31 Days of October, Day 27

[impy]

1. Favorite Halloween movie
The Worst Witch. Hands down, forever, nothing you can say or do will make me not love this movie. I know it doesn't hold up well, I know it was cheesetacular when it came out, and I know that short of the absolutely absurd Tim Curry song and the fact that Fairuza Balk is awesome, there is very little that someone who didn't love it before would see and love it in as an adult...
But it makes it Halloween to me when I watch this movie.

2. Halloween costume this year
Still deciding, man. Still deciding.

3. Favorite Horror movie
Can I say Rose Red? It was meant to be a movie and not a mini-series, after all.

4. Best Halloween/Fall themed food
CANDY CORN. And also those pumpkins you can get mixed in with your candy corn.

5. Your first horror movie
Don't remember, apparently I was too young to recall.

6. What type of monster do you want to be?
Ghost? Vampire? *shrug*

7. Favorite Halloween character
...?

8. One of your paranormal experiences
There's this local thing called the Ravenel Lights. (It's a thing. Google is your friend.) Cass got this bright idea we'd go look for them because she'd gone with her boyfriend at the time and wanted to share the ~mystery~ or whatever. I don't remember who the driver was and neither does Cass, but we go out there and the deal is this:
Drive out to the middle of nowhere. Knock on the church door. Ride back, see the lights, debate whether locals just wait for this or if these are lights bouncing off reflectors or something else entirely.
So we do the first part. On our way to the second part, something darts in front of the car and our driver slams on the brakes just in time for us to see a deer cross the road. Only... this is no deer. None of us can ID the animal but it's creepy as hell and screams may or may not have happened. Ghost!Deer!

We do the second part, (well, Cass runs out to knock on the door and this part isn't exactly easy.) and we head back down the road where more ghost!deer appear. o_O And then, just when we're about to give up, we notice these lights way up in the trees. And they're steadily getting closer but not in an "incoming car that's... flying?" way.

We sat there, in the middle of nowhere, watching these lights trying to figure out if it was a trick and then everyone got creeped out all at the same time and whoosh, away we went.

I'm very sad to know that Cass does not remember the ghost deer at all. They still haunt me. Creepy. (And later that year or the next we came across a deer on the way out of the James Island park and it looked nothing like the ghost!deer so...)


9. Do you believe in witchcraft? Explain why or why not.
Sure. Mostly because why not. :P I believe Ari can use Tarot cards to see the future, I believe witchcraft has numerous meanings and at least one of them is bound to be applicable to the truth. Oh, and curses and hexes? Totally, man. But that dude called himself a warlock. And he runs a ghost tour, so there you go.

10. Best costume you’ve ever worn
Middle school, I was tall and curvy-ish enough to pull off this black dress of Mum's. It had fairly grown up neckline (boobs!) so it was worn over an orange shirt and I was the Queen of Halloween. I thought it was the most beautiful dress in the history of EVER. I still have it in case I get the flu seventy times in a row and lose enough to wear it again. :P

11. Favorite candy
Ever or for the season? Because I live for candy corn, I cry without Milk Duds and Whoppers, and Twix bars and Milky Ways and Sugar Babies (and Daddys)...

12. How you act when watching a scary movie
Am I alone? Because if so, I'm clutching a plush something or other or trying to coax the dog/cat into sitting with/near me. If I'm with someone, I'm usually the person who gets to watch to make sure the icky part is over. If I'm with someone and we're the only people in the theater? You totally talk back to the movie then.

13. Best pumpkin carving you’ve done
Stitch a couple of years ago. I was really impressed with myself. :P

14. Do you believe in ghosts/spirits?
GHOST!DEER. But otherwise, yes. Yes I do. I'm pretty sure it's against the law to grow up in this city without at least partially believing, at least a little.

15. Halloween decoration tips
PURPLE LIGHTS. Seriously. That and a pumpkin and dude, I don't care. You're good to go. If that's not enough, um, glitter? Black glitter.

16. What do you use to hold candy when you trick or treat?
When *I* went trick or treating? The boy and I had matching black & glow in the dark fabric Halloween bags that we used every year. Widget's been using a variety of things, though my favorite was the bag that you slipped a glow-stick in so the bag glowed and you didn't have to hold your glow stick.

17. Your Halloween traditions:
Pumpkin carving except for those years we don't speak of (I have the worst luck with pumpkins) so that I can smell the delightful scent of burning pumpkin, frantically trying to figure out a costume in the last four seconds before Widget and I are set to depart for trick-or-treating, spaghetti for dinner (when I was little it was Chef Boyardee), green glow sticks are used, coming home and trick or treating at our house. Possibly bullying my way into watching The Worst Witch. ;) Sorting candy from the great haul.

18. Best Halloween pranks or dares
I don't. I really don't.

19. Biggest fear
I don't tell people that for obvious reasons.

20. Best TV show Halloween episode.
I don't think I could pick one. Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends has a couple I recommend, and you can't go wrong with any Phineas and Ferb Halloween special. iCarly's Halfaween amuses me, and Charmed's All Halliwell's Eve is a classic for the show. I love Halloween themed episodes so just trying makes me love you.

   I will say that I didn't consider it Halloween for YEARS if I didn't manage to catch Frankenweenie on Disney or The Worst Witch on whatever channel it would come on.


21. Opinion on October weather
I wish it were cooler more consistently. Instead we get heat waves followed by a few nice days (be they rainy or sunny, nice in this case means cool) and somewhere the week before Halloween it feels like one thinks October should. And then by Halloween itself you're left wondering if you're going to freeze your tush off or melt into a puddle of ew because Mother Nature has a nasty sense of humor.

22. First Halloween costume:
Mums doesn't remember (shocked!) but by process of elimination we've narrowed down the ones she does remember to either my stint as a Fluppy Dog or Rainbow Brite. Based on the short shelf life for the Fluppies, I'm guessing they were first. Photographic evidence coming at a later date.

23. Worst Halloween candy
Gummy body parts. Or, if you meant from my trick or treating days, those peanut butter mary jane things. Ick.

24. Trick or treating, Halloween party, or Halloween Movie Marathon?
Trick or treating. Duh.

25. Favorite Halloween song
I... have no idea.

26. Have you ever used a Ouija board? Experiences?
Actual Ouija board? Um, once maybe? Yeah. Nothing happened. Board of DOOM though? Oh yes. I can't remember now if we had two boards and N took one home or if it's always just been the board of DOOM. *thinks* Anyway, we found it at Barnes & Noble, I believe. If not, Green Dragon. Possibly both if there were two boards. Doesn't matter. One predicted death all the fucking time. (It was wrong quite a lot.) The other had three distinct personalities, which you might think "duh" since there were three/four of us using it.
But no.

One: Messages for Cass. Even if she wasn't with us. Usually about her boyfriend at the time. When she was at the board, it was obvious she was pushing things. When she wasn't... things were more complicated.

Two: Surprisingly accurate predictions of the future. Case in point, well before Ari and Derrick got together, it predicted she'd marry someone with the initials D & S. Indeed she did.

Three: When Ari and I'd use the board together and it wasn't leaving increasingly annoying messages for Cass, it was interesting to have it go on for hours (seriously) about various things. You get your usual past life crap that happens when you get teenagers who read way too much Pike in a room with a board and then... other things. It was interesting.

Board of doom had certain 'voices'. Nelle would flip out and die of the happy whenever Mercury would show up. (See: good news.) I forget who the bad news messenger of You're All DOOMED was, but somewhere there's a tape I made of it.

Favorite memory though was the boy joining in. And asking where the Keebler Elves lived. :P

27. Halloween costume last year
Undead.

28. Your Halloween plans this year
Finish decorating the house (and the dolls), carve my pumpkins up, sniff them as they burn (... I need help?) and take Widget trick or treating. Return home and sit, contently, in the glow of the Halloween lights.

29. Some Halloween Events you attend
I used to go to the Halloween Extravaganza, but this is it's final year. :( And that was actually only a couple of times. When I was younger we'd go to the Fair and there was the year I begged and pleaded and whined until my mother agreed to take me into the Haunted House there. Where, about three steps in, I closed my eyes and did not open them until we were outside again. :P
Other than that, when I was in elementary school (and a year or two afterward), we went to the school fair. I loved it even the years Mums worked so I got to see how the magic was done. There was the year the haunted house kept taunting me (they closed off the kindergarten/first grade wing and spooked it up) and that was bookended by the year I led everyone through the haunted trailer that spooked them (younger kids) but I was all "ha! that the best you got?" Which is weird because I am never the leader in these situations.

As a semi-adult I don't really... attend Halloween events. Mostly because I'm always at work when these things happen. :(

30. Favorite Halloween animal
Black. Cat.


31. Why do you love Halloween?
It's the one time of year you're encouraged to scare the crap out of small children. And free candy.

Also, it's fun to be scared (thank you, Jem) and I love the way things look and feel in the fall. It's dark, it's spooky, and gloomy days are celebrated. The smell of a jack-o-lantern, the way some people really get into the holiday, the way that even more than Christmas, kids are encouraged to decorate and some of their stuff is the best you'll see. The costumes, the make-up, the glitter, the way the decorations smell. The candy is nice, the cold, crisp air. The way the sky turned purple last year, and the way the trees have dropped enough leaves that looking down you see a rainbow in autumn colors and looking up you see a dark, spooky skyline.
The way everyone believes, for a day, in ghosts and things that go bump in the night. The way even a crappy Halloween special is better than some of the best Christmas specials. The way the lights beckon to you during the week before Halloween. Christmas lights are showy, but Halloween lights are cozy. Or insane. Depending on your neighbors, I guess.
The way you believe anything, and I do mean anything, can happen.
Scary movies and not so scary movies, black cats, and windy days.

Most of all, I love Halloween because it was the one holiday I pretty much did every thing for, decorating wise, as a kid, and I can still remember the way it felt on a windy afternoon in October as I swept the steps and put out plastic decorations.
Halloween is home.

Comments

[irishgypsie.livejournal.com]

What a great post! I'm going to copy this and answer it myself over in my journal.

Oh, and The Worst Witch is AWESOME. I need to get it on DVD (I used to have an ancient VHS copy of it because my former stepmother was a pathological TV recorder - seriously, she'd tape ANYTHING) but I don't know what happened to it. I do actually still have a working VCR though (I use it to watch BSC videos, ha.)

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

Yay for VCR having ways. I still have one (most useful for the BSC videos!) as well. I need to step up my converting things from VHS to DVD but I'm lazy and it's boring.

Worst Witch love! I used to catch it on HBO or maybe it was on Disney during their preview weekends (I feel so old remembering those) but then they stopped playing it. Mums was working at a video store and special ordered it for me and then... I may have copied it. *cough* I think I snagged the DVD a few years ago on Amazon when I needed to get $25 for something else. Best "bonus" purchase I think I've ever made.

Alas, so few people understand TWW love. Poor, poor fools.