Halloween 365
Bring Back the Christmas Ghost Story Tradition
by Maledicta | Dec 9, 2018 | Categories: Halloween 365. Tags: a christmas carol, christmas, dickens, England, ghost stories, and tradition.
For the last hundred years, Americans have kept ghosts in their place, letting them out only in October, in the run-up to our only real haunted holiday, Halloween. But it wasn’t always this way, and it’s no coincidence that the most famous ghost story is a...
Unique Graves Have Haunting Tales to Tell
by Maledicta | Dec 3, 2018 | Categories: Halloween 365 and Uncategorized. Tags: cemetery, coffins, graves, tombstones, and unusual graves.
Have you heard about the mysterious Black Angel, the crypt with moving coffins, or Lilly Gray, “Victim of the Beast?” Every grave tells a story… And some are more “strange and unusual” than others. Most of these stories are prosaic enough,...
Roaming Charges May Apply: Did Edison’s “Spirit Phone” Really Communicate with the Dead?
by Maledicta | Nov 12, 2018 | Categories: Halloween 365 and Interesting People. Tags: Edison, spirit phone, and talking to the dead.
In the late 1920s, not long before his death, Thomas Edison reportedly gathered with other scientists in a secret laboratory to record the voices and presence of the dead using “speakers, generators, and other experimental equipment.” Several years later, an...
How Did the Victorian Mansion Become the Default “Haunted House?”
by Maledicta | Nov 11, 2018 | Categories: Halloween 365. Tags: haunted house, mansion, and victorian.
Visit your local Halloween haunted house or watch a horror movie, and you’ll probably see a creepy Victorian structure that simply exudes terror. But as art historian Sarah Burns points out, in the 1870s, Victorian houses were just…houses. “Half a century...
Death Festivals Around the World
by Maledicta | Nov 4, 2018 | Categories: Halloween 365 and Weird Tourism. Tags: chuseok, dia de los muertos, Festivals, gai jatra, hungry ghost, obon, radonitsa, and totensonntag.
Mexico isn’t the only country that sets a date with the dead. Around the world, different countries, cultures, and religions have unique relationships with their dead. And yet, there are plenty of festivals of the dead—which take place over the course of days,...
6 Ways to Make Halloween Safer for Your Pets
by Maledicta | Oct 22, 2018 | Categories: Halloween 365. Tags: candy, costumes, Halloween, masks, pets, and safety.
On Halloween, it may seem like a lot of fun dress up and jump out in a scary costume and shout “boo!” to scare our family and friends. That’s because most of us know who’s really underneath it. But it’s different for pets. For example, masks and costumes...
High-Stakes Halloween Games That Can Tell Your Future… or Kill You!
by Maledicta | Oct 14, 2018 | Categories: Halloween 365 and Macabre Amusements. Tags: apples, cabbage, halloween games, and snap apple.
These traditional Halloween Night games used fruits and vegetables to tell you who you will marry and when you will die… and sometimes even set you on fire! All Hallows’ Eve is a time when the veil between the world of the living and dead is thinner than...
An Empire Built on Orange Crepe Paper – Dennison Halloween Ephemera
by Maledicta | Sep 30, 2018 | Categories: Halloween 365. Tags: Bogie Book, crepe paper, Dennison, Halloween decorations, Halloween ephemera, and Halloween party.
Halloween ephemera from the 1920 Bogie Book In the early 20th century, the Dennison Manufacturing Company built a business empire on Halloween costumes, pumpkin-themed party invitations, die-cut ghosts, and orange-and-black table decorations. For many years,...
Very Stable (?) Geniuses – Why Halloween Fans are Smarter than Other People
by Maledicta | Sep 30, 2018 | Categories: Halloween 365. Tags: candy, decorating, genius, Halloween, and party.
All holidays are fun in their own ways (okay, maybe Flag Day and Arbor Day aren’t all that exciting), but we know that nothing compares to Halloween. There are many reasons why Halloween is just hands down the best holiday of them all. You can dress up...
Who Will Save Us from Sexy Pizza?
by Maledicta | Sep 23, 2018 | Categories: Costumes & Couture and Halloween 365. Tags: Halloween costumes, sexy costumes, and Take Back Halloween.
I’m usually a pretty open-minded person with a live-and-let-live philosophy of life. But sometimes you see things that are so ridiculous, annoying, or stupid that you can’t help but get your knickers in a twist. (Hoping it isn’t just me…) Like one...