We found a treasure from the past this year. A music video featuring The Groovie Goolies to the song Monster Mash! Enjoy, and have a safe Halloween! After Saturday’s haunts it will be officially safe for you to start thinking about Christmas and your photo holiday cards. Just a thought…

Last year we posted my dad’s version of the Bobby “Boris” Pickett classic Monster Mash. This Halloween, we’re bringing back another classic…

Inflatable Boy Clams, Skeletons

Play it while you’re carving pumpkins, baking Halloween goodies, taking down Halloween decorations in preparation for Thanksgiving and… (gasp) Christmas. Yes, it’s time to start thinking about photo Christmas cards and holiday photo cards.

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

Here’s some information on this spooky holiday and some history behind it.

Halloween, or Hallowe’en, is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. Traditional activities include trick-or-treating, Halloween festivals, bonfires, costume parties, visiting “haunted houses”, carving jack-o-lanterns, and viewing horror films. Halloween originated from the Pagan festival Samhain, celebrated among the Celts of Ireland and Great Britain. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century. Halloween is now celebrated in several parts of the western world, most commonly in Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom and occasionally in parts of Australia and New Zealand.

The term Halloween (and its alternative rendering Hallowe’en) is shortened from All-hallow-even, as it is the eve of “All Hallows’ Day”, also which is now known as All Saints’ Day. It was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions, until Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV moved the old Christian feast of All Saints’ Day from May 13 to November 1. In the ninth century, the Church measured the day as starting at sunrise, in accordance with the Florentine calendar. Although All Saints’ Day is now considered to occur one day after Halloween, the two holidays were, at that time, celebrated on the same day. Liturgically, the Church traditionally celebrated that day as the Vigil of All Saints, and, until 1970, a day of fasting as well. Like other vigils, it was celebrated on the previous day if it fell on a Sunday, although secular celebrations of the holiday remained on the 31st. The Vigil was suppressed in 1955, but was later restored in the post-Vatican II calendar.

Many European cultural traditions, in particular Celtic cultures, hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when spirits can make contact with the physical world, and when magic is most potent (according to, for example, Catalan mythology about witches and Irish tales of the Sídhe).

The modern holiday of Halloween has its origins in the ancient Gaelic festival known as Samhain (pronounced /ˈsˠaunʲ/ from the Old Irish samain). The Festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and is erroneously regarded as ‘The Celtic New Year’. Traditionally, the festival was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. The Ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops. The festivals would frequently involve bonfires, where the bones of slaughtered livestock were thrown. Costumes and masks were also worn at the festivals in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or placate them. When the Romans occupied Celtic territory, several Roman traditions were also incorporated into the festivals. Feralia, a day celebrated in late October by the Romans for the passing of the dead as well as a festival which celebrated the Roman Goddess Pomona, the goddess of fruit were incorporated into the celebrations. The symbol of Pomona was an apple, which is a proposed origin for the tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.

Need more information? Head on over to Wikipedia to find out how halloween is celebrated around the world.

Be safe out there tonight.

No, it’s not what you get when you mix Count Chocula, Franken Berry and Boo Berry into one bowl. Click to listen to my dad’s version of the song originally done by Bobby “Boris” Pickett.

Monster Mash

Curt (that’s my dad) put this together in about 2 hours with Apple’s Garage Band. He’s teaching music in Ventura, CA. Check out his blog!

Here’s some background info on the original version…

Pickett was an aspiring actor who sang with a band called The Cordials at night while going to auditions during the day. One night, while performing with his band, Pickett did a monologue in imitation of horror movie actor Boris Karloff while performing The Diamonds’ “Little Darlin’”. The audience loved it and fellow band member, Lenny Capizzi encouraged Pickett to do more with the Karloff imitation.

Pickett and Capizzi composed “Monster Mash” and recorded it with Gary Paxton, Leon Russell, Johnny McCrae and Rickie Page, credited as “The Cryptkickers”. This song was partially inspired by Paxton’s earlier novelty hit “Alley Oop”, as well as by the Mashed Potato dance craze of the era.

The song is narrated by a mad scientist whose monster, late one evening, rises from a slab to perform a new dance. The dance becomes a hit when the scientist throws a party for other monsters. The producers came up with several low-budget, but effective sound effects for the recording. For example, the sound of a coffin opening was imitated by a rusty nail being pulled out of a board. The sound of a cauldron bubbling was actually water being bubbled through a straw and the chains rattling were simply chains being dropped on a tile floor. Pickett also impersonated the horror actor Bela Lugosi as Dracula when he said, “What ever happened to my Transylvania Twist?”

On October 20, 1962, eight weeks after it was recorded, “Monster Mash” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart just in time for Halloween. It has been a perennial holiday favorite ever since. The single was re-released twice, the first re-release was in 1970, and the second re-release resulted in the single peaking at #10 in early-May, 1973. The song remains a staple on oldies radio.
- Wikipedia

We used Zombie Pumpkins last year to place 2nd and 4th in a carving contest. Competition aside, the site is easy to use and fun for all.

The Zombie Pumpkins! site offers its own breed of unique pumpkin carving patterns. Each stencil has been carefully crafted to work easily with traditional cut-out carving techniques.

There are currently 151 pumpkin designs to choose from, with more being added all the time. Traditional Halloween patterns, classic and modern movie monster patterns, television and music hero patterns… they’re all here.

You can have immediate access to these patterns today. All you need is a printer, some carving tools, a pumpkin and maybe some guts. A quick trip through the Gruesome Galleries will unearth thousands of chilling creations from carvers of all ages and experience levels.

You might be thinking, “I’m not artistic. I can’t carve a pumpkin like that.” Oh, but with these stencils you can! Just follow the simple pumpkin carving instructions illustrated on the Terrifying Tips page and you’ll be amazed with your stunning monsterpiece, even on the first try!

For five years, Zombie Pumpkins! has been your one-stop haunted home for everything pumpkin carving. The Creepy Carving Contests will give you something to strive for. And the Sickening Store provides many gory goods to make your Halloween experience much more monstrous.

As the “pumpkin portal for the people,” most of the pumpkin patterns here were created by request. If there’s a stencil you’d like to see (even a personal pumpkin based on your own face), give them a scream!

Each year at Halloween time the decorations come out and people start to look for fun ways to be neighborly. Here’s a simple and fun thing to do to start the seasons of giving early.

BOO!

1: Download and print your BOO-gram here.
2: Decide who you are going to BOO.
3. Create two “BOO” bags. Your gifts can be wrapped in cellophane, placed in festive bags or even decorated baskets. Get creative with the gifts. You can include candy, spooky stickers, eerie erasers, petrifying pencils, creepy cake mixes or just anything your victim neighbor might enjoy. Be sure to consider the size of the family that will receive your BOO and include enough for everyone.
4. Sneak up to the house and place your BOO near the door.
5. Ring the doorbell or knock… then run! (Yes, this is ding-dong-ditch)

You’ll start to see BOO signs all around your neighborhood very quickly as the BOO-gram instructs its recipient to create two BOO bags and keep it going. The sign is placed in plain site near or on the door to let everyone know what they’ve been BOO’d.

Enjoy!