31 days left......... Halloween Countdown 2010

 Well folks this is it.  We have about 20 minutes until the beginning of OUR season, OUR month, OUR favorite time of the year.  October 1st will be here soon and what better way to kick off the Halloween season than with our friends over at Gothtober.  If you thought that the Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare zombie dlc was the best news you were going to get all day you were wrong.  (Don't worry I thought so too, until I was made aware of this site of Halloween awesomeness!)  Gothtober has enough wickedly awesome stuff from years past to keep you busy until the 31st, and that is not even including this years content.  Tonight at Midnight their 2010 campaign will begin.  How the site works is that it works like a Halloween Advent calendar.  So for each day you head over there and click on that day's date to get a new surprise in the form of a poem, a song, a video, a recipe, and other Halloween goodness.  The theme they are going with this year is called the "Haunted Boombox".  In the words of one of the sites wicked curators this year's theme will dish out an ode to ghosts of music past, sounds from beyond the grave, audible nightmares, and melted mix tapes.  Like I said they have a plethora (do you even know what a plethora is?) of old stuff and you get access it by clicking right here.  They also have a blog which keeps everyone updated on some of the artist's work and other little gems of Halloween goodness, and that can also be accessed by clicking this.  So everybody reading this needs to head over there and we will all count down the minutes to midnight (don't sue me Linkin Park!) and share in the deliciousness that is GOTHTOBER together! (By the way that's PST so us East coasters might have to wait a little longer, but it will be well worth it, I assure you!)  Also just in case you are using HalloweenOverkill as your Halloween 2010 Headquarters I will keep a Gothtober link on the sidebar located just below my Halloween Countdown 2010 link so you can just read my daily posts and then click over to Gothtober for another Halloween daily goody!

OH.....MY......GOD.........

So zombie are coming to Red Dead Redemption and I cannot wait!!! Also check out the side by side poster for the original game and the poster for the new "Undead Nightmare" pack, pretty sweet little take on the original!

33 days left.......... Halloween Countdown 2010

With all of the local haunted attractions opening this weekend I figured I would help everyone out and compile all of the haunted attraction search engines here.  It seems alot of these search engines are connected to Hauntworld in one way or another but produce some different results, so I will still list them below.  Most of the sites are utilized but searching or clicking on your state and going from there, but some of them let you put in a zipcode to produce more localized results.  I've also noticed that not all of them have been updated with this years information but should be soon.  So click any or all of the links below and hopefully you will find an interesting local haunt to visit this weekend.  By the way some of the sites below even list actual haunted places as well.  Have fun and remember these are not always exactly accurate but should pretty much do the job. (YMMV)

And for my hometown friends in Michigan please visit FearFinder.com for all of your local Detroit and other Michigan Halloween Haunts!

Use this next one for your other Halloween season fun stuff such as Haunted Hayrides, Corn Mazes, Pumpkin Patches, and other Haunted Attractions.

And last but certainly not least this link is for our friends over in Canada looking for a local scare!

38 days left......

So I missed a few days, it is my first countdown after all.  I promise I'll make it up to you ghouls.  Hmmm... I'm not really sure how much I can write about this but I'm sure gonna give it the old college try.  By the way I think in the 6 months of this blog being in existence this might be the very first time I have shown myself, sorry for being such a recluse.  ( I lied, I just realized the George Romero meeting post had a pic of my wife and I )

 

So there ya have it, the Candy Blood Bag.  This nifty little seasonal item was found at my local Giant Eagle grocery store.  I've heard about these several times in the past but never actually got my hands on one.  After looking at the back of the card and noticing that it was an imported good, I just knew I had to taste this delicious lead laced liquid candy treat.  Here is what the blood bag looks like.

Actually the thing looks pretty disgusting.  When you tilt the bag to the side the blood doesn't just run down the side but is actually quite sticky and looks as though it really does have the consistency of real blood.    After a few minutes of deliberating on whether or not this stuff would give me lead poisoning or just make me gag I decided to take the plunge and drink the damned stuff.

Taking the plunge.......

Right about now is when that godforsaken stuff is hitting the back of my throat in all of its frightfully warm and sticky grossness.

Kudos to the wife on the cool mirror effect, but wait a minute......  Blood drinking should equate to no reflection right?  I guess I'm the shittiest vampire ever.  Actually you haven't seen shitty vampire until you see the outtakes from this shoot.  If you guys beg in the comments, I just might post two pictures of me in the most ridiculous poses you've ever seen.

So if you've never tried one of these things let me warn you ahead of time, DON'T!!!!  This was one of the most wretched tasting things I've ever had the displeasure of pouring down my gulllet.  It literally tasted like sour theatrical blood.  It said it was supposed to taste like cherry.  Did these guys use the Crayola method of naming their flavors.  (Read the Crayola markers post if this doesn't make sense.)  Seriously this tasted nothing like cherry but did taste exactly like sour, warm, sticky, dolphin blood.  Boy did I feel like Dracula.  Albeit a dolphin blood drinking one.  Aqua Dracula perhaps?

By the way I'm totally bummed that none of these pictures show off the Dracula tuxedo shirt that I put on specifically for this post.  However the shirt does show up very prominently in those outtake photos I was telling you about.

p.s.  Sorry if that was a shitty post guys but again how much can you write about fake, shitty tasting, liquid, blood candy?  Also for those that were interested in the "Horror Draft"  let me know again because I'm not sure if my list is complete and I really want to get this thing off the ground in time for Halloween so I can throw together some nice prizes.

43 days left.....

Tonight we're gonna keep it simple and keep it clean.  I want to briefly talk about Halloween Anthologies.  I don't know about you ghouls but sometimes a good Halloween themed yarn can topple a Halloween themed movie.  Maybe it's because the tale that is being told on paper allows us to envision the surroundings and atmosphere as we see fit and not how some shoddy director sees it.  Below you will see a partial list of some of the Halloween themed anthology books that are currently sitting on my horror themed bookshelf.  This is not an exhaustive list of everything out there but just the ones that I currently own.  Oh and by the way I implore you to please leave comments below on any Halloween themed anthology collections that I am missing, as I would love to do some Amazon shopping and pick up some more.  Again I will remind you ghouls that these are not Halloween themed fiction novels, but anthologies.  The Halloween themed novels will be another post later down the road.  So without further ado, the first post in the HalloweenOverkill Halloween Countdown 2010!  First up we have,

 

"Murder for Halloween"

Edited by: Michele Slung & Roland Hartman

BOO!

From the fog-enshrouded back alleys of London to a cry in the woods, from a black cat's glowing eyes to a knocking at your door, once every year they run wild: goblins, ghosts, pranksters, and things that go bang in the night.  Sometimes it's only a trick.  Sometimes it's murder.

The fiendish collection brings together the scariest and most unforgettable stories ever told, both classics and new works by the greatest names in mystery.  From a haunting story set in ancient Rome to a mysterious tale-within-a-tale told by an enigmatic jazzman and set in the American South, from Poe to McBain, Muller to Straub, welcome to All Hallow's Eve.  And hold on for morning.

 

"Halloween Horrors"

Edited by: Alan Ryan

It's Halloween night.  And you-a brave soul, indeed-are reading the most terrifying collection of Halloween stories ever written...

Thirteen tales by today's most frightening storytellers.  You turn each page, your heart pounding in your chest.  You are afraid.  Deeply afraid.

Then the doorbell rings.  You jump up to answer it.  And there, standing on the dark porch step, a lone figure reaches up, pulls a colorful mask from his face-

And scares you...to death.

TRICK OR TREAT!

 

"All Hallows' Eve" 13 Stories

By: Vivian Vande Velde

Witches are dancing.

The dead are walking.

Vampires are feeding.

For tonight is All Hallows' Eve.

A deceased serial killer strikes again, a girl becomes trapped in a centuries old mausoleum, and five friends meet their fate after an unsettling visit with a backwoods psychic-all within the pages of this haunting collection of stories that take place on Halloween night.  With tales that range from the disturbing to the devious to the downright gruesome, here is a book that begs to be read with the lights on...and the doors locked.

"13 Horrors of Halloween"

Edited by: Carol-Lynn Rosssel Waugh, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Isaac Asimov (yes THAT Isaac Asimov)

A killing frost is on the pumpkin, a ghostly harvest moon hangs in the midnight sky of All Souls' Eve, and thirteen tales of murder and the macabre make "13 Horrors of Halloween" a perfect withes' brew of short story suspense.

As the clock strikes the witching hour, Ellery Queen invites you to a mysterious masquerade to witness a bloody crime.  Edith Wharton lures you to a remote and lonely spot to watch what happens on the night when the dead can walk.  And Ray Bradbury (yes THAT Ray Bradbury) shows you how a demented mind makes bobbing for apples a very grisly game.

Graveyards and haunted houses, vampires and ghouls, messages written in blood, and jack-o-lanterns alive with menace-they're all waiting to grip you with delightful chills of terror in this unforgettably frightening collection of Halloween tricks and treats.

"Frightful October" Tales of Halloween Horror

By: Paul Melniczek

"Frightful October" takes you across shadowed cornfields and along the twilight streets of suburban neighborhoods, beneath dark forests and through haunted houses, in this short story collection centered around Halloween and the darker aspects of the fall month.  These chilling tales can be whispered before an autumn bonfire, or in the confines of an evening chair, but regardless of the surroundings, the terrifying atmosphere has already been set in place, and you're the invited guest.  You'll have shivers crawling your spine, as you turn each dreadful page of this wickedly delightful book.

As I stated above this is in no way an exhaustive list of every single Halloween anthology out on the market, but I do personally own these ones in particular.  If there are any out there that I am missing, please remind me in the comments below.  Also here on the countdown we will still be featuring Halloween themed novels, Halloween texts with historical value, and grab-bag Halloween books. (this will make sense when you see them)  Also the covers you see above are the ones that I actually own, but because of the age of some of these books there have been other covers printed during later reprints.  All of the book synapses featured above were taken from the back of their respective book covers.  And yes I know one of the bigggest Halloween anthologies of all is missing from this list, and yes I do own it.  The reason it isn't on here is because I feel it deserves a post of it's own.  Only 43 more days until the night of nights......

And so it begins........

 

You thought I was dead didn't you?  I'm not, and that is good news for you because I present to you here on HalloweenOverkill the 1st Annual HalloweenOverkill Halloween Countdown Extravaganza  or HalloweenOverkill Halloween Countdown 2010.  Not a real fancy title is it?  You'll just have to learn to like it because it is my first year and I was too busy designing that god forsaken logo to come up with anything better.  If any of the elements in the logo look familiar it's because you've probably seen some of them in different gimp tutorials, but fear not every single thing you see above was created from scratch by yours truly.  (Except for the fonts used, but the glow and color outline effects were done by myself as well.)  So what do you think?  Not bad for a first time gimp user I'd say.  Well we'll officially call that the first post in this Halloween Extravaganza that is somehow going to have 43 more posts of Halloween themed goodness.  These posts will include: interviews, contests, giveaways, candy, candy corn, candy treats, razor laced candy, and candy apples.  Ok, never-mind they aren't all going to be about candy but you get the point.  I'm hoping to post something every day be it big or small but if not please don't send me hate mail, as I said before this is my first year with a countdown.  So does everything sound good?  Please I implore you, if you have any suggestions or ideas please let me know because I don't want to miss anything that I may not see in my area, or anything that was a total hidden gem at some store I don't usually shop at.  And hopefully a lot of these posts aren't the same products and/or ideas that other blogs are using in their countdowns.  If they are I can assure you it is just coincidence, as I am sure we will all be running into a few items that we all share a common interest in this season.  If you see some of the same stuff here as on other blogs let me repeat, this is just a coincidence and hopefully each and every one of us have our own spin on the ideas so that all you ghouls out there can come to everyone's countdown this year and experience something different.  So for now it looks like we'll have at least the two contest/giveaways that I have planned for this Countdown, but I can assure you I am working on more.  Also if you happen to be from a company or you yourself want to run a contest/giveaway on the countdown this year email me at halloweenoverkill(at)gmail.com.  If all we end up having is the two giveaways/contests I am really hoping you will still come on by and share with me the love we all have for this special night as we countdown the days until it's arrival.

Sorry Ghouls!

This past week was a crazy one between my wife starting her new job, me actually getting a job, and some school let downs and what not.  But I promise to be back on task this week.  Here's a rundown of things to come.  We have the first annual HalloweenOverkill Halloween Countdown Extravaganza coming up on September 15th.  We will also be having our first horror draft on a soon to be noted date.  You can also expect some movie reviews coming soon on some movies that were sent to me as screeners that I have just totally fallen behind on.  Hopefully you ghouls haven't given up on me yet, sometimes life just gets in the way!  The blog is alive and well for all of those who thought otherwise!  Check back tonight for an update and every day after that for new content as well!