HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Rosemary Clooney does Halloween right. Love to dance around with this one.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

A Disney classic in our little green house, and possibly yours too:)



And here is a new classic  that keeps Donald in the Halloween spirit!



And a great one starring Goofy on How to Haunt a House!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Some old Halloween commercials to make you smile

dark, dark, love, love,

reak...
Crash...
BOO!

Shivering skeletons, ghostly pirates, chattering corpses, and haunted graveyards...all to chill your bones! Share these seven spine-tingling stories in a dark, dark room.

I'm 31 years old, and I still remember the day I found this book in my school library when I was seven. I was enamoured, and checked it out numerous times before another student lost it. I was a bookworm as a child, and this book still stands as one of the truly unforgettable books I read in my youth. I believe it is the powerful imagery of the book that has stuck with me all these years, and made it impossible for me to forget.

Granted, it is not for everyone, and some children might benefit from reading it at an older age. I remember being slightly perturbed by some of the ideas and nuances presented in the book. However, I doubt highly that it would truly disturb any child that was mature enough to approach the book thoughtfully.

   

baby after me heart

books we love

Can we please judge these books by their covers? Please? Just once? Oh my oh my how much I love these covers. What do they hold? What do they tell? I could gaze at these all day.

 

We here at OB do love us some spooky tales, but as designers, we also notice packaging and design even more. These books make our flesh crawl, in only the best of ways.

 

 

Oh what a library holds! A trove of wonderful fright!

pumpkins of 2010

Two cuties from 2010. Miss them.

 

give a little whistle

An October Boy being serenaded by the HalloweenTime Dapper Dans.

two tickets to ride!

Hubknuckles

Here at October Boys, we love to collect old kid books on Halloween. This will begin a post series of kids books that we love- some known wide, some rarely read. 

The first book we want to highlight is called Hubknuckles.  Reading this as a boy, I was awestruck on how spooky it was. I recently picked this up again, and found that it was still very spooky for a kids book. I don’t know why, but you do see a lot of children’s books from the 60s-80s tackle more heavy spooks for a “kids” book. No complaints here though. 

Here is a description: 
Every Halloween, Hubknuckles pays a visit to Lee and her younger sisters and baby brother. The children watch the ghostly figure from the safety of their warm kitchen, experiencing delicious little tickles of fear.

But this year, Lee has decided that Hubknuckles isn’t real. “Hubknuckles is just a sheet and a flashlight,” she tells her sisters. “Either Ma or Pa makes him dance.” And she is determined to prove it. 

What Lee discovers after an eerie dance on the lawn with her silent, shadowy partner is sure to delight young readers, who will be enchanted by the softly glowing illustrations of this unusual Halloween happening.

buy it here 

8-BIT HALLOWEEN

8-Bit Halloween is a short but sweet platformer that's in the style of Castlevania and Ghost & Goblins, created by Lionsoft just in time for the All Hallows' Eve celebration. You play as Jackie-Gun, a buffed-up grunt who happens to be stuck in a cemetery with the exit door mysteriously locked at the start of the game. A friendly apparition appears out of nowhere and offers to help our hero escape, but before it can do so Jackie must find and rescue five of his other ghostly brothers (who somehow can't pass through the bars of the cages holding them in). 

The game doesn't feature any sort of checkpoint system, so you'll have to play through the entire adventure in one go. Freeing ghosts also reward you with just one point of health, but you will lose it just as quickly if you don't watch your step when walking on a dead man's grave. 8-Bit Halloween is available to download from YoYo Games...it's safe, and better yet, its FREE!

YEAH!!

HAPPY LITTLE JACK

ACEO ORIGINAL PAINTING

buy it here

Stingy Jack

The Legend of "Stingy Jack"

People have been making jack-o'-lanterns at Halloween for centuries. The practice originated from an Irish myth about a man nicknamed "Stingy Jack." According to the story, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn't want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree's bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years.

Soon after, Jack died. As the legend goes, God would not allow such an unsavory figure into heaven. The Devil, upset by the trick Jack had played on him and keeping his word not to claim his soul, would not allow Jack into hell. He sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as "Jack of the Lantern," and then, simply "Jack O'Lantern."

In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack's lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits. In England, large beets are used. Immigrants from these countries brought the jack o'lantern tradition with them when they came to the United States. They soon found that pumpkins, a fruit native to America, make perfect jack-o'-lanterns.

halloween altar

halloween birthday party 2010

Both our birthdays land in October, so we always have a party. This one was from 2010.

 

 

 

Baby Drac

Here Is one of us circa 1985. The bug spread early on. Looking good if I do say so myself.