Happy Hallowe'en!

A simple Happy Hallowe'en wish to all my fellow haunters. I hope your holiday was filled with scares, screams, smiles, and trick-or-treater laughter!

Snowpocalypse!

Aww, doesn't it look pretty?

As I posted on my vlog today, the snowstorm that swept over the East Coast yesterday buried my haunt in about 6" of not so fluffy white stuff. The heavy, wet snow combined with trees that didn't have time to shed their leaves created a menacing situation.

At one point during the afternoon, you could literally stand outside and hear branches cracking and trees falling every few minutes. It was quite dangerous and my truck was even struck by a falling branch while I was driving to buy gas. Fortunately it was just a smallish one, about three-feet in length so no damage was done.

Not so pretty now, is it?

At least not to my truck. My haunt was another matter. The tree that stood at the curb in front of my yard and hung so lovingly over my cemetery entrance pillars split in half, with one half falling into the street and the other half falling onto my columns. Initially there was no damage, but the weight of the heavy snow was ultimately too much to bear and one of the pillars broke apart from the strain.

Other than the pillar, I also lost one tombstone and some plastic skull edging I had along the walkway. I should consider myself fortunate since all that was lost really was some foam insulation, which I plan to salvage and recycle, possibly making new tombstones out of them.

Splitting the uprights

The other problem was the loss of power throughout most of the town. So widespread was the damage from the storm -- I don't think one block escaped without at least one tree falling -- that power, cable, and Internet access was knocked out everywhere. I'm thinking Halloween has been in essence cancelled by the storm. If you'd like to see some video of the damage and extent of the storm, check out the vlog link above.

The one hope is that since school has been cancelled for at least Monday and possibly longer -- the local utility says residents can probably expect Wednesday to be the earliest they'll get the lights back on -- there may be more kids going out than otherwise. But since the power's out and the damage so widespread, maybe not.

Also, since I have no power I won't be having my haunt lit up this year. I will light up my two skull torches and should any trick-or-treaters venture out I'll be ready. A disappointing end to the haunt season, to be sure, but I'm all fired up for next year as a result.

Happy Halloween to all!

Halloween Nation Needs Some Nation-Building

Yeah, baby!

No wonder haunters don't get no respect. We're not doing our part in terms of Halloween spending!

According to the market researchers at IBISWorld, spending on the best holiday of the year comprised just $6 billion, or 2.6% of total consumer holiday spending. Halloween spending was the smallest percentage of the total, which amounted to some $228 billion. What are we doing people?!

As expected, the evil elves of Christmas spent the most $135 billion, or 60% of the total.

And what did people spend their hard-earned cash on? Costumes represented 36% of the total (Lady Gaga-inspired costumes top the list -- wtf?!), followed by candy at 31%, decorations with 28%, and cards a distant fourth at 5%.

Ed bleeds green

Of course, I don't think the researchers polled any home haunters for their survey, but then again, many of us are cheap so-and-sos and reuse and recycle regularly to keep our spending to a minimum. If there's any "greener" group of people outside of professional tree huggers, I don't know them. When it comes to the environment I'm generally on the side of rape, pillage, and exploitation, but get me building a Halloween prop and I turn all Ed Begley Jr.

While candy sales comprise almost a third of total sales, confectioners actually make 8% of their annual revenues on Halloween, making it the biggest holiday of the year for them (take that, St. Valentine's Day!).

People also waste $300 million a year buying costumes for their pets. Personally I don't understand the whole "pet baby" mentality that considers a dog or cat as a member of the household -- yes, I grew up with dogs, but the were just that, dogs (sorry for not being all sentimental, PETA).

That's about 30% of what we spend on our kids, which came in at $1 billion, but just to make sure we don't let Junior look better than us, we spend $1.2 billion on ourselves. Who says Halloween is a kid's holiday anyway?

Apparently we also like to get our drink on around Halloween, too, as it's the fourth drunkest month of the year, according to the Census Bureau (aren't they supposed to just count how many people are in the country every 10 years? I don't remember any questions on my survey about which month I got most drunk in). The lushes of Christmas beat us out again, coming in a drunken third place behind July (yay, independence!) and November (burp! Thanksgiving).

So, FWIW, here's the ranking of holiday spending in order of percentage of the total:

• Christmas - 59.2% (Bah! Humbug!)
• Thanksgiving - 13.4% (Thanksgiving?!?)
• Valentine's Day - 7.7% (you bunch of saps)
• Mother's Day - 6.5% (love you, mom!)
• Easter - 6.1% (otherwise known as Zombie Resurrection Day)
• Father's Day - 4.5%
• Halloween - 2.6%

We've got our work cut out for us, haunters. So get out there, prime the pump of the economy, and spend, spend, spend!

Dreaming of a White Halloween

What the hell?! Snow on Halloween? According to the weatherman, the northeast is set to get walloped with as much as a foot of snow in some areas over the weekend.

I know some haunters contend with these early snowfalls every year, but according to reports for the New York area this would be the earliest recorded snowfall since the Civil War!

Fortunately, I'm in one of the areas scheduled to get "only" 1" to 6" of snow and that by Halloween the weather should turn downright balmy with lots of sunshine and temperatures in the 40's. So if we do get a small amount snow over the weekend, it may be melted come Monday and with the nice weather predicted we may still get a decent turnout of trick-or-treaters.

If there's snow on the ground, though, I know my wife will be pushing me to clear out the Halloween props faster than I already do and start putting up Christmas ones. This could be worse than seeing Christmas decorations in the store right after the back to school sales are finished.

Have You Chosen Your Costume Yet?

Ladies, if you haven't decided yet on what you're going to be on Halloween, here's some inspiration for you.

Just performing a public service for all the guys out there. You're welcome.

Walking Dead Three-peat

Good news, Walking Dead fans: AMC just announced the hit show has been picked up for a third season. Apparently the first two episodes of Season 2 were such blockbusters in terms of the all important 18-49 year old demographic that they wanted to keep it going.

The AMC announcement said that the October 16 premier set a new basic cable record for viewers, scoring a 4.8 household rating and 7.3 million total viewers (I was one of them).

No doubt they got their money's worth out of the show. Was anyone else annoyed by all the commercials? I liked how the opening sequence went on for extra long, but AMC made up for it by seemingly cramming commercials in every 5 minutes.

Regardless, I enjoyed both episodes so far but hope they keep the advertising to normal lengths going forward. Sure they want to pay the bills, but the interruptions really spoil the flow. In anticipation of the show's return I had watched all six Season 1 episodes on Netflix and it was a pleasure not getting interrupted with commercials all the time.

But it's good to know that the series is making a big impact with viewers, enough that the studio wants to greenlight more of them.

AMC's Mini-Doc: The Haunted Mansion

I just stumbled across a neat little behind-the-scenes look at a haunted attraction in Poughkeepsie, NY called Kevin McCurdy's Haunted Mansion. It's a walk-thru haunt that's been evolving over the past 35 years.
AMC's FearFest offers up a series of mini-documentaries (mini-docs) that take viewers on a tour of what goes in to operating such an immersive experience. There are 12 different episodes, covering everything from Designing the Scare to Casting the Haunter, Scare Tactics to looks at different parts of the haunt: the Doll Room, the Haunted Collector, the Frozen Family Room, and more!

This is an incredibly detailed haunt with many layers of scare, ambience, props, actors, and more. Below is the introduction video to the series.



It's a really terrific walk-thru of a walk-thru haunt. I recommend checking out all 12 videos. I'd love to visit the Haunted Mansion (though it won't be this year). Located in Bowdoin PArk in Poughkeepsie, it's about an hour and a half north of New York City.