You didn’t think I was gonna skip doing an entry for today, did ya?  Today’s the big day of course, and while I don’t have anything huge planned, I’m still going to have a fun time just like the other entries.  What else is there to do?  What am I going to talk about?

First, let’s set the mood with some Halloween music, shall we?

Ah, there we go.  Now how about that question.  What else is there to do?  Well, how about we reflect a bit?  A lot of these blog posts were not as planned out as I’d hoped.  They were definitely based on ideas I decided on at the start of the month, but the material itself was still largely improvised.  I’m really happy with how the entries turned out and had a lot of fun writing them.  Considering that a majority of the posts were about different aspects of how Halloween and horror stuff played a big part in my childhood, I feel like this month was mostly a fun way to talk about my beginnings as an enthusiast.

And there’s still many other areas I can talk about next year, so I am thinking of the future.  There’s no other way to say it, I dream big.  But there are lots of steps I have to take before I can make the kind of content I really want to dive into.  There is life stuff that does need my attention more than anything else, but the journey in getting there will be fun.  Difficult, but fun and challenging.  Anyone who’s been reading the blog post for a while will know that I want to get into filmmaking, so it’s a lifelong dream.

This video is one of the first behind-the-scenes videotapes I’d ever seen.  I was in the second grade when I saw it and it introduced me to the idea of film-making and production.  It mostly goes into how Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video was made, but of course, show business is show business and there’s plenty of overlap whether it’s a music video, commercial, or film.  The fact that the feature focuses on Thriller must have planted the idea of me wanting to create horror films at a young age.  There’s other genres I’d love to do too, of course, but this and my favourite Halloween Specials make me want to go totally nuts and produce horror stuff during the month of Halloween.  Will there be something next year that I’ll be able to do?  Let’s hope so!

As for other things I’ve been doing, I’ve been watching some of my favourite Twitch streamers play horror games.  A lot of gamers every year love to play spooky video games, even those who can’t handle horror play them.  They’ll set up loud & scary alerts for when someone subscribes and/or sends money, and they’ll often play the games in the dark.  It’s fun watching them do this, especially if it is someone who gets easily scared.  They’ll even modify their emoticons to have a Halloween element.  There could be a Dracula-inspired emote, for instance.  Not everybody goes all out, but it is really fun seeing what they come up with and it’s a new form of entertainment that I’ve been enjoying for the last few years.

I personally don’t get scared easily from games.  I find ambiance and tone to be more effective than jumpscares, but horror games are definitely something I enjoy.  I’ve been playing some myself on my own Twitch channel.  Juggling that with writing these blog posts has been a little crazy, but for the most part, it has been pretty doable.  I do wish I made more time to watch more horror shows & movies (I just can’t get enough!), but there’s always another day.  Heck, I tend to watch this sort of stuff before and way after Halloween.

But it does become more special during this time.  Know what I mean?

I also talked a bit on Facebook about how I watched The Halloween Tree, an animated special released in 1993 that I only heard of recently and somehow never saw as a kid.  It’s based on a story written by the legendary Ray Bradbury and is even narrated by him. It’s about a group of kids who chase after a friend, run into a strange creepy character named Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud (Is it too cliche to ask whether you can say that three times fast?), and then they learn about the history of Halloween and how certain cultural elements affected how we celebrate it.  The film has a fantastic score, beautiful art, and a tone that absolutely nails the Halloween spirit.  It’s a lot of fun and even gets pretty dark here and there.  It further solidifies my appreciation for hand-drawn animated specials.

I also watched some of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, Ghostbusters, and have been listening to music popular at Halloween parties.  And since Stranger Things season 2 came out, I binge-watched that in its entirety and loved every second of it.  I’ve also looked at the Halloween costumes, props, and other cool things in stores whenever I’d go shopping.  I didn’t buy anything since money’s a little tight, but I always enjoy looking at that sorta’ stuff whenever it’s on display.

This is pretty much a little recap of what I’ve been doing, but it’s how I’ve celebrated the month.  It may not have been huge and totally epic, but we still had fun didn’t we?  I got to talk about a lot of fun stuff that means a lot to me, got to play some games and watch movies & cartoons, and I’m totally cool with this.  It’s tempting to do commentary-style pieces on the previously written pieces and touch on things I might’ve missed, but it’ll make more sense to do that after some time has passed.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed everything I’ve been doing.  It is only a start, but next year will have more.  Lots more.  There’ll be new things to talk about as well as little surprises.  Until then, I hope you’ve all had a safe and fun night.

Happy Halloween everybody!