Scary!

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Halloween was always my favorite holiday when I was growing up.</p>

<p>Even though my parents were not so much into the costumes
( we were either ghosts or politically incorrect gypsies for the girls and pirates for the boys- there is only so much you can do with a sheet and costume jewelry), what other night can you roam around for hours in the dark collecting candy?
( we lived in the suburbs and virtually every single house for blocks had kids and a jack’o lantern)</p>

<p>I still enjoy it- although I often have a meeting or class that night and so am not able to be home.</p>

<p>I do like being scared though- within reason. I don’t like gore at all- so haven’t seen any of these films that seem to be real popular with 20 somethings, although I did go see the original Halloween years ago by myself at a 2nd run house.</p>

<p>( one of my younger D’s favorite movies- and when I say favorite I mean she wanted to watch it over and over again, was Hocus Pocus- which I actually thought was kinda scary)</p>

<p>Both of us years later went to see " the Blair Witch Project", but I probably don’t have to tell you what a waste of time that was.
Unless you like feeling seasick.
:p</p>

<p>I am kinda in the mood to read some scary stories or watch a movie.</p>

<p>I have already read some of Stephen King ( I much prefer his short stories) and Ray Bradbury, and Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier ( he wrote for the New Yorker), but I am trying to find a movie that is scary that I haven’t seen, but won’t make me more repulsed than scared.
( or repulsed and terrified) :eek:
so kinda like Thai food- just a couplea stars not burn my tastebuds off.</p>

<p>What Halloween traditions does your family do/did?</p>

2

<p>I enjoy the older (gotta be black and white) horror movies. On Halloween we always watch
“The Haunting”(dir:Robert Wise 1963) and The Uninvited (1944). I keep my door open on Halloween and neighbors know that they are welcome for a glass of wine, mulled cider and black bean soup. We usually have at least dozen people just drop by. Its my favorite holiday—no presents, no pressure,no overblown expectations----- just fun and a little candy. This year I think I am going to make a few home made candies and treats for friends–almost all emptynesters like us.(Molasses popcorn balls and toasted cocoanut marshmallows)</p>

3

<p>I’m such a fan of Halloween costumes. My brother and I typically team up and do something for Halloween… Last year, we were the Prize Patrol and we ran around with balloons, roses, and a cameraman giving out oversized fake checks. </p>

<p>One year, we hand-painted an R2-D2 costume out of a dome-lidded trash can with the bottom cut out and plunked it over the top of him. I safety-pinned a bunch of sheets together, hot glued some dried-out bagels to a headband, and went along as Princess Leia to make sure he didn’t walk into a wall.</p>

<p>Most of the fun is in making your own costume, though, even if it’s held together with staples and glue.</p>

4

<p>That reminds me of one year, my D went trick or treating with friends in another neighborhood. I think she was in 5th grade or so, and since it was a big group and there wasn’t sidewalks for the most part, several parents went with.</p>

<p>One older neighbor, loved Halloween and had got up her house and yard into a big way, tombstones and bats all through the yard candles all the way up the steep stairs to her house and she invited everyone in for cider and donuts and to see the rest of her decorations. You could defintely tell it was the collection of a lifetime- it was amazing.
It was a little sad because she had taken a few years off after her husband died because she wasn’t up to it, but it was nice that she took the time to do this- and the children ( and the adults) really appreciated it.</p>

<p>Around here- many of the children go trick or treating in the smaller business districts or even in the malls ( which can be nice for really little kids when the weather is nasty), but still come back to the neighborhood for a short go round, but I always struggle with- when do I turn off the porch light?</p>

5

<p>Living on the Jersey Shore in the off season gives meaning to the term ghost town. We did not have a single trick or treater last year, even with the front of the house lit up. At least when my kids were young their friends would stop by. But as the mom who walked the kids around town ten years ago, I know they walk the one long street that has a lot of full-time owners, and peer down the side streets to see if multiple houses are lit to see if it is worthwhile to go down.</p>

6

<p>Emeraldkity-</p>

<p>Quite scary movie- Hour of the Wolf- Ingmar Berman, or,
the original The Fly, with Vincent Price “Help me!!!, Help me!!!”
Quite scary book- Turn of the Screw- Henry James</p>

<p>Halloween Tradition-
I grew up in a city, in a neighborhood with many apartment houses. (Goldmine for candy collecting, at least 2 full shopping bags/Halloween.)
One apartment building had a designated monster, someone in a fur coat and monster feet and mask and hands who chased every trick or treater away from the building. Once, the toughest kid in the neighborhood went into the building, the “monster” chased after him , and Ernie did not come back out. We waited outside for a long time, and became convinced that the monster had got Ernie. He probably was chased over the rooftop to the next apartment building and came down the stairs and exited where we didn’t see him.</p>

7

<p>Our next door neighbor used to sit on his porch dressed up as a scarecrow. He’d be really really still until the kids got to the door then he’d groan. It used to terrify them.</p>

8

<p>We get a lot of trick or treaters in our neighborhood so we adults hang around outside in the cul-de-sac drinking wine & beer and pass out candy. Years ago I starting putting out a few scary decorations and the kids liked it so much that I add a few new things each year ( I buy on Nov 1 at the half price sale). H & I buy the full size Hershey bars at Costco, which are a big hit.</p>

9

<p>Halloween is big in our house. D is quite ‘famous’ at her school for her creative costumes, going back many many years. The pressure is on each year to out-do herself, and everyone wonders what it will be next. She has to start at least a month in advance now, and the biggest stress is thinking up a unique idea each year, then the next challenge is thinking of how to make it a reality (engineering wise). I wonder if this could be an EC… :)</p>

10

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<p>Ooh full-sized candy bars! Back when I was young we lived about a mile away from the “rich” area of town where they always gave out full-sized candy bars. We would always start out our night by hurrying to those houses and then work our way back home. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven on Halloween :smiley: Such a treat.</p>

11

<p>^Oh I so know what you mean! That was exactly it for us too! The idea of any candy bar back in the day in our neighborhood was memorable…between the apples, the sunflower seeds, and these odd candies that had a great halloween wrapper but tasted horrible. Then when we encountered the full size ones in hte ‘rich’ hood…oh my.</p>

12

<p>We have always done the usual—carve pumpkins, make costumes, put up spooky decorations—but in recent years we’ve introduced the new tradition of going to the zoo on Halloween. It’s cool to wander around a nicely-landscaped park with unusual creatures about, without fear of being run over by a car. I’m glad many zoos are hosting trick-or-treating these days!</p>

13

<p>Growing up, after we had gotten our fill of candy, we’d head back home, sort and swap our candy, and then “inventory” our haul.</p>

<p>The last thing we always did was to watch Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” which was on t.v. every Halloween night. I used to just love the suspense in that movie! :eek:</p>

14

<p>^^ I loved that movie, too - enough that one year I made a costume based on the movie. I went to a crafts store and bought about a dozen of those little stuffed birds of various sizes, along with a tube of fake Halloween blood. I took an old shirt and attached the birds to the front, back and sleeves and then made little rips in the material and squirted some of the fake blood onto the shirt. I think there was even a hat with a bird attached. Kinda gory, but funny :)</p>

15

<p>I use to make my children’s costumes - everything from a crayon to a pink witch (yes, pink!) I use to make a newpaper-stuffed man and sit him outside our front door for Halloween. Everyone thought it was a real person. It was fun to watch them tentatively approach him waiting for him to jump up and scare them. </p>

<p>As my kids got older, they got into collecting for UNICEF on Halloween. I think part of the appeal is that they often get offered pieces of candy from the houses that give to the UNICEF box. DS and DD get the candy without feeling like their trick-or-treating (it’s such a little kid thing to do, you know.) This year DS is off at college, so I will walk with DD when she trick-or-treats for UNICEF.</p>

<p>Although not my favorite holiday, I love seeing the little ones in their costumes. They are so cute!</p>

16

<p>We always watch our Simpson’s Halloween DVD, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and Spongebob Halloween–and of course It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. Although my oldest ds–the college soph.–said to me last year, “Charlie Brown is awful. Nothing good ever happens to him.” It made me laugh out loud, because of course it’s true, but I see it as this whimsical, nostalgic thing and he sees it as a cartoon about a kid with a really unhappy life. </p>

<p>We decorate a lot, with lights outside and the Dept. 56 Halloween village inside. My youngest is still really into putting up the village. We did used to host Halloween parties with friends that lived out in rural areas so they’d come and trick-or-treat with us. We’d have chili and hot cider and all that traditional fall food. This year my 8th grader and a friend are having a party at the friend’s house, and I’ve offered to provide the punch with dry ice. I’ve never done that before–but when I was a kid our neighbor did it every year because he was a science teacher. </p>

<p>I really love Halloween. It’s a no pressure holiday. I don’t have to buy anyone anything.My mother-in-law isn’t mad at me because I’ve decided to spend Halloween at my house instead of hers. I don’t have to start cooking three days in advance. It’s more fun and less exhausting than any other holiday.</p>

17

<p>This isn’t a bad list:</p>

<p>[Essentials</a> by Genre: Psychological Horror Movies](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000256521]Essentials”>http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000256521)</p>

<p>I might also add Scream (which I thought was a terrific movie, although it has a little gore at the end – the sequels have a lot of gore), Prom Night, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (either one, but I like the 80s remake), The Exorcist, The Omen, Straw Dogs (a lot of violence there, though), and of course any of the great Hitchcock movies (Psycho, The Birds, Rear Window, Notorious) in addition to the ones on the Amazon list. </p>

<p>Alien and Aliens are pretty terrifying, but might be too violent/gory for your taste. Poltergeist might be OK.</p>

<p>Also, one of the scariest movies ever, at least to my childhood self: The Wizard of Oz. I remember watching it at my aunt’s house every Thanksgiving (she had a color TV!), and my sister wouldn’t sleep well for a week afterwards (but insisted on watching it, of course).</p>

<p>A nice Halloween movie – supernatural, eerie, and philosophical, if not exactly scary – is Spirited Away, an animated movie by the great Japanese anime auteur Miyazaki Hayao, about a young girl who winds up working at a witch-run spa for demons, while she figures out how to rescue her parents (who have been turned into pigs), and whom to trust among the various players, none of whom is exactly what he or she seems.</p>

<p>I remember being terrified – in a delicious way – by various jungle movies. You know, white explorers get victimized by dark natives in thrall to some malevolent voodoo-y power. Completely racist. I don’t even remember the names, and their racism pretty much blocks a widespread revival, but I’ll bet they are fun to watch. King Solomon’s Mines and She are close, but not quite a cigar.</p>

<p>Lit: Bradbury and Collier are philosophical and eerie, unheimlich, much more than horror. If you haven’t read Borges’ short stories, you would probably love them. Carlos Fuentes’ early novella, Aura, is also great in that tradition. On the science fiction-y side, Philip K. Dick wrote many books in the Bradbury tradition, although his tend to be darker and more violent (and if you haven’t read the books you may have seen a bunch of the movies in recent years, under different names – it is very popular to use his plots). (There was a really awful movie a few years ago from one of Collier’s best stories – the one about department-store mannequins – but I don’t remember the title of either the move or the story.)</p>

<p>Finally, a couple of pretty good literary supernatural thrillers: Arturo Perez-Reverte’s Club Dumas, and Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind. Like a lot of the genre, both begin really well and end a little disappointingly, but both sustain the initial quality a long way in.</p>

<p>Oh. Rosemary’s Baby. Book or movie.</p>

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<p>Exactly!!!</p>

19

<p>Ok…I like “The Others” with Nichole Kidman.
Scary and not gross at all.
Great for Halloween!</p>

20

<p>My sons (both in HS) still love Halloween. Their HS has a dress-up day (not much real learning this day) and last year one S went as Cookie Monster–this year it will be Fuzzy Bear. He is such a serious student and usually pretty shy which is why I enjoy seeing him let loose this way.</p>

<p>As for scary movies–Mothman Prophecies! I made the mistake of watching this movie one night years ago while my H was away on a business trip & kids were asleep. It is based on a true story with paranormal elements and it just freaked me out.</p>