Ok, all you ghouls out there. Just lean back in your coffin, and learn a few interesting bits of trivia. This is a BIG one...

FYI: A 21-year-old man recently reunited with his amputated foot after police siezed it from his front porch, thinking it was part of a crime scene. Ezekiel Rubottom had been keeping it on display there in a 5 gallon bucket of formaldehyde.

FYI: Hong Kong officials are considering turning a favorite local suicide spot into a theme park. The ghost-town-esque attraction would see tourists staying a night in a "haunted flat."

FYI: Diff'rent Strokes star Dana Plato was originally offered the role of Regan in The Exorcist, but her mother wouldn't allow her to appear in the film. She did have a small part in the sequel.

FYI: Some Shakespearian scholars argue that Macbeth was written as a much shorter play, and that the scenes involving the witches were added at a later date (possibly by someone else).

FYI: The literal translation of the word "seance" is "sitting."

FYI: On January 15, 1919 in Boston, a storage tank ruptured dousing the immediate area with a 30-foot tall wave of molasses that killed 21 people. (I guess it doesn't run as slowly as you think)

FYI: Before the advent of antibiotics, it was common practice to use silver in sinus and cold remedies (in the form of nose drops) and in medications for syphilis. It was later determined that use of these products could lead to a rare and irreversible condition known as Argyria, in which deposits of silver actually remain in the skin, turing the afflicted an undead-looking, slate-gray colour.

FYI: In the 1800s, it was commonplace for executioners in China to eat the heart or brain of those they carried out sentence on.

FYI: In the folklore of many cultures (including Romania, Russia, China, and parts of Africa), committing suicide was believed to cause vampirism.

FYI: Dysmorphophobia is a disorder in which a normal, healthy person becomes inflicted with the belief that they are suffering from a physical deformity.

FYI: Actor Clint Eastwood's first film role was that of a lab technician in Revenge of the Creature.

FYI: The last serious outbreak of the Bubonic Plague struck India and China in 1910.

FYI: The first computer game with a vampire theme was in 1990 with Accolade's Elvira: Mistress of the Dark.

FYI: In June 2005, a 23-year-old Romanian nun named Maricica Irina Cornici was held captive, starved and eventually crucified by two other nuns and the priest overseeing the small mountain monastery where she served. Following an argument, the 29-year-old priest deemed her possessed by an evil spirit. Medical records later indicated that she suffered from schizophrenia.

FYI: After watching Frankenstein in 1931, an irate man called the manager of a Santa Barbara theatre at home every five minutes to tell him: "I can't sleep because of that picture, and you aren't going to either."

FYI: In China, crispy fried rat with lemon, boiled bamboo rat and deer's penis (served in soup) are all considered delicacies. (Note to Iron Chef: please leave these off of your menu)

FYI: Author Bram Stoker had a nightmare about vampires after eating a dinner of crabmeat, an experience which inspired him to write Dracula.

FYI: In 1995, at a bachelor party in Consenza, Italy, stripper Gina Lalapola was found dead inside the cake she was supposed to leap from. Apparently, she had suffocated inside the sealed wooden cake more than an hour before her body was found. (Note to Iron Chef: cut air holes)

FYI: Taphopilia is the love of the art and history of cemetaries and funerary practices.

FYI: A landing party visiting Krakatoa nine months after the massive 1883 eruption found only one creature alive: a tiny spider, spinning a web.

lol Mortis, what are you dressing as for the sacred holiday?

hmmm i thought this was the one time of the year you dressed differently no????


Dark

Just thought I would let my true self shine through.

Halloween is an annual celebration, but just what is it actually a celebration of? And how did this peculiar custom originate? Is it, as some claim, a kind of demon worship? Or is it just a harmless vestige of some ancient pagan ritual?

The word itself, "Halloween," actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.
One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.

Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

Probably a better explanation of why the Celts extinguished their fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that all the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach.

Some accounts tell of how the Celts would burn someone at the stake who was thought to have already been possessed, as sort of a lesson to the spirits. Other accounts of Celtic history debunk these stories as myth.The Romans adopted the Celtic practices as their own. But in the first century AD, Samhain was assimilated into celebrations of some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October, such as their day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, which might explain the origin of our modern tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.

The thrust of the practices also changed over time to become more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned, the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a more ceremonial role.

The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840's by Irish immigrants fleeing their country's potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates. The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes," made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul's passage to heaven.

The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.

According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.

The Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns" originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember.

So, although some cults may have adopted Halloween as their favorite "holiday," the day itself did not grow out of evil practices. It grew out of the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans. And today, even many churches have Halloween parties or pumpkin carving events for the kids. After all, the day itself is only as evil as one cares to make it.