Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts

Friday, October 28, 2016

Halloween Groaners

Thought for the day:  Diamonds are a ghoul's best friend.

It's that time of year again. Monday's Halloween, so it'll once again be time for witches, goblins, vampires, ghosts and other things that go bump in the night to be out prowling the streets in search of candy and fun. 'Tis the time of year when, out of selfless pursuit of an atmosphere more suitable for playing holiday games of hide and shriek, it's perfectly acceptable for me to allow dust bunnies and cobwebs to multiply unabated. (That's my story, anyway...)

I'm not gonna try to scare you with a re-run about a creepy haunted doll this year. Nope. If you do any groaning this year, it'll be because of some bad puns and jokes.  Shall we begin?

Where we grew up, there was a fairly long road between my parents' neighborhood and the main avenue, where the Carlton movie theater was located. That long road was lined with graveyards on both sides. Not a problem walking to the movie, but I'll admit, the walk home in the dark was a bit more daunting, what with eerie lights (shudder) reflecting off the gravestones. (Not to mention the scary noises a certain person whose name I won't mention, but whose initials are Smarticus... liked to make as we passed those cemeteries...) Whether you find cemeteries to be frightening or peaceful, they're a common setting for numerous Halloween stories and jokes. Like this one...

[morguefile]
One dark Halloween, a couple of men were walking home from a party, and decided to take a shortcut through the cemetery. Ahead of them, they heard an eerie tap-tap-tapping noise coming from the misty shadows. Trembling with fear, they tip-toed toward the sound, and found an old man hunched over a gravestone with a hammer and chisel.  Relieved that it was only a workman, one of the men said, "Mister, you scared us half to death... we thought you were a ghost! What are you doing working so late at night?"

"Those idiots!" the old man roared. "They spelled my name wrong!"








[morguefile]

Let's ramp it up a little. Let's add a full moon for this story...

On the outskirts of a small rural town in south Georgia, a huge pecan tree grew just inside the cemetery fence. One evening, two boys snuck into the cemetery to gather enough pecans for their mothers to bake some pies. After they'd amassed a good pile of them, the boys sat down beside the tree, leaned against its massive trunk, and divided the pecans into two buckets. "One for you, one for me, one for you, one for me..." said Tommy. In the process, some of the pecans dropped, and rolled over to the fence. 

Another boy, riding past on his bicycle, thought he heard voices from inside the cemetery, so he stopped to investigate. Sure enough, he heard it again, "One for you, one for me, one for you, one for me..."

With the hair standing up on his neck, he jumped back on his bike and took off as fast as he could. Just around the bend, he saw an old man with a cane taking a slow laborious evening stroll. "You aren't going to believe what I just heard at the cemetery!" the boy said. "The Lord and Satan are dividing up the souls!"

"This I've got to see," the old man replied.

The boy walked his bike back to the cemetery, with the old man hobbling slowly beside him. When they reached the fence, sure enough, they both heard the voices. "One for you, one for me, one for you, one for me..."

The old man whispered, "Boy you were telling the truth! Let's see if we can see the Lord." Shaking with fear, they peered through the fence, but were still unable to see anything. They gripped the fence tighter and tighter as they strained to get a peek at the Lord.

Then they heard, "One for you, one for me. That's all we have here. Now let's go get those nuts by the fence and we'll be done..."

They say the old man dropped his cane, and had the lead for a good half-mile before the kid on the bike passed him.

******



  • Know why you can always count on vampires? They always come through in the neck of time. 
  • What do you call the ghost of a door-to-door salesman? A dead ringer.
  • Do ya know why mummies don't have any close friends? They're too wrapped up in themselves. Besides, their taste in music is way too narrow. All they ever listen to is wrap. 
  • Did you ever wonder why there are no famous skeletons? Simple. They're a bunch of no bodies. 
  • What's a good play to see on Halloween? Romeo and Ghouliet.
  • Have you ever wondered if ghosts ever haunt living rooms?
  • Do zombies eat popcorn with their fingers? Nope. They always eat the fingers separately.
  • What's a good Halloween meal? Fettucini a-fraid-o, with a cold Blood Lite, and for dessert? I-scream, of course. To make the meal even more memorable, play some haunting music in the background. Perhaps Mr. Skeleton would even agree to play his trom-bone for you...
  • What did the vampire say to the invisible man? Long time, no see!
  • How did the invisible man respond? Goodbye, sucker!
 As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today... oh how I wish he'd go away! [William Hughes Mearns]





Ever been to a costume party? The gal in this last story probably wishes she'd stayed home...


A couple was invited to a swanky masked Halloween party, but the gal got a terrible headache, and told her husband to go without her. So he reluctantly grabbed his costume, wished her well, and took off. After taking some aspirin and sleeping for an hour, the wife awoke feeling much better, so she decided to surprise her husband by putting on her costume and joining him at the party. She thought it'd be fun to watch him for a while from behind her mask before letting him know she was there, so she could find out how he behaved when she wasn't around. 

To her surprise, she found him cavorting on the dance floor, dancing and flirting with every woman in sight, copping feels, stealing kisses, and having a grand old time. She decided to get in on the fun, and sidled up to him seductively and smiled. He immediately abandoned his current dance partner, and turned all of his attention to her. They smooched and cuddled, and pressed their bodies together during the slow dances, until he finally whispered in her ear, and she happily agreed to join him outside in a car for an exciting marital romp. 

She left just before the unmasking at midnight. At home, she put the costume away and crawled into bed with a book, wondering what he'd say about his evening. When he came in, she asked how the party was. He said, "Oh, the same old thing. You know I never have a good time when you're not there."

Then she asked, "Did you dance much?" 


He replied, "Not at all. When I got there, I met Pete, Bill Brown and some other guys, so we went into the den and played poker all evening. But I'll tell you what, the guy I loaned my costume to sure had a helluva good time!" 

*************





Whatever your horrorscope may say, and however you choose to celebrate Halloween this year, I hope it's a frightfully boootiful one. Have fun, but don't eat too much chocolate. Oh who am I kidding? As if that were even possible...

                       Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

On Halloween, parents send their kids out looking like me. [Rodney Dangerfield]

Whew! It's hard to believe, but another month is about kaput. That means next Wednesday will be the monthly gathering for the Insecure Writer's Support Group, which means I'll be posting on Wednesday next week instead of Friday. Hope to seeya then. 






Friday, October 30, 2015

A Living Doll

Thought for the day:  Demons are a ghoul's best friend. 


Halloween time again! You gonna be wearing a costume? That's mine in the pic. That tee shirt has resided in my dresser for almost thirty years, relegated to the darkness until time for its once-a-year appearance. The cool thing about it? It glows in the dark. Verrrrry brightly. Yeah, I know, after all these years, that's a teensy bit scary. Still, it's just the thing to wear while greeting trick-or-treaters.

Did you ever go trick-or-treating as a kid? I went once at the ripe old age of thirteen, the only time my father was working the three-to-eleven shift, and my more lenient mother allowed me to go out for a little while with my friends. Turned out, it wasn't all that fun. I'd made myself a sexy (or as sexy as a thirteen-year old gets) Hawaiian outfit. Decorated bra top, crepe paper hula skirt and lei. Looked great until my mother made me put a long-sleeved sweater under the bra top and a coat over top. Oh, and of course, long corduroy pants. Even so, it was cold and windy. Felt like rain, too. Nonetheless, I was determined to squeeze in as much fun as I could, because I pretty much knew that was gonna be my one and only shot at going from door to door giggling with my girlfriends and flirting with our male classmates, while begging for candy. What could possibly go wrong? Turns out, plenty. See, some of my friends, who were pros at Halloween shenanigans, had brought bars of soap and a dozen raw eggs. For, um, vandalizing car windows. Did I participate? Yeah, I may have made a soap squiggle or two. When I got home, someone had likewise vandalized my mother's car. Was she happy? No. Was there smoke curling out of her ears? A little bit. She asked if I'd done any of that to anyone's car. When I admitted I had, she made me wash her car. In the dark. In the cold and windy, felt-like-raining miserable night. It was a lesson I never forgot.

Okay, I didn't mean to go into all that. I meant to be more lazy efficient, and re-run last year's Halloween post. I liked it so much, I figured I couldn't top it. Besides, I'm feeling particularly lazy efficient. The original post was called... Demons are a Ghoul's Best Friend.

***********************************************************************

Thought for the day:  Halloween was confusing. All my life, my parents said, "Never take candy from strangers." And then they dressed me up and said, "Go beg for it." I didn't know what to do! I'd knock on people's doors, and go, "Trick or treat!" "No, thank you."  [Rita Rudner]

[Morguefile]
Halloween gives us a good excuse to be lazy put off some of that pesky housecleaning. After all, dust bunnies and cobwebs help us create the proper atmosphere, dontcha think? The perfect place for the kiddies to play hide and shriek. An eerie kinda place to sit back and sip a nice cold Blood Lite...

Okay, I'll stop. (Sorry. Just kidding!)

Do zombies eat popcorn with their fingers? Nope. They always eat the fingers separately.


[Morguefile]

Okay, I'm not one to lose my head over Halloween decorations, (at least, not any more...) but no bones about it... Happy Halloween, y'all!!!

Didja check the weather forecast and tomorrow's horrorscope to see what kind of evening might be in store for you? Gonna have fettucini a-fraid-o and a nice bottle of boooze for dinner? Or maybe some nice fried poultry-geist?

Okay, I'll stop now. Really.

But in honor of Halloween, we've gotta talk about something scary...

[Morguefile]
It was a dark and dreary night...

except for the moon. There has to be a big full, pizza pie in the sky kinda moon...

maybe coyotes howling...

[Morguefile]







and a bunch of hungry buzzards...

No, wait! Forget the buzzards. At my age, the idea of impatient buzzards hanging around is entirely too scary.

But how about... a doll? A haunted doll?

[wikipedia]


Now, I'm not talking about Chucky, although those movies did scare the bejeezus out of me. Smarticus even claimed I turned into that creepy doll at the stroke of midnight one Valentine's Day, when, in a deep gravelly voice, I oh-so-sweetly suggested...
I WANT CHOCOLATE!!!
But that, of course, was a gross exaggeration. (Hey! I only did it for comic effect. By the way, it worked. I got my chocolate...)

[wikipedia]

Anyhow, the doll I'm talking about is named Robert. Robert the Doll. (Makes sense...)

Claimed by some to be the creepiest toy in America, the doll was given to Robert Eugene Otto, a well-known Key West artist, in 1906, when he was just a young boy. It was a gift from his nanny shortly after she became his ex-nanny. His voodoo-practicing ex-nanny. The doll she made for the little boy bore a striking resemblance to him, and even had human hair stitched onto its head... hair which had come from the boy's head.

Almost from the start, the doll was... different. The boy had conversations with it... two-way conversations. The family heard creepy giggles. Tiny feet scampering in the night. Schoolchildren claimed to see it move from window to window... watching them as they walked past. Things disappeared, got broken, got moved. And always, the boy claimed, Robert did it. .

Even as an adult, Otto kept the doll nearby, and never painted without Robert sitting beside him. After he got married, he built Robert his own special room in the attic. His wife was spooked by the giggles, sounds of scampering feet, eerie events, and other sounds coming from the attic, and after Otto's death, she moved out, and left the doll behind in the attic, where he continued to spook tenants who rented the house.

Now? Robert resides behind glass in the Fort East Martello Museum in Key West, Florida, where he continues to freak people out, who claim the doll changes expressions. A sign hanging beside him instructs people to only take pictures with Robert's permission. He allegedly gives a little nod to signal his approval. Failure to ask could lead to... a voodoo curse of some kind. I kid you not...





As creepy as that doll is, I can think of something even scarier. We still have another year of debates, toxic political mud-slinging ads and robo-calls to put up with before the presidential election.
                      OH, NOOOOOO!!!!!!!
                                                 
                                                          Now THAT'S scary.

Okay, just one more. Know where the goblin threw the football? Over the ghoul line! Y'all have a de-fright-fully boooootiful Halloween.

************************

Wait! But that's not ALL! Last year, after reading this post, our dapper friend Cro Magnon mentioned another peculiar doll in his comments. A doll named Lord Tod Wadley. So I figured I'd tack on a quick addendum about this British doll.

Joe Carstairs and Wadley [wikipedia]

Born in London to a very wealthy American heiress in 1900, Marion Barbara "Joe" Carstairs was a tomboy as a child, and as an adult, dressed as a man, had tattooed arms, and loved adventures, machines, and speed. By 1934, she was the fastest female speedboat racer in the world, so she didn't just love speed; she majorly kicked butt in speed competitions. Lord Tod Wadley entered her life in 1925 when one of her girl friends gave the foot-tall leather doll to her, and it became her constant companion. Or maybe I should say he, because Jo certainly thought the doll was more than just a doll. He became her constant companion, and her dearest friend. When publicity photos were taken of her, he had to be included. She had a plaque made to put over top of the door to her flat, which contained both her name and the doll's. She lavished him with expensive gifts: things like special-made clothes and shoes, a working wristwatch, and golf clubs. She had dozens of studio photographs made of him, poems written, and sculptures created in his honor. He was her mascot, her fetish, and her alter ego. "We're like one," she said. "He's me and I'm him. It's a marvelous thing. If everyone had a Wadley, there'd be less sadness in the world."  When Joe passed away in 1993, her beloved doll and companion was cremated with her.

Kinda weird, huh? Not exactly scary, but a little bit sad.

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other. (Don't eat too much chocolate! Pbbbt...what am I saying?  There's no such thing as eating too much chocolate.) Pssst... make sure y'all practice safe hex!

Friday, October 31, 2014

Demons are a Ghoul's Best Friend

Thought for the day:  Halloween was confusing. All my life, my parents said, "Never take candy from strangers." And then they dressed me up and said, "Go beg for it." I didn't know what to do! I'd knock on people's doors, and go, "Trick or treat!" "No, thank you."  [Rita Rudner]

[Morguefile]
Halloween gives us a good excuse to be lazy put off some of that pesky housecleaning. After all, dust bunnies and cobwebs help us create the proper atmosphere, dontcha think? The perfect place for the kiddies to play hide and shriek. An eerie kinda place to sit back and sip a nice cold Blood Lite...

Okay, I'll stop. (Sorry. Just kidding!)

Do zombies eat popcorn with their fingers? Nope. They always eat the fingers separately.


[Morguefile]

Okay, I'm not one to lose my head over Halloween decorations, (at least, not any more...) but no bones about it... Happy Halloween, y'all!!!

Didja check the weather forecast and today's horrorscope to see what kind of evening might be in store for you? Gonna have fettucini a-fraid-o and a nice bottle of boooze for dinner? Or maybe some nice fried poultry-geist?

Okay, I'll stop now. Really.

But in honor of Halloween, we've gotta talk about something scary...

[Morguefile]
It was a dark and dreary night...

except for the moon. There has to be a big full, pizza pie in the sky kinda moon...

maybe coyotes howling...

[Morguefile]







and a bunch of hungry buzzards...

No, wait! Forget the buzzards. At my age, the idea of impatient buzzards hanging around is entirely too scary.

But how about... a doll? A haunted doll?

[wikipedia]


Now, I'm not talking about Chucky, although those movies did scare the bejeezus out of me. Smarticus even claimed I turned into that creepy doll at the stroke of midnight one Valentine's Day, when, in a deep gravelly voice, I oh-so-sweetly suggested...
I WANT CHOCOLATE!!!
But that, of course, was a gross exaggeration. (Hey! I only did it for comic effect. By the way, it worked. I got my chocolate...)

[wikipedia]

Anyhow, the doll I'm talking about is named Robert. Robert the Doll. (Makes sense...)

Claimed by some to be the creepiest toy in America, the doll was given to Robert Eugene Otto, a well-known Key West artist, in 1906, when he was just a young boy. It was a gift from his nanny shortly after she became his ex-nanny. His voodoo-practicing ex-nanny. The doll she made for the little boy bore a striking resemblance to him, and even had human hair stitched onto its head... hair which had come from the boy's head.

Almost from the start, the doll was... different. The boy had conversations with it... two-way conversations. The family heard creepy giggles. Tiny feet scampering in the night. Schoolchildren claimed to see it move from window to window... watching them as they walked past. Things disappeared, got broken, got moved. And always, the boy claimed, Robert did it. .

Even as an adult, Otto kept the doll nearby, and never painted without Robert sitting beside him. After he got married, he built Robert his own special room in the attic. His wife was spooked by the giggles, sounds of scampering feet, eerie events, and other sounds coming from the attic, and after Otto's death, she moved out, and left the doll behind in the attic, where he continued to spook tenants who rented the house.

Now? Robert resides behind glass in the Fort East Martello Museum in Key West, Florida, where he continues to freak people out, who claim the doll changes expressions. A sign hanging beside him instructs people to only take pictures with Robert's permission. He allegedly gives a little nod to signal his approval. Failure to ask could lead to... a voodoo curse of some kind. I kid you not...



As creepy as that doll is, I can think of something even scarier. Early polls are showing a strong possibility that both our gubernatorial and senatorial races may be so close, run-off elections will be required. Know what that means? Enduring TWO MORE MONTHS of toxic political mud-slinging ads and robo-calls.
                      OH, NOOOOOO!!!!!!!
                                                   
                                                          Now THAT'S scary.

Okay, just one more. Know where the goblin threw the football? Over the ghoul line! Y'all have a de-fright-fully boooootiful Halloween.

                  Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

A Halloween Howdy

Thought for the day:  Halloween was confusing. All my life, my parents said, "Never take candy from strangers." And then they dressed me up and said, "Go beg for it." I didn't know what to do! I'd knock on people's doors, and go, "Trick or treat!" "No thank you." [Rita Rudner]


Hi-ya. I'm back. Sorta. We're back in town, but I'm not really full tilt boogie on blogger yet. Too many other things to do. (sigh) Really, I've been working my butt off... Oops! Darn. Never mind. I just looked, and it's still there. (Dammit.) Anyhow, I've been restocking the larder, raking a mountain's worth of leaves, washing a mountain of laundry, shampooing carpets... you know, all that fun stuff. And guess what? We even went to the movies! First time in fifteen or twenty years, so talk about sticker shock over the cost of tickets. (But we saw Gravity... in 3-D! Loved it!) Anyhow, I wanted to take a few minutes to wish y'all a Happy Halloween.

So, Happy Halloween!!! (y'all)

Okay, just a few quick pictures, and then I've gotta run...



AR-AR-AR!!! Granddaughter Devyn makes one cute pirate, doesn't she?


But she makes a cute bumblebee, too.
Aaron's our super little man,  Kymber's always a little princess. and (shhh... don't tell him!) I'm not sure about Jaiden's costume. Power Ranger, maybe? Whatever he is, he's a cute one.

And here's three of the Florida grands, modeling some of their costumes while we were in Florida. I do declare, Persephone looks like she stepped right out of the pages of Gone With the Wind, doesn't she?  Ella makes a super duper Jasmine, and Olivia? A delightful pirate lass.




Okay, I'm gonna include a few you've gotta be kidding me pictures of dogs dressed up for Halloween. The poor beagle doesn't look at all happy, does he?





Doggone it, (heh heh) I've really gotta go. But before I do, let me remind y'all to turn those pesky clocks back an hour on Saturday night...


                                       Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

Know what? I'll bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween. (Pssst! Don't forget to practice safe hex!)