quality.  I might even print them out and hang them up!

If you'd like, click on each image for a "full-res" version. Might take a second to load.

^ Would this be considered pumpkin beer, technically? ;)

Another ghost!

This one is by @hallerlakehaunt.  Sheet ghosts are hard to beat in my book.

Tattered Ghost

by @sacred_ghost_haunts, a prop maker that has only started posting this year.  Definitely an artist to watch out for. This old-looking ghost prop was especially exciting to me, but they have many other cool works you can check out on their Instagram.

Click here to check out other cool props on their Instagram

Happy First Day of Fall !

My mother likes to share a story of when I was in elementary school.  As she was picking me up from school one September afternoon, I took a long inhale: 

    "Do you smell that, Mom?"

    "Smell what?"

    "Fall!"

I can actually recall this moment and this feeling quite well.  Before I was old enough to appreciate the concept of an equinox, I could smell--feel--when fall had arrived.  Cooler, darker evenings heralded the start of my favorite season.  I treated the first cool fall day much like how kids in movies treat the first snow of winter.  My energy skyrocketed; each breath of cool dry air was like a jolt of electricity. I felt as though I could run and play for hours at a time. (Where did all that energy go??)

Over the years, that feeling--which began with a long inhale and stayed with me until winter--has definitely faded for me, and at times was not felt at all.  Blame it on climate change or the stress of life or just getting older... whatever the reason, it hasn't been there for a while.  But this year felt different.

I've recently shared about an evening at the beginning of this month that felt like the beginning of the season.  While I still feel that was valid, the weather this past weekend had me experiencing that long lost childhood feeling again... I took a big whiff and thought, Fall!

Though the temperatures will be warming up again this week in Central Florida, this past Thursday and Friday were quite pleasant. The highs were only in the low 80s with low humidity (as evidenced by the cloudless skies).

This evening we celebrated by going for a short bike ride through a few local neighborhoods at sunset.  Winding through the suburban roads brought back memories of biking through my childhood neighborhood to plan my trick-or-treating route.

Happy Autumn Equinox!  

Pumpkins Spotted!

Caught sight of the first pumpkins for sale in my area at my local Walmart Neighborhood Marketplace.

Very tempting to buy and carve some now, but jack-o'-lanterns don't usually last too long in Florida. The constant heat, humidity, and rain causes them to kind of... melt.  

It's just as well, I suppose. After all, I ought to be saving up my pumpkin cash for the Great Pumpkin Project!

Friday the 13th Pizza

This is a fun idea from Beau Coffron (@lunchboxdad)

Would have attempted this today had I bought ingredients ahead of time.  I definitely want to give it a shot in the future.

Happy Friday the 13th!

True love

"True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen"

- François de La Rochefoucauld

I'm finding these two chicken wire ghosts inexplicably compelling.  I think it's partially due to the fact that this picture was taken during daylight hours, seemingly near sunset.  I also think it's because there is a clear relationship between these two; they aren't the usual solitary figures.  There's a story in there somewhere, the details of which we can never fully know.

Picture found on Pinterest. I could not track down the original source anywhere.

Nosferatu Candle Holder

This is pretty clever.

Click below to see it on Etsy

by LilacRage