Anoka: Halloween Capital Of The World

Back in 2008, I blogged that I was going to be moving to Anoka, Minnesota after finding out it was considered the Halloween Capital of the World.  It seems our High Holiday is worshiped by those folks, and it's been that way since the 1920's.

But now, according to the Orlando Sentinel...
Orlando has been dubbed the world's Halloween capital in a new marketing campaign to lure more tourists and scare up some extra business.

Visit Orlando is promoting events on social media, arranging press trips and hosting a Halloween landing page on its web site.

The convention and visitors bureau has never branded the region this way before, Chief Executive Officer George Aguel said.

"We needed to pull this together in one big overarching way," he said. "We don't see any place that could even come close to the magnitude of how we celebrate the Halloween period like we do in Orlando."

Here's hoping big money doesn't win out over spirit.

Click below for Anoka's official website...

Utopian Facade

By John Carpenter

Pumpkin Thurible

More images by Sam Heimer here.

First Decorations Of The Season

Got our cornstalks and strung up some orange lights on the porch...

Unholy Orchard

There really is no excuse as to why every hayride doesn't have stuff like this in their fields...

unholyorchard.com

...And We LIKED It.

I was talking about music with a friend of mine at work and we thought about how things were when we were young.  We're around the same age and we recalled a world without the Internet and how difficult it was to have a hobby.  Not really difficult, but you had to work for it.  Really, really hard.  Actually, it WAS difficult.

Like in my case I loved film composer James Horner, but had no easy resources to find out information about him or to know what he was scoring next.  We checked out the movie posters in the lobbies of theaters, we went to the library to look up any articles that might exist about him or perhaps even an interview, we flipped through records, tapes, and cd's in record stores for hours looking for something we missed.  You'd find "newsletter" advertisements in horror mags or in the back of Starlog magazine and write to them asking to be on their mailing list.  Thank the gods for the fanatical people who ran those things.  Pre-Internet, they WERE the Internet.

I remember calling a soundtrack store in Leeds, England early in the morning, asking what Horner soundtracks they had...  and finding out there were foreign releases not available in the U.S., it was like finding treasure.  I think my mother made us pay for those calls.

Anyways, we talked about this stuff and pondered the good and the bad of it all.  Like is it a good thing that someone now who discovers they love something suddenly has immediate access to literally everything there is to know about their new-found hobby?  Does it feel as good getting it all so quickly?

Mind you, I'm grateful for what the Internet has provided me by way of my strange interests.  I'm certain I would have missed out on a lot of the obscure music I love had it not been heard on Pandora or suggested by Amazon.com.

But maybe I savor it more remembering the way it used to be?

Maybe I'm just old.

Lurking Clown Arrested In Kentucky Woods Near Apartments

Clown justice...
How can this be real?  It's like when they arrested Michael Myers in Halloween V and let him keep his mask on...

Click below for the story:

Thanks, Rowan!

More October Dreaming...

 

Images by october_dreaming.

Diner Ghost Story

The Halloween Countdown Continues

Click below for days and days of the ultimate Halloween playlist...

Now Playing: Bergson

By Billow Observatory.

More From The Olde House

So many great images on this tumblr...

More from The Olde House on the Hill here.

Creepy Clown Sightings Continue Throughout The United States

I pray, PRAY, that I see one soon...

Laugh at me, will they?

Turnips And A Lump Of Coal

Image source.

Now Playing: Collage

Horner's score for Titanic is one of the best-selling orchestral soundtracks of all time. He won an Oscar for that score and another for the film's theme song, Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." But his career began much more modestly: He started out scoring pulpy B-movies, including Humanoids from the Deep for Roger Corman. His wife, Sara Horner, remembers meeting James when they were both students at UCLA.

"He took all of the money he made on Humanoids from the Deep, and then dumped it into the next score — he didn't take any money out," she says. "He used it to make the music as good as he could and lived off the money he made as a TA at UCLA."

She adds, laughing, "We just lived on nothing, just nothing."


Click below for samples from his Collage release:

Click here for the article.

Reanimated

Store props done right...

Image by matt fic.

Some Fun Links

Over at The Skeleton Key blog...

Creatures Watching Over The Dead

The new album by Charred Walls of the Damned now streaming over at HowardStern.com...


Click below (album release date: 9/23/16):

Now Playing: Ecliptic Prophecy

By Jon of the Shred.

Fearless Crow

Image by timberchouse.

Phantasm: Remastered

Pumpkin Farm Spook House

Perhaps the coolest entrance ever...

Image by bedlamsupplyco.

Vac-Tastic Plastic

So many cool things here...

Click below:

Thanks, Rene!

The Day Draws Near

Re-promoting our favorite candle shop as the big day approaches.
Looking forward to the first carved pumpkin of the season with one of these tea lights inside.
Anise & Clove candles from soyNsuds.

Premature Burial

A day or two ago the body was exhumed, prior to its removal to another burial place, when the discovery was made that the girl had been buried alive. Her shroud was torn into shreds, her knees were drawn up to her chin, one of her arms was twisted under her head, and her features bore evidence of dreadful torture.

New York Times article, 1886

Image by punkineater.

A Haunted Place

Images by Get Sirius.

More Of The Porch Corpse...

Photos by Bean.

This Should Be Fun

Click below...

Bean Is Cool

Charred Walls Of The Damned

Cool interview with band founder Richard Christy...  made my day to see my work mentioned.

Click below:

And here's the group's bandcamp page.

Now Playing: The Magnificent Seven

Director Antoine Fuqua was provided with a surprising gift when he began making his contemporary remake of “The Magnificent Seven”: Seven themes composed by the late Oscar-winning composer James Horner (“Titanic”), who died last year in a plane crash. Horner didn’t live long enough to screen any footage, but he read the script and provided the backbone of the score for Fuqua. Indeed, after collaborating on “Southpaw” together, Horner convinced the director to make “The Magnificent Seven” when he was ambivalent about the project and worried about financing.

Text source.