“Makers” were born to create amazing Halloween projects. Whether you’re a reader of MAKE magazine or just a DIY inclined individual, you fall into this category. Like an evil MacGyver, you can probably take any 3 items from around your house and whip up a firebreathing jack-o-lantern or a decidedly unique costume. If 42 of “the craftiest costumes to amazing animated props and the latest in computer-controlled haunted house effects” piques your interest then you’ll want to pre-order MAKE Mag: Halloween Special Edition. It ships late August which, in Halloween-preparation time, is about 5 minutes away.

Congratulations, Halloweenies: you’ve made it to the 99 day mark in the 2007 countdown to Halloween. Like your high school woodshop teacher, we’ve just unceremoniously dropped a digit, but in this case it’s cause for celebration. Just 3-ish more months until everything comes in shades of orange and black, scary movies are playing on every channel, and you can finally shed your 9-to-5 gear for that badass costume you’ve been working on for weeks. Good times!

We’ve been planning for the 2007 all year, and are getting really close to unveiling our new site design and this year’s theme as well as a casketful of articles. If you’d like to be alerted when we unearth everything, just subscribe to our feed. Also, 365 Halloween just moved over to a new server in preparation for everything, so if you see any broken stuff please shoot us an e-mail so we can resurrect it.

Now would also be a good time to send in submissions if you’d like to see your Halloween-related website, book, art, event, music, haunt, whatever featured on 365Halloween.com. We’ve got a lot planned for this year, and although we’d like to feature absolutely everything we find, there’s only 2 official staff members here so guest writers are really encouraged.

Autumn will be here before you know it, so enjoy the rest of your summer while it lasts!

Has anyone ever told you that you look like someone famous? You know, “that guy from that show” or “the girl in the funny commercial”? Even if your face seems so unique that no one has claimed you have a celebrity doppleganger, chances are you resemble somebody famous. Even if it’s just slightly, this could be a good way to help you choose an interesting Halloween costume.

We tried using the free online service MyHeritage Face Recognition to see if we resembled any actors. Our idea being that if we did look similar to an actor it might be fun to make a costume based on a character they played. The database of “celebrities” at MyHertigate isn’t exhaustive by any means, but you will get a lot of different results based on each picture of yourself that you upload. As you can see with our model Alison, there was 1 common look alike (Alexis Bledel), but her 2 slightly different headshots produced 6 different look alikes.

Now we just need to pop onto IMDb and see if any of these supposed dopplegangers played roles that were;
1) of any interest to us, and
2) had costumes that were recognizable enough to reproduce.
Let’s see, Reese Witherspoon’s characters in Legally Blonde and Election were pretty recognizable, but that’s about it. Well, Catwoman too, but with a mask involved that pretty much negates the idea of being a “look alike”. We tried again using several pictures of ourselves and found a few more interesting and costume-worthy results, so it really depends on the photos being used.

Try it yourself and let us know if you get any good costume ideas!

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Nothing proves that point better than this video of a home haunter scaring trick-or-treaters with a stilt-wearing Predator costume. If you’re looking for something to freak out your Halloween visitors, few things garner the explosive response that “spring stilts” do. Their construction gives the wearer a surreal, monstrous walk that can transform any good costume into a terrifyingly great one. Imagine a scary costume idea- evil clown, Predator, bloody corpse, werewolf, nameless creature– whatever freaks you out. Now imagine it towering 3 feet above your head. Your costume just went from unsettling to scream-worthy with the addition of one item.

The only real catch is the price. Homemade stilts are dirt cheap and will still give you a great affect, but the “jumping stilts” (aka: poweriser or powerizer stilts) cost considerably more. We’ll start with the more economical option first, then move onto the more expensive alternative.

To make your own “pole stilts”, there are 2 main options: hands-free or hands-required. There are free plans online to make your own hands-required adjustable stilts, but these aren’t ideal for costume usage since your hands will be occupied holding the stilts. If you’re brand new to stilt walking, these would be a good beginner pair to learn construction and actual stilt walking techniques. After you get comfortable with that model, you can more safely move onto the hands-free type. Here is an incredibly detailed tutorial for hands-free stilts.

Now it’s time for the really cool ones: spring stilts! These are generally in the $300-$500 price range for adults, made of either fiberglass or carbon fiber. They allow for some inhuman physical feats, such as jumping up to 6 feet in the air and running strides of up to 9 feet in length! I was a little skeptical of those numbers, but according to GJS, “Jumping Stilts have been considered for military application. One particular set of stilts was tested by the US Air Force. The user maintained an average speed of 23 MPH over ¼ mile distance, while chasing a military quad.” Imagine the terrified screams as you go hauling down your street on Halloween night at 20 MPH, chasing naughty trick-or-treaters.

Apparently spring stilts are also a really good workout, so you can better justify purchasing them if you use them for fitness purposes, too. Then again, I think scaring the bejesus out of people is justification enough, but you may have different priorities.

CAUTION: Remember that stilt walking is potentially dangerous, so prepare accordingly. Read up, wear well-padded wrist guards and knee pads, use proper stilts, put lots of practice time in, and don’t put yourself or others in danger by performing stunts that you haven’t mastered yet. Stay safe, daredevils!

RELATED PRODUCTS: “Grabber” or “Reacher” costumes have crazy long arms and give the same creepy, inhuman affect as stilts…

Evil Clown Reacher

Grim Reaper Reacher

Evil Pumpkin Reacher

If you’re a fan of the paranormal, you’re going to want to carve out about 7 hours tomorrow to watch Most Haunted Live. Broadcast on the Travel Channel from 8PM EST on Friday, June 1, through 3 AM on Saturday, June 2, the MHL crew will be taking over Eastern State Penitentiary (or E.S.P.). The event will also be extended to the Internet, with multiple streaming webcams located within areas of the ESP.

This is their first US visit (as the show usually takes place in the UK), and they’ve chosen their location wisely. The visually stunning Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA, is considered one of America’s most haunted places, and has a dark and controversial history. It also hosts “Terror Behind The Walls”, one of America’s best loved, most terrifying, Halloween Haunts. (With all profits going towards preservation of the Prison. How cool is that?)

If the show gets you eager to see some real ghosts, there are plenty of Real Haunts located throughout the US. Happy ghost hunting!

For the zombie enthusiast, it doesn’t take long to scrape the bottom of the zombie-themed entertainment barrel. There just aren’t that many really good movies, stories, blogs, and other web content out there. Before you know it you’re watching Day of the Dead 2: Contagium and wishing the real Zompocalypse would start. So what does a zombie fan worth his machete do when craving some fresh, heart-pounding, survivalist action? Assemble a core team and hunker down for a game of Zombies!!!

You’ve probably asked yourself at least once: what would I do if the world was being overrun with flesh hungry corpses? Here’s your chance to find out, as you and your opponents try to escape the multiplying horde of the undead, get to the whirlybird, and fly off into the sunset.

Zombies!!! is a hybrid CCG and board game that requires strategy, a strong stomach, and a strong survival instinct. Using a modual set of board game “map tiles” the layout of your town is different every time, creating endless variations. You and your fellow humans start out in Town Square, adding tiles and expanding your playing field at the beginning of each turn. Some of these tiles contain uneventful buildings, while others are fodder for the gorgeously illustrated “event cards”. For instance, at the Sporting Goods Store you can use the Lots of Ammo card to pick up a good amount of weaponry. That’s been a lifesaver more than a few times for us, and the image is probably the most gory in the pack. In the Gas Station you chuck a Molotov Cocktail and get better fighting skills for a short time. Other highly useful cards include; finding a car and discovering that The Keys Are Still In It, wielding a Chainsaw for an entire turn, and maybe the funnest discovery of all: Hey Look… A Shotgun!. The artwork on these cards, done by Dave Aikins, is amazing, and is worth the $25 price all by itself. Our first couple games were particularly long since all the players were distracted with examining the artwork.

The ever-changing board layout also sets the stage for a variant ending. Sometimes it’s impossible to lay down all the tiles and so rather than heading to the chopper, the winner is declared after killing 25 zombies. With 100 of the little grey guys included (which some people have custom painted), it’s a fun yet formidable goal. You can also opt for variant sets of rules and/or a customized card decks to create an entirely new scenario. The customization options are really endless and so many good ideas have all ready been submitted by players. For us, that’s one of the strongest features, as it means our Zompocalypse won’t veer into predictable territory and could feasibly go on forever.

After our first couple games we also noticed some downsides, but nothing too terrible. Functionally speaking, the tiles are flimsy and lightweight, so they get shuffled around a bit and frequently need adjusting to put them back into their designated spaces. For this reason, having a young kid or pet in the same room isn’t advised. Due to the flexibility of the tile placement, a large table space is frequently needed, too. Sometimes a card table will do, but often a pretty large surface is needed. (We’re thinking about making a mod where we apply magnets to the back of all pieces and then place them along wall-mounted magnet strips. Does that make us crazy?)

We tested the first edition of the game (there are many expansion packs which include new cards and tiles) and another annoying factor is the amount of devious cards: too many of them can negatively affect everyone on the board. Each player’s turn adds new zombies to the town, but many event cards “allow” you to add 5, 10, or a whole bunch of extra zombies into the mix. Not that being devious isn’t a necessary evil for this game, it’s just that too many cards are used for this purpose. When you’re running low on life and bullets (which can be a very frequent occurrence), the last thing you want is to draw card after card that would further infest your city with zombies, even if that might also slow down your opponents. As cited in another review, “The strategy of the game is hidden when you first try to play. Basically, you want to hinder all of the other players from doing well, while you hold onto as many bullets and life points at the same time”. These cards are indeed useful in thwarting the other players: there are just too many of them.

Another nitpick is obvious to us because 2 of our players are female. As we went to select our game pieces we noticed only a “shotgun guy“. No big surprise, especially since horror gamers are generally male, but the action cards are decidedly male-dominated, too. Of the 50 event cards, women only appear in 6 of them and none of them include any battle. In fact, they are either cowering, experiencing Claustrophobia or a Bad Sense of Direction. It smacks of wimpy 1968 Barbara instead of adaptive, shotgun-wielding 1990 Barbara from Night of the Living Dead. Hopefully future editions will have a wider range of characters featured in the artwork and playing pieces.

Players on Board Game Geek are pretty divided on Zombies!!!, but we give it 4 out of 5 brains. The variety makes it a new experience every time, and besides the game mechanics, the theme is spot on; the action cards explore so many ideas that movies have yet to depict. For zombie fans, it just doesn’t get any better. Grab yourself some snacks, pop in some Romero, and try your hand at surviving the Zompocalypse.

Buy Online At: Twilight Creations or find a killer deal at eBay.