Awww yisss, it’s Halloween time, baby. The one day of the year when we gladly consume scary shit in massive quantities, instead of the rest of the year when it’s shoveled down our throats whether we like it or not.
For our part at least, we’ve gone all out with loads of quality Halloween-themed content to quench your blood-thirst. Like this piece on blood, and why we crave it — sexually. Or this piece about a devil of a dinner at the Satanic Temple. We’re here to help alleviate your fears, though, too, especially if scares in general are a serious problem for you. For example, these guides on how to get rid of your phobias.
There’s plenty more where that came from — you need only look below. If you dare…
Must Read (Or Else…)
“We Still Haven’t Made a Better Horror Movie Than ‘Night of the Living Dead’”
George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is a 96-minute masterpiece that managed to reshape the horror genre while also gifting it its most timeless villains: Zombies. And 50 years after it thoroughly traumatized its young audience, America is riven with the same conflicts the movie leverages for narrative. You need only replace “zombies” with “migrants,” a similar “teeming horde” “invading” the countryside. Romero always meant Living Dead to be an allegory — he just didn’t mean for it have the same resonance half a century later. READ MORE
Oh, the Non-Horror!
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of movies that aren’t in the horror genre? Tim Grierson does. He’s picked out six film scenes that will give you goosebumps even if the rest of the movie won’t — from the infamous face melt in Raiders of the Lost Ark, to the least-friendly worm on Ceti Alpha V in Star Trek: Wrath of Khan.
Nightmare Fuel
I love horror movies. But I have three rules when it comes to watching them:
- Limit my viewings to the daytime.
- Have a distraction (like a smartphone) and use it liberally.
- Follow up viewings with at least one episode of Seinfeld, for eye-bleach purposes.
These are rules I live by in order to sleep at night. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS. But for some guys, no amount of mid-movie Sudoku can overcome the nightmares that follow.
Dinner With the Devil
When the head chef of the Satanic Temple of Salem, Massachusetts, needs a hand running the bar for the Devil’s Dinner Party, do you say no? Not if you’re Haley Hamilton, bartender and our booze correspondent. Adam Dodge, aka the Satanic Chef, invited Hamilton to bear witness to the “secret, surrealist, satanic soiree,” and this is what she saw.
‘The Thing’ is…
…not the horror movie you probably think it is. At least not according to Tracy Moore, who’s got an entirely different reading on the 1982 horror classic from John Carpenter. That’s because the film isn’t about a shape-shifting parasite alien that body-snatches a dog and takes over an Antarctic research station one man at a time, guerrilla-warfare style. No, it’s really a treatise on men and women, and a brilliant, claustrophobic, paranoid meditation on masculine fear.
Hear us out.
Blood ‘n’ Guts
Peruse the horror section of your neighborhood bookstore and you’ll see countless volumes of sexy Dracula-themed fiction. Scroll through movies on iTunes and you’ll encounter even more hot, blood-sucking fare. Flip through Instagram today and you’ll undoubtedly land on friends dressed as vampires, a red ooze erotically dripping from their lips.
So what is it about blood that we find it so sexy? Tierney Finster asked a range of experts — from a heart doctor, to a blood-play dominatrix, to a horror-film historian and a few sexual scholars — to explain all that they could about the bloody turn-on of the red stuff that courses through our veins.
Eat, Drink & Be Scary
Look, it takes more than a monster mash to turn a Halloween party into a graveyard smash. So how does a regular, non-deadite guy like yourself throw the perfect scary soirée? Follow a few, simple rules. Like:
- Set the right tone by not half-assing the invitation (nonchalance isn’t your friend)
- Make two guest lists, an “A” squad and a “B” squad (confirm which of your A guests can’t make it, and invite the Bs to fill the gaps)
- If you can, host the party in a central location (or secure alternative transpo to deter the urge to drink and drive)
- Don’t throw a party if you’re on shaky ground emotionally (God forbid the disappointment sends you spiraling)
- Remember that a low turnout doesn’t equal bad friends (people lead busy lives, after all)
Get the rest of our best Halloween party advice, here.
Boo, Ghosted
When you think of “ghosting,” that evil specter threatening all early relationships whereby someone vanishes into thin air after a few dates or even a few messages, you might be under the impression that men ghost, and women are ghosted. But women do it, too — albeit for very different reasons.
Rock the Hisbah
In Saudi Arabia — a country of strict Islamic laws and a stricter moral police, known as the hisbah — Halloween isn’t merely frowned upon for its pagan roots, it’s outright banned. But that hasn’t stopped Saudi youth from throwing underground costume parties on the scariest night of the year. In doing so, however, they run the risk of serious jail time — or worse.
A Halloween party has been raided in Saudi Capital Riyadh by local police, no words on arrests pic.twitter.com/UAD5uCZUrp
— Khalid khi (@khalid_pk) October 27, 2018
Feed My Frankenstein
What do you do when you’re a washed up, 50-year-old grappler trying to turn back the clock on your once-great professional wrestling career? If you’re Pierre Carl Ouellet, aka “PCO,” formerly a partner on the WWE tag title-winning Quebecers of the mid-1990s, you turn yourself into an undead monster — Frankenstein’s monster, to be exact.
Terrified yet? I am.
What Are You So Afraid Of?
There are few people in this world who aren’t afraid of anything. Personally, I’m afraid of bugs. Cockroaches terrify me, the way they seemingly appear out of nowhere and skitter about in an unpredictable fashion. Fuck that noise. Some people, however, are more afraid than others, and sometimes, those fears are entirely irrational — i.e, a phobia.
But if our phobias are so deep-seated, is it even possible to dispel them? What a helpful rhetorical question! Because the answer is yes — yes, you can. Here’s how…
- …if you’re claustrophobic (“Tight spaces make me so scared!”)
- …if you’re acrophobic (“I’ll never climb a ladder because high places give me the willies”)
- …if you’re aviophobic (“Get me a drink because THIS PLANE IS GONNA CRASHHHH”)
- …if you’re trypanophobic (“Don’t look at the needle, don’t look — oh shit, I saw the needle!”)
- …if you’re germaphobic (“Wash your hands! Everybody wash your hands!”)
Everything You Want to Know About Halloween Candy* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)
Candy and Halloween is like family squabbles and Christmas — entirely unavoidable. But before you let your kids begin chowing down on their trick-or-treat booty over the next month (or over the course of one evening), you’d best educate yourself on what they’re putting in their little bodies. So here’s every last ingredient explained in…
And if that’s not enough for you, here’s all of the most popular Halloween candies ranked by how (un)healthy they are for little Jimmy and Janie.
