Midnight. This long, long day is finally over. But if you think about it… indeed, it's not really over. Halloween comes back in our daily life. Strange animals may attack us. Fashion designers decided that zombies depressed models were trendy. Mutant toys invade our shops. Torture is still legal. Ridiculous objects are always closer than we believe. Even kids are carried away by the bloody wave. Worse: ninja are surrounding us, even if we can't see them.

And apart from that… well, I'm dead-tired. Thank you all for supporting Jouni and I all day long. It's time for us to go back in hell. See you tomorrow :)

Ok, it seems that at least for Gasgas the horror movies I listed we’re a bit too lame. Fair enough, I’ll give this thing another go… ;)

This time we’re not talking about movies though and you have to fly overseas for the experience. Yes, we’re talking about real life haunted houses here! Ten minutes ago I was googling around for Halloween stuff and found a guide that has the locations and information for all haunted houses in the USA.

They’re mostly nice and commercial too! I looked up info on some haunted houses in my former home state and this is what one of them promises to offer: “This Halloween season come visit a place where the souls of the damned walk in anger….A place so scary even the toughest of grown men will shiver in fear. If you make it through the torture chamber consider yourself among the lucky. But can you escape the ten foot tall Grim Reaper??? We'll see…”

Ten foot? Pffft, I’m almost that tall myself. Happy Halloween, everyone!

1. Our place is different
2. We tried that before.
3. It costs too much.
4. That's not my job.
5. They're too busy to do that.
6. We don't have the time.
7. Not enough help.
8. It's too radical a change.
9. The staff will never buy it.
10. It's against company policy.
11. The union will scream.
12. That will run up our overhead.
13. We don't have the authority.
14. Let's get back to reality.
15. That's not our problem.
16. I don't like the idea.
17. I'm not saying you're wrong but…
18. You're two years ahead of your time.
19. Now's not the right time.
20. It isn't in the budget.
21. Can't teach an old dog new tricks.
22. Good thought, but impractical.
23. Let's give it more thought.
24. We'll be the laughingstock of the industry.
25. Not that again.
26. Where'd you dig that one up?
27. We did alright without it before.
28. It's never been tried.
29. Let's put that one on the back burner for now.
30. Let's form a committee.
31. It won't work in our place.
32. The executive committee will never go for it.
33. I don't see the connection.
34. Let's all sleep on it.
35. It can't be done.
36. It's too much trouble to change.
37. It won't pay for itself.
38. It's impossible.
39. I know a person who tried it and got fired.
40. We've always done it this way.
41. We'd lose money in the long run.
42. Don't rock the boat.
43. That's what we can expect from the staff.
44. Has anyone else ever tried it?
45. Let's look into it further.
46. We'll have to answer to the stockholders.
47. Quit dreaming.
48. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
49. That's too much ivory tower.
50. It's too much work.

I found this here and, let's just have a little game together: how many of those sentences have you already heard? Personally, 47. Luckily there are still persons who can make a Halloween costume with an umbrella. Creativity's not dead!

Halloween is the premium season for costume parties and those are always fun, right? Well, at least if you actually use your head when you’re picking a costume for yourself. In every costume party there’s always a few individuals who decided to skip that step and made the night a living hell for themselves.

A few key points for choosing a successful costume:

Don’t choose a costume that is too big

Dressing up as a hamburger or an apple may seem like a funny thing to do but it’s going to be a pain in the ass for you after the first 5 minutes. Bumping into people, having trouble in the doorways, not fitting into cars… You don’t really want that, now do you?

Don’t try to be “realistic” if that’s not comfortable

Ok, for an example mermaids have a fishtail and yes, dressing up as a mermaid is hot. If you try to replicate the tail by wearing a skirt that only allows you to take baby steps all night long or anything else like that you won’t be hot. You’ll just look like a dork.

Use consideration

When you’re about to buy that costumes that portraits you as a human toilet seat please think again. Dressing up as a menstrual pad isn’t funny either. It’s just plain awful and will make people avoid you.

Clichés and classics are two different things

Thinking about showing up as Elvis from Vegas years, a drag queen, a member of the Village People or something similar? Go ahead but don’t expect a huge “Haha”-effect since a few billion people have already done it before you.

So, in order to have fun don’t go crazy! Pick a costume that you know you’ll feel comfortable in and allows you to move around just like your regular clothes. If you’ve got more tips please share them with the rest of us and for more ugly Halloween customes, check out this site.

Booh! Cute, isn't it? The terrific permanent Photoshop contest on Worth1000.com just released a new Halloween challenge: if the dead ruled. Like it? Then you may also lose all your productivity watching the Jack-O'Lantern contest, and my favourite one, the deadly cute contest.

To further celebrate the Halloween I thought it would fun to share a few not so widely known facts about two masters; Alfred Hitchcock & H.R. Giger. Hitchcock is known as the “Master of Suspense” and Giger (other than being my favourite artist) is best known for his work for the Alien movies – and they’re just a small portion of what this mastermind has created.

So, did you know that…

Alfred Hitchcock

Director

1. Hitchcock had an extreme fear of eggs, known as ovophobia.

2. Hitchcock almost never socialized when not shooting films, with most of his evenings spent quietly at home with his wife Alma Reville.

3. When Hitchcock won his Lifetime Achievement award in 1979, he joked with friends that he must be about to die soon. He died a year later.

4. In his childhood days, Alfred Hitchcock was sent by his father with a letter to the local police station. The officer read the letter and, without further ado, locked young Alfred up for ten minutes. Then he let him go, explaining that this is what happenes to people who do bad things. Hitchcock was frightened of the police from that day on.

5. When Hitchcock accepted the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, he delivered the shortest acceptance speech in Oscar history: he simply said "Thank you."

H.R. Giger

Painter, Sculptor, Set Designer

1. Giger designed a transit tunnel for Switzerland during the early nineties. Essentially it was a pentagram shaped system and the entrances to the underground were supposed to be marked by five massive pyramids (each 1000 meters tall).

2. Giger suffers from Night Terrors, and keeps an artist's pad near his bed to draw out his nightmares. It was in this fashion that he came up with horrific designs of the monsters for Alien.

3. Giger built a private ghost train to his garden. Neighbours weren’t actually pleased.

4. The front (face) part of the alien costume's head designed by H.R. Giger is made from a real human skull.

5. Los Angeles City Attorney prosecuted the Dead Kennedys’ front man Jello Biafra in 1986 for “distributing harmful material to minors” because their album included some of Giger’s artwork.

Nothing is worse than a hasty, ill-planned, haphazard, last-minute suicide. Everyone has a bad day, week, month, year, (even a decade or two) now and then, but remember… there's almost always a silver lining behind every cloud. If you're at all serious about 'doing the deed', at least take the time to read this book (don't skim). A little pre-planning now will avoid many problems later…

This is how the Layman's Guide to Suicide begins. Chapters 1 to 21 are online for free, and of course, it's just a funny book… If you really want to kill someone and become a ghost, I have a better solution for you than suicide: kill Pacman. You'll feel relieved!

Just like Halloween itself pumpkin carving is a very American custom. Families all over the new world search for the perfect pumpkin and most of them carve it to a traditional Jack-o’-lantern right after that. Some take this a step further than that though and make carving a form of art.

For a complete guide how to achieve that check out Ray Villafane’s site. Beautifully horrifying stuff!

Then again if you feel like carving yourself you can just slack off and buy a foam pumpkin. Those things are kinda cheesy though.

Tip of the day; candles are a fire hazard. Use a few leds inside you pumpkin instead.

I'm sure you already experienced it: you fall asleep, make a nightmare, try to wake up, believe you're awaken but actually you're still sleeping, and then, things go darker and darker… I learnt today that those nightmares have a cute name: hypnagogia. Vice Magazine has interviewed seven regular hypgnagogia sufferers, so let's see if your nightmares are worse than this one:

I suffer from sleep terrors. It’s a more physical version of nightmares where you act out what you are dreaming. Apparently it’s caused by anxiety. There have been cases of people committing stabbings and murders in their sleep. It gets pretty extreme.

The worst experience I ever had happened about a year ago. I was asleep next to my girlfriend and I was dreaming that something was attacking me. When I woke up I had her hand in my mouth and blood all over my face. I had bitten her in my sleep and taken a huge chunk out of her hand. It was so horrible. It’s weird, but in my dream I thought I was saving her.

Pretty strange, eh? 

If you like night related topics, you may enjoy reading this interesting essay : If we had no moon.

In the past I used to be greatly in love with horror movies and in many ways I still am. That love affair hasn’t always been smooth sailing though. There’s been a huge horror boom in the film industry over the last few years and a boom at anything is very likely to result loads of crap being produced. Same applies here; Hollywood has been pushing out a crappy horror movie after another for quite some time now and there haven’t been too many quality productions to keep the genre alive in a way it deserves.

In case you’re in a mood for celebration Halloween by watching some of the best horror films out there I decided to make your life a little easier and more frightening by making a list of 13 movies that will scare you off your pants. Some of the more sensitive users may even soil those pants before that.

In no particular order my unlucky 13 movies are:

"The Exorcist", "Carrie", "The Others", "The Shining", "Halloween", "Storm of the Century", "The Birds", "Cujo", "Hellraiser", "Candyman", "Psycho", "Pet Sematary" and "It."

Each one of these has resulted in losing some sleep which is a great way to judge a horror movie. If it makes you feel uneasy and uncomfortable enough to stare at the ceiling while you’re wide awake in your bed at 3AM it was a decent movie!

Oh, besides those older movies it actually seems that there’s a new one hitting the theatres in a couple of days and the trailer seems quite promising. “1408” is based on a novel by Stephen King and the lead roles are played by John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson – these should serve as a recommendation.