# how do you celebrate halloween?



## graveyardmaster (May 14, 2012)

hi folks,here in the uk halloween isn"t celebrated on such a huge scale as in the america,but it is getting more and more popular each year.i usually spend halloween having a party and also going to friends party"s too,i also spend nights in lead-up to halloween watching halloween-related movies.i also love carving pumpkins,and handing out candy to the tot"s.how do you usually celebrate?


----------



## jdubbya (Nov 6, 2005)

Sounds fairly typical of a lot of us here too. I usually manage to take a couple weeks vacation from work before Halloween to prepare. We take in local haunted attractions, also watch movies, carve pumpkins, etc.. Halloween night it all comes together with our walk through haunt and passing out candy to the hoardes of TOT's who visit.


----------



## Headless (Sep 4, 2011)

Graveyardmaster I am in Australia and it isn't celebrated much here either although parties are pretty popular. I had been waiting many years to have a big event/party/haunted walkthrough which finally eventuated last year. We had most of our guests get into the spirit of things and come in costume and we got a scream out of each and every group that went through the haunt. Can't wait to do it again this year.


----------



## Pumpkin5 (Aug 8, 2010)

:jol: Well for me, Halloween is a yearly thing. Throughout the year I do a little Halloween-themed stuff as the year goes along. I make props or develop my ideas all year long and then around August I start switching it to high gear with staging and figuring out what props I need, what I have, and what my overall theme is going to be. I think this year I am going to switch up the front of my house to a 'Ghostess with the Mostess' theme. We'll see....and..oh yeah....I spend a lot of time on the forum......


----------



## FredKrueger (Apr 12, 2012)

I start planning around March or so, then for the next 7 months I can gather any materials I may need and start building/painting/corpsing/rigging, etc. 

On the actual day, I wake up excited and I get into any last minute things like putting out the fog machine, expensive props, sound system, etc. Like many others on here I'm sure, I'm woking from 9am to around 10pm on Halloween day, but it's worth it.

After terrifying the kiddies, exhausting myself, sweating and having a serious case of dry mouth, I take in anything I don't want stolen (most of it). Then I go inside, take off the costume, a quick shower, put up my throbbing feet, catch a couple of horror movies, eat too much candy, and pass out.

This is my routine and I love it. Eating candy any other day of the year just isn't the same as having it on Halloween


----------



## CenCalHaunt (May 12, 2012)

Let's see...
Usually I spend the month of April playing around on Google Sketchup trying to come up with a new way to lay out my haunt in my 2 car garage and side yard. Then I pull out all the walls and start repainting and re-theming them. Around May, on top of fine tuning my structure, I start building and/or repairing and refurbishing props from the previous year and building new stuff. June I build any new walls or scenes I need. That takes up until at least September, all the while I fine tune and usually build more props and spend more money on my haunt than I budgeted...then comes October. I start puting all the walls together, mixing soundtracks and effects, and stress out on whether I'm going to finish or not. Usually somewhere in there something breaks or stops working. October 31st is the big day when we "celebrate". I round up all my actors in the morning, go over their scares, and do a final equipment check. I open the haunt around 6 o clock or whenever it gets dark enough. My wife and kids go off and check out the rest of the neighborhood because by now they are sick of me and my haunt!! We scare the crap out of people untill 10 o clock, shut everything down, and dismantle enough of the haunt so I can at least close my garage door.
Then I drink about a gallon of water, sit on the couch, and swear up and down that I am never going to do the haunt again...
Then a few weeks go buy and I start scheming for next year, planning a "smaller scale" haunt, but it always gets bigger. Then comes Christmas. I ask for Lowes gift cards so I can go buy more lumber and all the necessities in life (extension cords, liquid nails, zip ties, electrical conduit, pvc pipe, flouescent light starters...)

In short, I guess I celebrate Halloween for 9 months out of the year! I don't know how it happens but it does. I guess I do what I do to allow everyone else to celebrate Halloween. Don't get me wrong, I have fun doing all the building and planning and stuff, but as we all know, it's alot of work. The "celebration" I have is afterward when we watch the surveilance videos of people screaming and peeing their pants!


----------



## debbie5 (Mar 2, 2007)

How do I celebrate Halloween? With chocolate, sweat & stress.


----------



## FredKrueger (Apr 12, 2012)

debbie5 said:


> How do I celebrate Halloween? With chocolate, sweat & stress.


LOL, good answer!


----------



## kprimm (Mar 14, 2009)

I spend my entire life celebrating Halloween. I work on my haunt all year making new props and decorations. I write my Halloween, spooky poetry all the time. The month of October I do everyhting scary I possibly can. I try to watch all the special shows on t.v., I have a bunch of movie favorites that I watch every year. I go to haunted houses, haunted hayrides, Halloween camping trips, spookshows,pumpkin patches, cider mills, walk the nature trails, walk through Halloween city and Spirits multiple times, attend Great lakes fright fest and Midwest haunters convention. I carve usually 10 to 20 pumpkins a year, sometimes more. I hold a Halloween party every year for 24 years now and counting. Anything and everything haunt or scary, I try to do.


----------



## MorbidFun (May 8, 2012)

kprimm said:


> I spend my entire life celebrating Halloween. I work on my haunt all year making new props and decorations. I write my Halloween, spooky poetry all the time. The month of October I do everyhting scary I possibly can. I try to watch all the special shows on t.v., I have a bunch of movie favorites that I watch every year. I go to haunted houses, haunted hayrides, Halloween camping trips, spookshows,pumpkin patches, cider mills, walk the nature trails, walk through Halloween city and Spirits multiple times, attend Great lakes fright fest and Midwest haunters convention. I carve usually 10 to 20 pumpkins a year, sometimes more. I hold a Halloween party every year for 24 years now and counting. Anything and everything haunt or scary, I try to do.


That is awesome I love the Fall and Halloween season I too do the local Haunted Houses, watch scary movies and set up a yard haunt to entertain the TOTs :jol:


----------



## Copchick (Apr 10, 2012)

Besides doing what everyone above does, I also try to go at least once to Kennywood Fright Nights. It's an amusement park that transforms into an awesome haunt. Most of the rides are shut down except for the roller coasters. The park is dark with lighting along the walkways to set the mood. All through the park is fog. It is so creepy to walk through the fog and have actors dressed with their zombie/monster costumes jump out at you. Or are they really actors? The park also adds about a half dozen walk through haunts with different themes. Halloween season is also a mind set. You all know what I mean. :jol:


----------



## Hairazor (Mar 13, 2012)

SPOOK WALK. Our town is about 8,000 people. There is a river that runs along part of our downtown. We have a walking trail that makes a circle around the town. At one point the trail is between the river and behind the Library (where I work part time) and a couple of Churches. Then it goes down a slight incline and goes under a 4 lane overpass. On the other side of the overpass is a small park on the left, the river on the right. The trail continues past the park but--- at the end of the park it circles around the park back to the underpass. This is where the Spook Walk begins and ends. The Chamber/ Community Revitalization sponsors the walk which is non-profit. Businesses or organizations or even just interested people sign up to have a "booth" on the circle. Each booth can be as simple or as elaborate as you want. The people or person running the booth has to be in costume and hand out candy, etc. just like you would to trick or treaters at your door. The day is set usually for the Thurs. a week or 2 before Halloween with a bad weather date the next Monday (it is Iowa after all). A women's group decorates under the underpass. They hang ghosts, bats, whatever, have bones, skeletons, whatever and tons of pumpkins (carved and decorated by various children) on either side under the underpass. The underpass has a rope down the center for going one way and coming back the other. The whole trail is lined by lighted luminaries. About 5:30 or 6:00 P.M. the fun begins. The line starts behind the churches. Some group sponsors giving out treat bags to all the kids who forgot a bag and then the kids (supposed to be 12 and under and accompanied by an adult) go under the underpass and hit each booth for treats till they are back to the start and back under the underpass. Our town has been doing this for about 15 or so years now. I have helped with a booth for the Library for 10 years now. We get over 1200 kids in about 1 ½ hours. Oh the costumes you see and the excitement!! It is a safe way for kids to "trick or treat" and for some it is the only trick or treating they do. We have as much fun as the kids. My only regret is we hand out candy non stop and don't get pictures of the totally cool kids. We try to keep it small kid friendly. _Of course any spooking I do at home is Scary themed!!!_

_Picture of our 2011 booth:_









_ 
_


----------



## Copchick (Apr 10, 2012)

Hairazor - that is such a great haunt/Halloween outing your community does! The picture is great too!


----------



## graveyardmaster (May 14, 2012)

wow hairazor,well thats the best community halloween spirit ive seen,well done,awesome picture hairazor!!!


----------



## Hairazor (Mar 13, 2012)

Thanks Copchick and GYM. It does tend to cut down on TOTers on Halloween night but it is quite the setup. And the kids are sooo excited, almost as excited as us spookers.


----------

