A tradition has evolved over the years in which Mrs. Spookyblue and I keep our Halloween costumes under wraps until the night of the annual bash. This year, the cloak-and-dagger routine worked so well that not even we knew what we were going to be until the last minute.

It’s a great strategy for keeping secrets, but it makes for some late nights and frazzled nerves when you decide to pull off Godzilla Vs Mothra. In just two weeks.

While a full-body suit was never seriously considered for ‘Zilla, green sweats and a (Gahh!) green jogging suit were both flatly rejected. Nervous necessity eventually revealed the obvious answer, and we became Godzilla and Mothra …on vacation.

Mrs. Spookyblue raided every craft store in town for moth wing material while I carved a reef of spines out of construction foam. The Panama hat, Mrs. S’s idea, was a nice touch. That blue blur buzzing angrily around my head in some of the pictures (check the new gallery link) is a carved F-86. Mothra’s wings were an engineering miracle mixed with my wife’s mad sewing skillz.

And on the night of the big reveal…

“So, he’s a dinosaur and she’s a butterfly, right?” .. “Gozzla? What’s a Gozzla?” .. “Oh, yeah! Moffra! Hmm… that’s nice.”

Nobody got it. Gaar.

More pictures of Gozzla and Moffra

Category: Halloween   Tags: foam carving, godzilla, gozzla, halloween costumes, moffra, mothra

Well, kids, Halloween’s gone and buried a week now.

All that’s left is a faint buttery aroma of stale popcorn and a piece of Grumble rope that I keep forgetting is still hanging in his tree. It’s been a popular topic of conversation as I drive by and say to myself, “I keep forgetting the piece of Grumble rope hanging in that tree.”

Our haunt, aptly titled “Anxiety Gardens at Spooky Hollow”, was a great success in that nobody got electrocuted, wind and rain didn’t cause serious damage, and no vandal was inclined to test the dark figure standing off to the side of the driveway. Silent. Watching. Louisville Slugger hanging indolently from a slack, gloved hand. Did it just twitch?

It only took a week to cram everything back into the garage this year, a personal record. Everything, that is, except the gray monolith of a mausoleum that still stands in the center of the yard. Mrs. Spookyblue has floated the idea of hanging Christmas lights and tinsel, a perfect Santa house, but I’m unconvinced. Maybe if we had a set of three plastic Magi and a camel to stage around it, and crèche for the doorway. To pull off the full effect, the Infant would require, of course, a bulb that blinks.

In any case, your old pal Spook’s been busy. Buried is the better word. But to offset the drudgery of the annual post-holiday cleanup, I’ve been tinkering with the website. We now have a (mostly) working photo gallery embedded into the blog engine. There are a zillion gallery plugins for WordPress, and I didn’t like any of them, so I built my own. WordPress themes are a dark magic, so what better subject to kick things off than our two resident crones Calamity and Infamy?

More pictures of haunt ’09 will be posted this week. After that, it’s time to finally tackle the huge project back-log.

Category: Halloween  

Category: Halloween   Tags: anxiety gardens, cemetery

From the Dead Letter Office:
Our friend Gzzlglug writes…

Hey, Glugmuck

If you don’t count swearing, “I stupidly believed” ranks as one of the top 10 most-uttered canards by the haunt engineer. A few other gems in that list are: “We assumed”, “Randy said”, and “It’ll be fine”.

To date, I can’t recall a single project that ended the way I thought it would when it was hatched. Sometimes that works out for the best, and sometimes you get a Packing Tape Zombie.

Enjoy your successes and toss your failures over the fence. They make good nesting material for bunnies and quail. Packing tape zombies, however, degrade differently. They’ll hang around, usually out of spite, to remind you of your spectacular potential for inadequacy.

On the plus side, when it finally fills up with ants, it will eventually burst.

Gruesomely.

Success and Failure…

Category: From The Undead Letter Office, Halloween   Tags: failure, packing tape zombie, success