I don't know how you feel about this but Halloween around our place is celebrated more than any other commercial holiday. Its the only holiday that I can think of that requires having fun and scaring the crap out of kids. We start early every year with Halloween festivities in early or mid September with putting up crazy crap on our walls. As October 31st nears, we spend our weekends attending Halloween events, haunted houses, pumpkin patches and corn mazes. Halloween time is the most enjoyable, worthwhile holiday, devoid of all the religious trappings burdening the other end of the year festivities (I don't care what you pagans say, we don't do those things anymore).
First thing is first, we needed to make our house spooky to set the mood and theme (but mostly to keep Halloween-haters out). I have a lot of fun designing decor for our deck, windows and front door in easy to acquire materials (burlap, black plastic lining, colored string lights, miles of tape and twine, paint, etc). This year I went with a simple, distressed haunted house look covered in tattered fabric and natural looking decaying detritus and finished with creepy blood red lighting. Since our apartment is located right next to the open parking area we received a lot of enthusiastic compliments from passersbys and neighbors.
Now that we had set the mood the first thing to do was our Halloween tradition of going to Pirates of Emerson in Fremont. This year we shared the experience with friends that had never been. We were pretty excited since this was the first year the Emerson people invited other haunt groups to hold their own individual haunted houses. The pirate boat was spending 2007 in Santa Cruz but the Fremont site expanded the underwater adventure and brought back the Bilge Rat maze with more seizure-tronic action. Understandably, it would be difficult to take pictures while a chainsaw wielding maniac chases you down a blackened hallway towards a cluster of flesh hungry zombies. But after catching my breath I did manage to take a few poorly lit shots of the entrance.
"The Asylum" was a horrifying hospital haunt straight out of the Silent Hill video game series. Towards the end was a very convincing wheelchair guy that rams you into a terrifying morgue area where bodies in clear plastic bags hung from the ceiling and writhe while you try to push your way out. "Heartstoppers" had an apparent wild west theme with the entrance but once you got through the saloon doors the haunt kicks it up to high gear and you enter a "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" nightmare. "Leatherface" forced us into a large inflatable, black nylon sphincter that we had to push through into a pitch black hallway only to be prodded by what I assume is the worst thing in hell, clowns. Who then shoved us into a bar filled with abusive 18th century, drunken cowboys. The "Densmore Manor" attraction had no backstory but we were told we were late for dinner. It was a horrifying run through a old mansion that I would describe as a smash-up of "Carrie, The Exorcist and The Devil's Rejects". The last haunt "Rebel Yell" was the worst in my opinion because it made no sense to me. I didn't run but walked through what looked like a Southern plantation mansion in where the inhabitants were doing weird scientific experiments to each other. The night ended with a visit to this little caravan which held a little gypsy woman who would read your "fortune" and offer a future "warning" which was "shocking" to say the least. A night at Pirates of Emerson was definitely worth $20.
The next weekend we went pumpkin hunting which would eventually become Powerset jack-o-lanterns. We took Fisher out with us to pick the perfect pumpkins. And from the look of the gourds that day we had our work cut out for us.
Later on that week the pumpkins were cut, cored and gouged out for the enjoyment of the boyfriends company. (I baked the seeds with spices for the whole office to share) They lasted a little less than a week, the offices were kept too warm on the weekend for their liking. I don't have any pics of them becoming pumpkin puddles, it was too sad.
I'm going to cut this post here and write about the last part of our Halloween festivities in a bit.
See you after the break.
Su
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