Halloween, part 2

A few days after Saratoga, Sean from apple had a Halloween party on actual Halloween. I don't think I've ever been to a Halloween party ON Halloween, unless it's been on a weekend of course. I also haven't been to a party at someone's parents' house in quite awhile. I put Horseman back to work, this time with a felt/hot glue H on my chest instead of duct tape. It worked much better. This party was pretty tame, but I still took a bunch of pictures that are worth sharing. 

Here's Sean with his dry ice. I need to have dry ice. All the time. 

The standard party-at-your-parents-house beer pong table. Except of course, that when I got there, nobody was playing because although Sean had completely decorated his basement and even went so far as to buy dry ice, he didn't get ping pong balls. All night, it was the story of "____ should be here soon with them." I think Karim was the one blamed the most, and he didn't even show up. N00bs!

lonely table

my fake hand, blur city, sean being awkward, boobs

Dan had a pretty solid Dr. Doom costume, featuring lots of duct tape:

Alicia was a meme. She was this chick:

I thought she did a pretty solid job:

you need to work on your face though, especially your mouth

The highlight of the night of course, was Horseman, with new felt H and the desire to do lots of splits:

This is one of my favorite pictures in awhile. I fell over doing a split, and you can't see my head. I just look like an awkward horse with double jointed arms and screwed up hands:

The party pretty much consisted of people standing around drinking and talking, but it was fun. I got to see some people I only recently met, some people I used to work with and some new peeps too. Sometimes it's fun being social. Especially in costume. As the night went on, sober people left and drunk people collapsed. I tried to shake their hands with my fake hand, to no avail of course:

Then handstands happend? I guess?

At this point, the music being played was getting weirder and weirder- to the point that classical music was playing. It was a bunch of movie soundtrack stuff, so I decided to do some interpretive dance to people I hadn't met yet. I'll never lose the blue zoo stupidity I've always had of trying to make people uncomfortable, but most of it didn't work and I was instead just the weird guy nobody knew with fake hands dancing all around a pool table.

I headed out to leave, then stood outside with Sean for awhile and he decided to shoot fire everywhere:

I hate that this one is blurry, but damn, what a flame:

He was doing this with Absinthe, so I decided to try it. Not only was it disgusting, but it also burned the hell out of my throat (and hurt for a few minutes), and it made me go from sober back to buzzed instantly. I'm not sure what proof it was, but it was clearly pretty high. So I stayed and watched people be drunk for awhile longer while Sean's dad yelled at us to be quiet. Here's my favorite picture of Sean:

All in all, it was a long drive for basically just a hang out in Sean's basement, but it was fun. And as much of a pain as it can be to be horseman, it felt good to bring him out again. I can't wait to be him again next year. Horseman forever.

Since this post is short and it's now December, here- look at our jack-o-lanterns! The left is Josh's, the right is mine. I tried out 2 different style eyes so it looked like he was squinting or something. I wasn't psyched with how he came out, but everyone else though he was solid.

The left 2 are Rich's, the right is Holly's. I loved the real left one. Excellent job Rich.

I left to go to Maine to take my parents to the airport on the night that trick-or-treaters were going down our street. When I left, Josh was being George Bush.

OR WAS HE?!

Rich was changing masks for every visitor (only like 4 families and 1 really awkward Michael Myers who didn't say a word and just stared at us (and was an adult) by the time I left). Rich was Ronald Reagan Thor with a giant cloak from his ren fair costume the last I saw him. Irwin had on a crown. It was pretty adorable. Our porch was also quite excellent, which I had pretty much nothing to do with. 

It was another great Halloween season!

Halloween in Saratoga Springs and the Birth of Horseman

With Halloween coming up, I had to decide what I was going to do. The friends I live near have a big halloween/birthday party every year called Birthdayween, but I had so much fun last year in Saratoga Springs that I just couldn't imagine anything being more fun than that. It bummed (and still bums) me out that I can't do both, but Saratoga was a hilarious time again, so I don't think my Halloween plans are going to change.

I headed up with Kevin and Gina on Friday night. But let me backtrack to my costume first. I had to make one up. My Halloween costumes have been homemade for as long as I can remember, and they have slowly morphed from being a bum every year into finding an excuse to wear my giant purple pants. Last year's costume was funny, but let's face it, it was awful. I'm better than that. 

So in me freaking out wondering what to do, I stumbled upon a rubber horse head mask at Bull Moose that I had seen on instagram (someone I follow randomly started posing with a horse head on). After seeing it on the way out, it took the 20 foot walk I had to my car for me to immediately turn around and go buy it. Maybe I'd be some sort of weird horse person. 

After putting the head on, I immediately knew I didn't want this to be my costume. It was hard to get on, it was insanely hot, and I could barely see. I didn't want to be the guy who was in costume for 5 minutes and then just took everything off. So, I started to wonder if I could make some sort of hat out of the horse head. And thus, with a 20 second sketch, Horseman was born.

I wasn't sure what in my retarded brain made me want to have super long arms- why would a half man/half horse have long arms? But there it was, and knew it would be hilarious to have unusually long arms. I had to find a way to do it. 

I bought a few black long sleeve shirts, pink duct tape, jammed stuff in the horse head and figured i'd be fine tying a bandanna tightly around it. I bought incredibly stupid fake hands (2 right hands because they didn't have any left ones left (ooo good phrase)), hot glued and duct taped them to the inside of pringles cans, hallowed out areas for my hands to hold on to the cans, and hot glued half sleeves to the pringles cans. Small holes were cut in the shirt for my real hands to go through when needed. I had just created arm-extenders. This was all done before I went to Saratoga of course. 

The day of the Halloween partying, Kevin and Dustin did an all uphill bike race at like 8 in the morning followed up by a 50-60 mile ride. I played the part of Mysterio for the day, and hung out with my friends' girlfriends while they went shoe shopping. It was a thrilling time.

"ooooo they have them in pink!"

We went to AC Moore and I bought some pink felt and some brown hair to make H emblems and add a mullet onto my horsehead. I considered having a patch of hair ripping through my costume or maybe have a tail or hairy crotch, but in the end, it made the most sense to glue the ends of the neck of the horse head together to make it tighter on my head, and then add the hair on like a mullett mane. These were all Gina's ideas, and they worked perfectly. And soon enough, Horseman existed.

long arms of the law

This tended to be Horseman's favorite pose:

It looked better from the side. Longest arms ever.

Watching drunk Dustin create his alley cat costume pretty much right in front of us was pretty hilarious. The best parts were when he stuffed panty hose over his face and freaked out, and when he hot glued chunks of fur to his crotch and butt while wearing the clothes. I even helped at one point. It was awkward. 

All of it was documented on my camera in some pretty hilarious videos that you'll never see. More on that later.

All the girls did Alice in Wonderland stuff, from Alice to the Mad Hatter. Kevin was a Hazmat dude who was going to hand people smarties in a bag marked "The Antidote" (which he forgot at Dustin's house). The other dudes were both the same costume without planning it- Mexican dudes. I was pretty impressed with Gina's costume. Do you know of this internet video/meme?

That's what Gina was. I don't think a lot of people knew it, but it was still a damn solid homemade costume.

We all looked pretty good in our pre-going out picture. 

L-R: Kevin, Jon, Sheray, Me, Amanda, Dustin, Lyle, Gina, Morgan, Chick whose name I forgot

The best part about this picture is that Gina nearly broke her foot and Dustin's speakers and couch when she was taking it. She set her camera up on a timer and freaked out and ran as fast as possible to get in the picture, turning around and immediately running full speed into the couch and speakers. It was like drunk Peter Griffin falling through a table on Family Guy- she hit that couch as hard as humanly possible in pretty much 1 frame. I'm laughing now thinking about it.

The other best part of the picture is how fuzzy Dustin is. He's a mess, freaking out. The beauty of this is that this was the last picture really taken of Dustin. 

We all pre-gamed while hanging out at his house. Much beer was drank. I took a few trips to the garage. When we left, I was functional, but nice and messy and ready to act even weirder than I normally would (although when I'm in a costume, that tends to happen naturally). Dustin though... Dustin didn't pre-game very well. He drank A LOT and pretty much right when we got in Amanda's car, he was super serious guy, sadly talking like a little kid: "Amanda... I messed up. Oh no. I'm sorry... I'm too drunk... oh no."

When we got to the parking lot and everyone started heading down to the bars, he stayed behind. I videotaped him peeing in the parking lot, pretty much on Amanda's car. Jon and Amanda stayed behind with him. He was sure he just needed some food, some water, and a little time to get with it. Kevin and I got sick of waiting for him and headed down to try and find Druther's Brewing Company, where there was some band playing. We assumed Dustin would show up eventually. It was time to party.

I was pretty much instantly on the dance floor. I noticed a lot of people pointing at me and laughing, so I decided to just go for it and give them a show. Within a few minutes, everyone was dancing like idiots to some band that I don't think any of us really paid any attention to. It was hilarious. We got the party started.

I didn't think ahead when making this costume and didn't even realize that I'd be a horseman in a town obsessed with horses. Saratoga is known solely for its racetrack and there are horses everywhere. I was VERY popular. In fact, this picture was found on facebook, taken by a friend of the band playing:

The band announced that they'd be doing a costume competition (funniest, sexiest, scariest, etc), but not until later. Other than one long phish-esque song where I became somewhat hypnotized by a never ending solo, none of us really cared that much about the band, and everyone decided to leave to head somewhere else. 

We went to Caroline street which is basically like the Bourbon Street of Saratoga- a billion drunk people dancing and drinking, with cops always watching.

Friends wanted to say hi to people on one of 4 floors of a 4 story bar. Somehow with every floor we went up, we lost more people. By the time I got to the 4th floor, it was just Morgan and me. She wandered for a minute then said she was going to another floor. I couldn't resist what was happening up there. It was a full on dance club- the kinds you see in movies. It was hundreds of people jammed into way too small of a space, crazy lights everywhere, hot chicks and dudeguys everywhere- even a FOG MACHINE. I think at one point confetti exploded out of a corner. The DJ was only playing the most ridiculous club/radio hits, from Rihanna to Gangnam Style. I immediately started dancing like an asshole, and admittedly fist pumped up a storm, hopping on one foot like I was a cowboy from Jersey. At one point, a girl (who I was told to dance with because it was her birthday) that I grinded on ripped my horse head off and threw it, but other than that, everyone loved me. 

Sadly, it was here where I lost my camera. It was packed enough in there that someone could have easily stolen it out of my pocket, but most likely, it just flew out as I was hopping around like a moron. Someone either picked it up and kept it, or it was stepped on and kicked into a corner where it met it's untimely demise. Most likely though, someone got it. And they got pictures and videos of Dustin saying horrible things while hot gluing fur to his crotch, and drunkstin peeing on his car in a parking lot, also while saying horrible things. Someone got quite the show, and I'm still heartbroken about it. Losing the money (it was 200 bucks) sucks- sure, but I'm more upset about losing those pictures. There were a lot of incredible ones, and some ones with me posing with a bunch of hot chicks at the first place. Live and learn I guess. I will keep my camera on a necklace next time. No more pockets. 

BTW, I'm still waiting for someone to find the footage of Dustin on youtube. Fingers crossed...

I didn't realize the camera was gone until I left the bar in an attempt to reconnect with my friends I had lost. I went back in and did 2 laps around the dance party, but it had gotten 10 times more crowded and it was hopeless. After having a conversation with a random dude outside the bar who turned out to be from Portsmouth, I texted Kevin asking where he was. This is the conversation:

Me: Where?

Kevin: No clue sorry.

Kevin: Were at baileys

Kevin: I'll be on the street screaming

Me: How do I get to baileys

------10 minutes pass------

Me: I'll be there in a bit, I lost my camera

Kevin: I don't know shit about this town

------20 minutes pass------

Me: Dude so pussed camera gone

Kevin: U blew it

I decided that if I lost my camera, maybe I could save the night by winning money in a costume contest I was sure to win. So, I headed back to Druthers on a solo mission to win everything. 

When I got there, everyone was happy to see me, and I went to work dancing again. Here's another picture that random person put on facebook. At this point, my sweat had killed my duct tape H.

Somehow, they did sexiest costume first, and I was nominated. It was me against some chick in a viking costume, and the band told us we had to have a dance-off to determine the winner. Now, not only was I not psyched about this, but at this point, I was absolutely exhausted and in a lot of pain. I'd been dancing for hours. I had only had 1 beer since leaving Dustin's, but plenty before we left and zero water or food. Every part of me hurt. The last thing I wanted to do was have a dance-off with some random chick, surrounded by strangers in a bar I was at without any of my friends. 

But I wanted to win, dammit. So I got down.

While it wasn't too bad rubbing up on this random chick, I was near collapse the entire time, and the stupid band was in full on hippy mode, playing probably a 6 minute song. Are you kidding me? And after nearly dying and doing WAY better dance moves (she even said to me that I won), I still somehow lost. I guess because nobody there knew me and she got more cheers. Weird- the busty chick in a short skirt beat a completely soaked fat guy in sweatpants with a horse head as a hat and pringles cans for arms in a sexiest costume contest. What a shocker.

She won a gift certificate and a shirt, while I won the same shirt (I think a small) and an empty growler to fill up the next time I came to this brewery restaurant I'll probably never go to again.

I said goodbye to the hot chicks and left a tired, broken man. I left the growler with a manager there who said he'd try to get me a shirt that wasn't a small.

I headed down to the bar where everyone was supposed to be and found it with the help of some strangers. I probably posed for 3 pictures on the way down. Oh yea, that happened a lot. I probably took 20-30 pictures with complete strangers that night. I told every single one of them to hashtag it "horseman" on instagram, and to this day, not a single picture of me has surfaced. Asses. 

The High Peaks band were at Baileys. They play Grateful Dead and Phish covers and I've seen them before. They're good, but I was the deadest I've been in quite some time when I found Kevin sitting at the end of the bar looking at least twice as dead as me. 

"I WANT TO GO HOME" he said. I switched from sitting in pain and agreeing with him and wanting to watch the band. Eventually I got a water from the bartender and everything suddenly felt way better. It's incredible how much water helps. I found the others in the crowd and danced a little since they were playing Phish songs I liked a lot. They were solid, but we were happy when they called it a night. We were toast.

As we left, I got to watch a bunch of dudes beat the shit out of each other in the street and sidewalk. Who fights after a phish show?

"THEY SHOULD HAVE ENDED WITH TWEEZER!"

As I got closer to take pictures, some broad trying to be in the middle of everything grabbed my phone out of my hand and screamed at me to stop fucking taking pictures get the fuck out of here, etc. I calmly said "ok great, can I have my phone back please?" I wasn't about to lose that too. She gave it back, as long as I promised I'd get the fuck out of here and stop taking fucking pictures, and I proceeded to make fun of her and the guys fighting while leaving. We then headed in the direction of the only thing that could make me feel even more alive, D'Andrea's Pizza. 

We killed some 'za there, and I sat outside listening to some girl we hung out with whose name I don't remember talk about god knows what while random drunk people argued on the street in front of us. I was in the weird mood where I think everyone is my friend and I just kept saying random stuff to people as they walked by, complementing people on costumes, telling chicks they were babes, etc. I don't know how I don't get in a hundred fights when I go out. Maybe because people don't want to fight dudes in purple sweatpants. 

Lyle had only drank a little, and we were waiting on him to get his car forEVER. After freaking out for what seemed like forever waiting, he finally was ready to go, and we headed up. Of course Morgan didn't think he should drive, and that turned into a huge explosion. Eventually we all were just standing in the street waiting for a cab. Finally one came and fit like 7 of us into it. 

As he drove us home, he informed us that it would be like 20 bucks to go to Dustin's, but then another 60 or something to take Lyle and Morgan home. Listening to drunk people tell a cab driver that he's wrong is pretty funny and incredibly awkward. 

"No, that's not right. There's no way it's that much." 

"Look, I don't make the fares, that's what my boss is telling me."

"It's like 25 bucks max, you don't know what you're talking about. Why are you trying to screw me?"
"I'm not... that's the fare. If you don't like it, you can get out of the car."
"This is ridiculous. It doesn't cost 60 bucks to go there. Bullshit."

This went on for way too long, and everyone just decided to go back to Dustin's, where he had been throwing up for hours. Oh yea, Dustin. Apparently he didn't quite bounce back like he thought he would hours before in the parking lot. Instead, Amanda and somehow Jon took him back and watched him puke every 20-30 minutes since we had seen him last.

We all went in and tried to be quiet. This didn't work out so well with Morgan losing her phone and Morgan and Lyle fighting over him being too drunk to drive (for the record, he wasn't) and other girl whose name I forget being super loud. At one point, Lyle exploded and left and started walking back into town. I'm proud to say that during all of this havoc, I sat in the corner with Kevin and helped the situation as best as I could by dancing obnoxiously to Nicki Minaj and Gnarls Barkley. Always the DJ.

Eventually it was just Kevin and me, and he managed to sneak away from me to go to bed even with me watching him as much as I could to catch him when he did it. I think I went into another room for 1 second and he was gone when I came back. What a pro. I went upstairs, showered and collapsed. Gina was still outside talking to the loud chick forever while I attempted to fall asleep. I think I literally was in so much pain from dancing all night with no water that as exhausted as I was, I still could barely go to sleep. And D'Andrea's and chugged water wasn't helping like I thought it would.

I woke up at 5 in the morning after being asleep for an hour and a half or so. My stomach wasn't happy, and I had to take care of business. Once I was done and heading back to bed, my heart stopped from what I heard. Out of nowhere, I heard the horrific sounds of someone dying a few rooms over. It was Dustin, barfing his brains out and practically screaming while he did it. I've never been good with puking- the smell of it makes me almost puke, seeing people puke makes me almost puke, and hearing it stops my heart like I saw a ghost. And he just kept going. I went back to my room and lay in bed trying to fall asleep again, all with him, several rooms over, continuously dying. Every time I started to fall asleep, there it was again: "aoowwwwWHOOAAARRFFFFFAHHHHHH... uhhh... uhhhh...... awwwooouuuuuUUUURRRFFFF" It was awful. I laughed it off the night before, saying "guy can't handle his shit!" but now I was officially worried about him and wondered if he somehow had gotten food poisoning. I thought of when Hilton was hospitalized for 3 days after eating a chicken parm and getting Salmonella poisoning. I decided that if he was still in that shape when I got up, we absolutely had to take him to the hospital. 

When I finally got up the next day, I was happy to see Dustin sitting at the kitchen table eating a sandwich, smiling. He held up his hand to show a hospital bracelet. I thought I had heard someone driving away super early that morning, and sure enough, it was Amanda taking him to the hospital. They had to pull over several times for him to barf more. I guess while he was there, he went through 2 IVs in record time. Maybe 3? Turns out D Bone was just a tad dehydrated. Lesson learned kids: Don't go for a 60 mile bike ride after a 10 mile bike race, drink zero water, take Benedryl, then drink like 8 beers and half a bottle of whiskey and think you're going to have a good night. You won't. Here's how he looked that morning:

barf bursts

We watched stuff about Hurricane Sandy coming for us, then went into town to go to a ski expo and get some air. The expo was pretty unexciting, but at least they had a huge chunk of floor dedicated to kids playing in packing peanuts:

We hit up D'Andrea's again for a delicious lunch, then went to Druther's to get my growler and shirt. That was a great moment.

"Hey, I was here last night, I won a prize for sexiest costume. I gave the growler to some dude who worked here. He said he'd find me a bigger shirt."

"Um ok... what are you talking about?"

"I was horseman. I had a dance off with some viking chick and didn't want to carry the growler all night so I gave it to some dude."
"Ok, who did you talk to?"
"Um... The Joker."

Somehow this got resolved and I got the growler, which I gave to Dustin since I knew he liked drinking. They said they'd call me when a bigger shirt came in. We then went to the 4 story bar to see if my camera had turned up, which it of course had not. We saw Keith eating at a restaurant on the way out, which was a pretty funny surprise. Then Kevin, Gina and I hit the road for a sweet 4 hour drive of fighting sleep while listening to Bush and Cake. 

Dustin almost died and essentially never left his house, and I lost a camera and lots of amazing pictures. Parts of the night weren't the best, but I still had quite the amazing time and the night was really one for the record books. That makes 2 Halloweens in a row that were better than maybe any other Halloween I've had. I can't wait for next year- Horseman is most likely going to make another appearance, this time with an even better costume. I'll leave you with this picture. Look closely and follow the path from the car on the bottom right to Kevin's foot. That's all a stain from things that came out of Dustin. 

Good Halloween.

currently listening to: If These Trees Could Talk- "Red Forest"

Halloween Haunts: The Good and the Bad with Screeemfest and Haunted Overload

What fall brings other than foliage, football, and squamtoberfest is fairs and haunts. Unfortunately for me, for some reason people didn't plan out a day for everyone to go to the Deerfield Fair this year and the day people went to the Rochester fair I was busy. So I only went to the Sandwich Fair. I was a bit bummed out about this, but I was still able to go to some haunts.

I was planning on going to Haunted Overload for the 3rd year in a row, then maybe try The Ghoulag, but the night everyone went to that, I had plans yet again (apparently it sucked this year). I ended up going to Haunted Overload and trying Canobie Lake Park's "Screeemfest." Yes, it has 3 Es. I don't know why.

You may be asking yourself, what the hell is a haunt? Well, it's where you pay way too much money to stand in line for hours, then walk through an area that's decorated to be spooky with people jumping out at you from shadows, screaming at you, making loud noises, etc. It's basically a haunted house, just set up in random places. The goal is to scare you, but what we all love about them is the decoration, ambiance, horror-movie-feel, etc. Some places do this very well (Haunted Overload). A lot don't.

Canobie started with Rich, Josh, Holly and I meeting up with Jesse and Sarah, and Buote and some chick, and paying way too much money. I think it was 27 bucks. And it couldn't have been a colder night. I had on a winter hat, long sleeve shirt, hooded sweatshirt and fleece gloves and I spent most of the night shivering. We wandered through Canobie Lake, walking past rides that were still running and the occasional ghoul walking through the crowd. We eventually found a haunt to wait in line for, and, well, waited in line.

We eventually got to go through 5 or so of the haunts, and I was pretty disappointed with every one of them. There were cool moments, but all in all, this was a pretty bad haunt.

Jesse and Josh lost in the fog

This spot was pretty cool- a house of mirrors with awesome lights:

Someone stuck in a TV!

Jesse posing in a haunted field:

The best part of these haunts was that this tight butthole tunnel was in 3 different spots:

These things were just tunnels made from inflated plastic pushing on every side. So it was very much like a butthole, and you had to push your way through a tunnel to the other side, with pressure on you the whole time and either darkness or weird lighting. I could imagine this would be an absolute nightmare for someone with claustrophobia and they'd have 10 heart attacks in one of these things. For us, it was funny and awesome, and a very weird experience.

All in all though, these were bad haunts though. They felt like I should have imagined they'd be- lazy. Concrete floor, large sections of fence with just corn stalks on them, etc. This is an amusement park that they just threw haunts into, and you could feel the half-assedness of the whole thing pretty easily. It was still generally fun, but every haunt was disappointing, and it all came from lack of commitment. 

The true fun was just walking around and doing the other stuff that was there, even though it was a -348934 degrees out. Here's Rich getting a psychic reading from Zoltar:

Jesse and Rich posing with a weird monster thing:

Jesses dead!

Rich getting shot by a skeleton cowboy:

Some weird dead ninja guy we could pose with:

And Mini-Kiss.

I know that these guys probably have fun doing this. Little kids probably love it. And at the least, it's a paycheck. But come on. I would think if I was a little person and was selling out to perform as Mini-Kiss, I would at least learn how to play an instrument. I would at least be an actual musician. I watched them for 30 seconds before I realized their instruments weren't even plugged in. The drummer was working hard, the singer was doing his best, but the guitarist and bassist were just standing there pretending to play. And they sucked at it! They had solos and poses and the bassist's hand never moved on the fret board! Apparently, to this guy, the bass line to every part of every Kiss song is the top 2 strings on the 5th fret, over and over again. Ughk. This was so bad, I was insulted by watching it.

We ended the night by going on this ride:

Here's Buote and Josh in the back row of the other side:

Buote practicing dance moves?

I HATED this ride. As soon as it started going to the highest point, I just wanted out. I was so uncomfortable and sick feeling. I was just clenching my whole body when we hit the top, holding my breath and just hating the feeling to death. I swear our ride was twice as long as everyone else's. I've never been much for carnival rides, but I was quite surprised to see just how much I hated this. I remember loving the Tower of Terror at Universal Studios, where you free fall faster than gravity (since it's pulling you down too). I figured this would be nothing. So either, I'm old and lame now, or the repetition of this just did me in. Probably both.

We then decided we weren't cold enough, and rode the ferris wheel. I think this is honestly only the 2nd time I've rode a ferris wheel, and the first one was the shortest ride ever, since it broke when we got to the top, then once they fixed it, we had to get off after the slowest rotation ever. So this was nice.

It was brutal up there, but neat to be able to look down at the whole place.

We still had a fun night, but the haunts were pretty lame. 

Haunted Overload, on the other hand, absolutely ruled. 

The line alone for Haunted Overload is better than most haunts.

soooooooo much fog

We were supposed to go after getting birthday dinner with Rich, but it was rainy and gross. Everyone planned on going the next night, but I had planned on driving to Cambridge to see Into It Over It. I had also signed on to write a review of the show for a website, so I felt like I really had to go. Over time, I realized that I didn't care about any of the opening bands, and if we went to an early enough time for Haunted Overload, I could somehow do both. Trying this has historically been a problem, but it worked out perfectly this time, with me showing up at the show and the band starting about 2 minutes later. 

And I'm so happy I got to go to Haunted Overload again. The attention to detail at this place is just phenomenal. There are so many decorations and spots with weird lighting. And it's in the middle of the woods enough that after awhile, it really feels like you're just with your friends, wandering through a horror movie. It's only 1 haunt, but it lasts long enough that it's absolutely worth the 25 bucks it costs. Look at the dude who lets you in!

Here's a ghost tree shortly after the haunt began:

Creepiest Teddy Bear ever:

Dead horse ghoul:

Dead Monkey:

Perhaps the most impressive thing there, this giant pumpkin man is literally like 100 feet tall. It's incredible.

And this thing- I think this was new from last year. This is also giant (maybe 50 feet?) and basically the whole side of a building. It's lit perfectly too.

I loved this- this became my "Happy Halloween" instagram easily.

Heidi got scared enough to scream a few times, and they also got me better than any haunt ever has before. I was walking through a small house and there was someone right in the door who started up a chainsaw right when we got there. I was somewhat expecting this, so it didn't spook me, but right as we left the house and the chainsaw stopped, out of nowhere there was a chick on the other side who screamed super high pitched out of nowhere. Yea, that got my heart to jump and a "whooaa haha" out of me. I'll never understand the stupid teenage girls that go through these things absolutely terrified the entire time. At Screeemfest, we followed 2 girls that were literally falling down from fright over and over again- just screaming at the top of their lungs and running in terror from a dude carrying a chainsaw without any blades on it. I hated them so much. Like, really? Do you really think this employee at something you paid almost 30 bucks for is going to murder you with a chainsaw in front of  a ton of people? People are ridiculous. But I'll admit it, I have jumped from these things. It's rare, but that screaming chick out of nowhere got me. I guess I got my money's worth.

It was tough to document Haunted Overload. These places don't want you taking pictures (or at least with a flash) and you have to keep moving so the group behind you doesn't catch up. It was tough to take it in, have fun with friends, try to get in the zone where you might get scared, and take pictures. Obviously I didn't have to take pictures, but there was so much awesome stuff that I wanted to, blog or not. They have an afternoon walk-through for little kids who may get way too scared at night, which I am 100% going to next year, just so I can take in all the decorations and detail in the daylight. I absolutely love this place and am psyched to go again next year. It wouldn't be fall without a trip there.

If any of my friends are reading this and have never gone to one of these things- they may sound stupid, but if you like horror movies and the general vibe of Halloween, you should absolutely go. But from personal experience, don't waste your time with some of the more mainstream ones. Go straight to Haunted Overload. 

currently listening to: Life In Your Way- "Kingdom of Man"