Order of Samhain

Just wanted to give a big THANK YOU to HalloweeNut. I am so stoked about this.
Click below for info.

Again, thanks so much, I really appreciate it. And I'm totally displaying it in the sidebar.

Masking Maniacs since 2005

Just wanted to share with you an AWESOME mask site. Neal Harvey's Rubber Gorilla.

Amazing hand-made, high quality latex halloween masks. And scary as hell, I might add.

  

Hoping to buy one sometime in the next few years. They're so damn cool.

And check out this great video showing how these masterpieces are made.

More Midnight

The (lovely) owner of the shop window where I set up my Halloween display sent me these photos taken by a friend of hers.

I love them to shreds. Thank you so much!

Manifestation

Aloysius

AKA Wishie. Looks like he just opened a pillowcase stuffed with candy after a long night's trick or treating.
Thanks Bean, you really are cool.
Pumpkin Hollow

Teasers (Filler)

It's true, this is a filler. Not much has been going on down here, and it reflects on the blog. I suppose this is the off-season for most haunters anyway. The last substantial post was in late December.
Mostly, I've been planning. And, thankfully, I actually have plans.

First of all, I have been making my ghost prop. It is going to look something like a 'Wallbreaker'.  Pictures of the completed wallbreaker-ghost should be up by Sunday.

Coming in late April/early May is going to be something very special.
Christmas in July
Haunt Theory - Traditionalism
Put two and two together with a dash of logic.

And finally, the first teaser for this years haunt...

There will be no spiders involved, think outside the box. It's gonna be awesome.

Come For A Ride On The Ghost Train

When I was four, there was one book I was O-B-S-E-S-S-E-D with. "The Ghost Train". It was a picture book, in which the reader rides a carnival Ghost Train. One page I particularly remember was the woods. The train-track twists off between gnarled trees with scary faces. You flip-the-flap and suddenly all the trees reach their arms up and their mouths get about five times longer, as though they were about to swallow you whole.

I would get it out of the library study it, read it again and again and study it some more. When I had to return it, I would simply re-issue it again and again. I would draw my own versions of it. Then, one sad, sad day a few months later, I went to the library to issue my favourite book, and... it wasn't there. I looked and looked and looked but it wasn't there. I asked the staff for help, and there was no sign of it on their catalogue, none of them seemed to remember it either. It had completely disappeared. No trace, full on, magic, disappearance. Poof.

And I've been looking for it ever since. I trawled the internet for it, to no avail. This was the INTERNET! It had to be on here somewhere. No such luck. I begin to think I had actually imagined it. Simply a fragment of my imagination. Maybe it was a book I was born to write, and I had actually had some sort of religious experience. A prophecy. I could totally see myself writing it in the future.
But I was so sure it was real.

One day I finally located it on amazon.com http://www.amazon.co.uk/Come-Ghost-Train-Colin-Hawkins/dp/0744577942

Turned out it was called "Come for a Ride on the Ghost Train". I had been looking for the wrong book all along. I was planning on ordering it from amazon, but the shipping prices were ridiculous. Anyway, today I went into the awesome Arty Bees Bookshop, just off the coolest street in Wellington. I was looking for that book.

I found it.

WHOA! WHAT?! I found it?! And my mind blew open in that instant. It was there. In my hands. Covered in my bloody brain tissue.

Some photos of it in all of it's nostalgic glory:

I love life.

From the outside in