Halloween 2011, Los Angeles

BONEY ISLAND:

After a 3 year hiatus, they’ve created a totally new Boney Island show, with a new theme: magic!

HOUSE OF RESTLESS SPIRITS:

As i write every year, don't tell any more people about this show.  It's just too crowded, and they can't handle any more people.  But if ya must know, it's one of my favorite shows in L.A.  The format for this show is a single file path around a small 2 story craftsman house in Santa Monica.

THE EVIL GARDEN OF EDWARD GOREY:

This is just a simple, very small front yard display, but it's so well done that i have to recommend it. Beautiful black n white enlargements of the people and monsters from Edward Gorey's The Evil Garden. Nothing moves...no effects...no scares. Just plywood cut-outs. Love it.

BOB BARANICK’S SILLY SKELETON PARTY:

Oh,
There will be an "industry party", Saturday night ,October 29th, only. And just so ya know, if you're reading this, you're in the industry.

HOUSE AT HAUNTED HILL:

Matt, Lori and friends are presenting their very elaborate and complex show a few times each hour. The cycle is about 10 minutes long, and has narration and dialogue and custom music and tons of effects. It's a wonderful show. It's a performance show, and you see it from the street.

ROTTEN APPLE 907:

Each year, these guys do a totally different theme. This year it’s "A SPACE ODDESSY." It’s a scare show, but the theming is fun.

THE FOREST OF MIRRORS:

I've been before, and it's a walk-thru through a nice side and back yard of a home in Woodland Hills.  Tons of mirrors.  I think these people just have a little Halloween party for their friends and they open up the backyard to strangers like you and me.  It's nice.  Oh, and come in costume.

GRIFFITH PARK LIVE STEAMER'S HALLOWEEN NIGHT RUN:

Suggested donation: $8, but please give them more.  Maybe act like a big spender, hand them a saw-buck 'n' say "keep da change!"

I've been to this maybe 3 years now, and i love it. First of all, the train ride is long, maybe 10 minutes. And you're traveling thru some wonderful scenery, even though it's night. They have lots of ghost-stuff to see.  None of it makes sense, and it's all stupid, but it's very fun.  There's an evil clown area and a crashed airplane wreck and then an aliens area and then pirates…pirates? …and it just goes on and on making no sense whatsoever.  It's just fun.

HALLOWEEN AT MY HOUSE:

Adriana sent me this link to what looks like a very nice display. The blog's video of the ghost organist looks good.

RIVERSIDE THRILLER HALLOWEEN DISPLAY:

Jim forwarded this fun link of a guy near Orange Crest, in Riverside, California, who, in 2010, used his synchronized Christmas display lights (Light-O-Rama) for Halloween. The 7 frame animation on the singing face is nice. Hope his neighbors allow him to set it up this year.

OLVERA STREET:

I like to go to Olvera Street and buy sugar skulls and try on wrestling masks and look at all the great Day of the Dead stuff.  I hope they still have nightly candle-light processions!

HALLOWEEN PARTIES:

It’s a list of various parties around the L.A. area.

HALLOWEEN SHOW LISTS:

Here are other blogs that list many other shows:

http://www.hollywoodgothique.com

http://www.alleycatscratch.com/halloween/Haunt.htm#SFV

http://www.hauntedhouseonline.com/haunted_houses_in_california

PIERCE COLLEGE HARVEST FESTIVAL:

i’ve been in year’s past and have been charmed. They have SO MUCH TO DO, what with their day program ($5 to $20) and after dark program ($5 to $25). They've got a huge overpriced pumpkin patch (your local supermarket is cheaper), a corn maze, 6 food stands with corn on the cob, barbecue, tacos, kiddy rides, a stage for some performance which i didn't see, the Fright Fair Screampark walk-thru haunted house made from lots of metal storage containers, a haunted hay ride, and a night-time thing i'll call a Screaming Path…where you walk thru a path in the corn and people jump out and scream at you. Some people like that sort of thing. What's the phrase? Oh yes: If you like that sort of thing then that's the sort of thing you like.

FORNERIS FARMS:

i've been to this before, and it's so-so. The pumpkin patch is beautiful, the petting zoo was fun, and they have a corn maze, which is designed in a pattern which could only be seen by an airplane, which i find terribly stupid but common. So many maze designers design mazes that you can only see from an airplane. Why? Oh, and the maze isn't haunted. It's just a maze, which is good. The maze is $7 per person, and other things cost other amounts.

LOS ANGELES HAUNTED HAYRIDE:

I went a few years ago, and it’s really just a scare show, but there’s a pumpkin patch and a corn maze and a hayride and they’re kinda fun.

HALLOWEEN FESTIVAL at the SPIDER PAVILLION:

It might be fun to wander the Spider Pavillion.  Maybe i'll go this year.  Maybe.

BOB BAKER MARIONETTES HALLOWEEN HOOP-de-DO:

On weekends in October, Bob Baker Marionette Theater presents their Halloween marionette show. It’s wonderful. I went last year and loved it, and maybe you can get a group together and go.

WICKED LITERATURE:

Mountain View Mausoleum and Cemetery,
Altadena, California

Gary’s been to these performances and has liked them…i haven’t been.

DELUSION:

RESERVATIONS ARE REQUIRED.

It’s a play in an old mansion near Western and the 10 freeway. $40 per person, on the last 2 weekends in October. I haven't been, but i like the house it's held in.

OLD TOWN PASADENA HAUNT:

Tim n Gary n friends have been many years, and they like it because, although it is a scare show, the scenery is above average...these folk don't have to strike it and reinstall it every year. It's in Pasadena. I haven't been, but it might be fun since it's in the basements of some Pasadena buildings. Check the site for times and date confirmations, but it's every weekend (extended) in October. E-gods, it's $15-$22 per person. At least the price is scary.

CHAMBERS OF THE MAUSOLEUM:

Carole sent this info on a show by some wonderful and talented Garner Holt folk. But it’s still a scare show,

and here’s a video of someone walking thru it.

HOLLYWOOD FOREVER GRAVEYARD TOUR:

Hollywood Forever Cemetery gives tours on a few specific October afternoons weekends. It sounds like Karie Bible gives good tour. (I love her photos.) I haven't been yet, but i wanna go.

DEARLY DEPARTED TOURS:

How about getting a group together and paying for a private limo tour of death-sites in Los Angeles? Sounds like fun. This year they also have a specific Halloween Horror Film Location Tour…just scroll down the page…

ESOTOURIC: SPIRITUAL TOURS:

Well, these people are arcane. They schedule tours around L.A. of the most hidden, historic sort. Just look at the itinerary for the Spiritual tour, led by Maja D'Aoust (God Is My Boyfriend): The Aetherius Society, Sister Aimee Semple McPherson, and Theosophy. Huh. (Well, what about Katheryn Kuhlman? She’s buried at Forest Lawn, Glendale, after all.) Anyway, they don’t schedule every tour all the time…it’s limited.

MUSEUM OF DEATH:

L.A. COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS:

They have a month-long Octoberfest, and…umm…Nightmare, a haunted attraction. Not for me.

KNOTT'S SCARY FARM:

ALWAYS do the early buffet, which gets you an hour or so in the park before regular Scary Farm guests pile in.

DISNEYLAND HALLOWEEN TIME:

Two rides undergo a full Halloween transformation: Haunted Mansion Holiday, and Ghost Galaxy at Space Mountain.

HONG KONG DISNEYLAND HAUNTED HALLOWEEN 2011:

Justin found this great blog link with an amazing report on Hong Kong Disneyland’s Haunted Halloween.  Scroll down.  Look at the side show with headless can-can dancers…the video mapping on the exterior of the Main Street buildings…the parade with Cinderella’s zombie dancers? The whole thing is one huge wonderful WTF!

UNIVERSAL HALLOWEEN HORROR NIGHTS:

SIX FLAGS MAGIC MOUNTAIN SNICKERS FRIGHT FEST:

THE QUEEN MARY DARK HARBOR:

HAUNTED NASHVILLE:

Nathan is doing very well with his show in Nashville.

He’s been named one of the top 25 shows in America by Haunted Attraction magazine.

NIGHTMARE FAIRY TALES (in NYC):

This is a great walk-thru haunted house in NYC. It's been around for about 8 years now. This year it’s Nightmare Fairy Tales. They say it’s slyly cast.

A STEAMPUNK TIME MACHINE (in London):

James' website lists this amazing show, last year, in London

SLEEP NO MORE (in NYC):

Justin told me about this amazing theatrical experience in NYC. I was gonna go the first weekend in October but i canceled. Damn. It’s not a Halloween show, but they do have performances on Halloween, and it’s creepy. Anyway, performances go thru November 17.

Here’s a review in Salon.

THEATRE BIZARRE (in Detroit, Michigan):

John Dunivant presents the Greatest Masquerade On Earth! Hope the Detroit police don’t shut him down this year.

BOGIE BOOKS:

?Huh? What’s a Bogie Book? Well, ya see, at the turn of the 1900’s the Dennison Corporation wanted to inform America on the new way to celebrate that ancient holiday, Hallowed Evening. Yes, there had been harvest festivals before, but the whole masquerade/trick-or-treat thing was new. So each year, starting in 1909, they printed a small little chap-book, with instructions and ideas…focusing on how to use the new Dennison paper materials. Each year the little book was different. And zooming up 8 decades to today, they sell for a ton on eBay.

This blog goes into some of the deeper history.

BUT! Bramcost Publications has begun to reprint them, and fairly well, selling them for around $12 each. You can buy them from Amazon or from Bramcost Publications, directly.

These little books are my grail. They represent a different view of Halloween, focusing on the harvest festival, the moon, bats, cats, witches and pumpkins. They’re amazing. No serial murderers or zombies. Strange, huh?

HALLOWEEN AND THE BEISTLE COMPANY:

This blog shows some of the amazing products the Beistle Company produced in the 1920’s.

HALLOWEEN TREAT BAGS:

Don'cha love the artwork on those tiny Halloween treat bags?

OUIJA BOARDS:

Here’s a good article on Ouija boards.

HOLLY’S GHOST MAP:

HALLOWEENTOWN, A STORE IN BURBANK:

and

Halloween Town Costumes

This store always amazes/confuses me. It's beautifully art directed, with a good diverse selection of merchandise (unlike those generic Halloween Superstores/Spirt stores), but how do they keep the doors open?  Can they really pay the bills by selling Halloween stuff all year round?  And now they’re opening a second store.  I’m so confused.  

HAUNTED WINDOW SILHOUETTES:

Boing Boing shared this page of window silhouettes you can make for your own home. They look fine.

OUTRAGEOUS PUMPKINS:

Mark told me to search for Ray Villafane on the "Food Network Challenge: Outrageous Pumpkins." What a lot of work! And damn, once ya cut ‘em, they rot so quickly.

WORLD’S CREEPIEST PLACES:

Phil sent me this link to a slide show of 14 of the creepiest places on our planet. Fun.

HALLOWEEN, TO MAKE AND DO:

HALLOWEEN AND CHOCOLATE:

This guy likes chocolate. And death. Oh, and abusing a cotton-candy machine to cocoon yourself in cotton candy seems fun.

GHOST PICTURES:

Ghost pix are phony but fun: