Posts Tagged ‘ghosts’
Halloween is just around the corner, and the clock is ticking to come up with a costume idea. If you are attending a party, trick-or-treating with the kids, or are passing out candy, it is always fun to dress up and join in the festivities. Halloween is a quirky holiday that allows us to dress up to the extreme, letting inhibitions go, and allowing our scary or funny personalities come out. Remember it is only one night! Have fun with it!
Here are a few ideas of Halloween costumes to inspire you:
Ghost
It’s a classic and well honestly, cheap as long as you don’t use the 1500 thread count Egyptian Cotton sheet. If you don’t have an old one “floating around”, you can usually pick up a fairly cheap flat sheet at a store like Walmart. Be creative. After cutting out oval shapes for the eyes, maybe your ghost would appreciate some blush and long eyelashes to expose her vulnerability, or a mustache and clever spectacles for a Freudian-style ghost.
Slumber Party
Do you have a Halloween costume day at work? Dressing up as a gaggling teenager going to a slumber party is an easy and lazy Halloween costume. Just wear your pajamas to work. Enjoy comfort in flannel sleep bottoms, a t-shirt and slippers while passing it off as a Halloween costume. So what if you don’t win the creativity contest during lunch, at least you didn’t have to wear an itchy polyester cat suit with a suffocating mask all day in your cubicle!
Group Costumes
Get your friends or family in the spirit by suggesting a group costume. It can be a fun experience with idea sharing and shopping. Some ideas for a group costume are the A-Team, Alice in WonderLand characters or a group of super heroes. If you have more than one child, have your kids dress up as crayons. It is super cute! You can even build on the mentioned slumber party idea, and get a group of co-workers to wear their pajamas to work.
Tabloid Star
With our obsession with tabloids, dressing up as a celebrity is always hit, and usually can be done with items you already own. Think Paris Hilton, Britney Spears or even Octo-Mom for a funny costume. You can also take these ideas and put a scary twist on them by adding vampire teeth or fake blood. What would Kate Gosselin look like with vampire teeth?
The Sexy Costume
It’s true; some of us use Halloween to dress provocatively. The market is saturated with “sexy nurse”, “sexy pirate” and “sexy Cleopatra” costumes among others. Have fun with it! Ignore the jealous eyes and take a chance. Just know that everyone has done it, or has considered it at one time or another. It’s only one night!
Whatever your tastes or interests, there is a costume out there on the market for you. With a little creativity and thought, you’re sure to come up with a great idea and have a Happy Halloween!
The wild success of the indie film Paranormal Activity proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that Americans love ghosts. It’s no secret that people love a good scare, which is why horror films in general are so popular, but humans have a special attraction to ghosts and ghost stories. Paranormal Activity, a mocumentary ghost story shot over a period of a few days in the filmmaker’s home for around $15,000 brought in billions of dollars at the box office. Originally the film almost was destroyed. The filmmaker tried for years to get a distributor for the film but no distribution company wanted it. Finally it was purchased, but the distribution company intended to just take the idea and remake the entire movie. Just to see what the audience reaction would be to the idea the company held a few small test screenings and the response from audiences blew them away. Audiences were mesmerized by the original film. Put into wide release it became one of the biggest sleeper hits of all time.
Some of the most popular shows on TV are shows chronicling the search for proof of the paranormal. Shows like the British import Most Haunted, Ghost Adventures, Scariest Places on Earth, Paranormal State, Ghostlab, Haunting Evidence, and the most well known and well respected ghost hunting shows Ghosthunters and Ghosthunters International all try to provide hard evidence of life after death. And audiences can’t get enough. The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS, is the focus of the Ghosthunters show. The group’s founding members, Jason and Grant, have been using scientific methods and high tech equipment to capture proof of paranormal activity for decades. They say that in about 80% of the cases they investigate they find no verifiable proof. But the other 20% of cases have yielded proof that scares and tantalizes viewers into wondering what really happens after humans die. Ghost hunting has become a wildly popular hobby, and fans have a cult like devotion to their favorite ghost hunters. The TAPS team are the most active of the well known ghost hunting groups and have network contacts all over the world. The members of the team give lectures and lead actual ghost hunts which sell out months in advance. Recently TAPS got involved in a spin off of the Ghosthunters show, Ghosthunters Academy which is a reality show competition . The carefully selected contestants vie for a coveted spot as a ghost hunter on the TAPS team. Ghost hunting has gone from an underground, sometimes ridiculed hobby to big business, and a big draw.
Why are people so fascinated by ghosts and ghost hunting? Ghost hunting is fascinating for a few reasons. One is that it’s fun to be scared, and nothing is more scary than the unknown. Another is because people want to know about death. Regardless of personal spiritual beliefs most people want to know what happens when they die. Does human consciousness live on? Is there an afterlife? Are deceased friends and relatives still here? Throughout the ages people have wanted answers to those questions. Using modern high tech equipment and scientific inquiry people are coming closer everyday to being able to definitively answer those questions.