As a haunter, I often debate about what candy to hand out on Halloween night.  It often ends up being the same stuff that everyone gets because of the amount of children that frequent the haunt.  I would love to hand out more original candy or the full-size chocolate bars, but it is just too costly.

What got me thinking about candy was a post I came about on the 11 Points website, titled, “11 Worst Things You Can Get Trick-Or-Treating“.  To summarize, although the site goes into greater detail, there’s a bunch of the obvious stuff (apples and the like), but at number four is Dubble Bubble.  This is the only thing on the list that I truly disagree with.  As much as that small piece of rock solid pink gum is hard to chew and almost immediately looses its flavour, I always loved Dubble Bubble, even to this day!  By the way, number one on 11 Point’s list was Milk Duds.  I’ve never received Milk Duds on Halloween, nor have I ever even tried a Milk Dud, but the name Dud does not inspire confidence.

As for the razor blade in the apple story that we all heard as kids, Snopes.com has a full report here.

Now I open this up for debate.  What in your mind is the absolute worst candy to get on Halloween night?  What is the best?  In my neighbourhood, I can recall a time when one house used to hand out cans of Coke.  Not anymore though.  And now all the candy we buy is nut free for the allergic kids.  Sorry Reece’s Pieces, I know kids loved you! 

Oh and gross or awesome?  This Blood Bag candy is $5.99 per dozen on Oriental Trading.

I feel as though I owe all two of you that visit this site an apology.  I said I would have some new updates last Monday, and nothing.  To be honest, it was a long weekend here and all day Monday I kept thinking it was Sunday.  My bad!  Anyway, here I am, back and slightly better than ever because I have exciting news!

Haunt on the Hill has it’s first ever Media Sponsor for the 2010 season, ICD Insurance Brokers.  If you need home or auto insurance, contact Mike Leinwand. 

What is a media sponsor?  Well, they are a company or person who helps spread the word of the haunt in one form or another.  Starting this year and every year from now on, Haunt on the Hill will be sending out postcards to everyone in the haunt’s postal code.  That’s over 1000 houses!  Read them, collect them, use them to scoop up your dog’s poo!  No scratch that last one!  The postcards, aside from being a cool design, will have the basic details you need to know.  Times of the haunt, location, and a helpful reminder to bring money for charity!  And they wouldn’t be possible without the help of our media sponsor!  Thanks Mike and ICD Insurance!

Now here is the design so far for this year.  What do you think?  Good?  Bad?  Changes?  Also, a big thanks to my buddy Steve from Phantom FX for helping with some of the design work!

Check back for more updates on the haunt and be sure to stop by Monday when I look at the worst of candy!

Rachel

If you’ve been following the blog, you would know that we have been looking at projection haunting a lot lately.  First I spoke with Hallowindow’s Mark Gervais, where he hinted at a release date for Hallowindow IV.  Then I spoke with Dave Bates of the Bates Haunt, one of the founding father’s if you will, of projection haunting.  He discussed his Haunted Mansion-esque style.  You can read both interviews here:

Part One – Hallowindow
Part Two – Bates Haunt

In the third and last installment of this series, I spoke with Andrew Grant, creator of Scaremation, an up and coming window animation maker, who has a very different approach to his work.  Check out this video of his animations, from his very own yard haunt:

Grant is yet another Canadian and a member of the Ontario Haunter’s Club, along with yours truly.  Read my interview with him: Read the rest of this entry »

First Haunt on the Hill took a look at projection haunting with Mark Gervais of Hallowindow.  You can read all about it here!

This week we continue our inside look at outside projecting with Dave Bates of the Bates Haunt.  I came across Bates’ work on YouTube one day and was blown away at just how amazing his display is and to top it all off, he does it all using only ONE projector!  

Check out a video here, but I warn you, the song will get stuck in your head:

As with Mark Gervais, Dave was nice enough to let me interview him.  And here it is: Read the rest of this entry »