Here is a funny little article I found online from July of 2008 which was featured in the Metro.co.uk. I’m not sure what I would do if this happened to me, but I know I’d be pretty creeped out.

“Superhero fans know about the bat phone and the bat car, but how about the bat bra. That’s the gadget Abbie Hawkins seems to have invented, at least. The 19-year-old was amazed to discover vibrations through her body were caused not by her phone but by a bat in her underwear. The hotel receptionist realised the baby creature had hidden itself in the padding of her bra – and pulled it out for all to see. ‘It looked very snug in there and I thought how mean I was for disturbing it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t notice anything when I put my bra on. It had been on the washing line the day before. ‘When I was driving to work I felt a slight vibration but thought it was my phone.’ Miss Hawkins, from Norwich, plucked up the courage to investigate the unusual disturbance after five hours and pulled out the bat, which flew around the Holiday Inn at Norwich airport before being set free in the grounds. The Bat Conservation Trust said the mammals have been known to hide in coats, bags and umbrellas.”

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Christmas and all of the Christmas traditions, but once in a while I like to have some fun with it and scary it up. Check out what I did with the traditional Christmas story The Night Before Christmas.

The Zombie Night Before Christmas

 
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, except for a mouse;

 
The mouse came from a medical research lab test,
But didn’t completely die like the rest;

 
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While nightmares of spiders danced in their heads;

 
And mamma in the kitchen had spotted the mouse,
Whacked it with a hammer and got blood in her mouth;

 
Inside her body there arose such a clatter,
As the virus mutated to make her mad as a hatter.

 
Away out the door she flew like a flash,
Ran down the street moaning, covered in a rash.

 
The moon shone on her as she ran down the lane
Seeking to quench her new hunger for brains.

 
When, what to her rotting eyes should appear,
But a group of carolers singing with cheer.

 
Their cheers turned to screams as she bit at their heads,
Soon the whole group was lying there dead.

 
But that didn’t last long as they rose to their feet,
They now also wanted some brains they could eat.

 
From door to door and throughout the night,
Zombies ruled the town and everything in sight.

 
The army was called in with big guns and tanks,
They surrounded the town and protected their flanks.

 
But a little old lady, now undead and quick,
Bit the arm of a soldier, and made him get sick.

 
The soldier was taken to HQ to be checked,
And soon the army base was totally wrecked.

 
The army, the guard, and the mighty marines,
All failed to stop the bloodthirsty fiends.

 
I wanted to run, and was turning around,
Then down from the sky St. Nicholas came with a bound.

 
He was dressed all in kevlar, from his left to his right,
He knew how to protect himself from zombies that bite;

 
A bundle of weapons he had flung on his back,
And he looked like an action hero ready to attack.

 
His eyes — how they twinkled as he fired his guns,
His cheeks were like roses, his aim second to none!

 
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the blood of the zombies covered the snow;

 
The pins of grenades he pulled with his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

 
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
And his axe cut through zombies like jelly.

 
He cut off their heads, to kill them for good,
Saving the world as only few could;

 
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

 
He spoke not a word, but finished his work,
And burned all the bodies; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up from the rubble he rose;

 
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Those damn zombies really ruined my night.”

By: Scary Jane (with a little help from the classic story)

Have you heard of Vampira? I’m sure you have unless, of course, you never crawl out from under your rock. She was the original Mistress of the Dark. Elvira was inspired by Vampira. She was the first television horror movie hostess from 1954 to 1955 and then again briefly in 1956. Although the show didn’t last long Maila Nurmi (Vampira) was nominated for an Emmy for the character and has a huge cult following to this day. Maila Nurmi actually passed away just last year. I happened to pick up the latest Gothic Beauty magazine and there was a big article in it about her. I know I claim not to be a Goth, just a lover of all things scary, but lets face it a lot of the stuff I blog about would fall into the Goth catagory. It’s a cool magazine and it gives me great ideas sometimes, so I pick it up now and then. You should check out the magazine so you can read this article, but you can also find out all about Vampira at her website OfficialVampira.com.

So here’s a bit of interesting news. Well, at least in my book anyway. The original King Kong model from the 1933 movie sold at a London auction for about $200,000. It was sold as part of Christie’s auction of pop culture memorabilia. The metal alloy and steel skeleton is less than 2 feet tall and originally was covered in cotton, rubber, latex and rabbit’s fur. However, the covering rotted and fell off over the years.  It was designed by master animator Willis O’Brien and built by the RKO Studio’s Miniature Department. In the movie this model was used in the climax to make King Kong climb to the top of the Empire State Building. Interestingly enough the model was thought to have been destroyed years ago, but was recently discovered in a collector’s shoebox. The model was originally saved by Eugene Hilchey when RKO’s props department was scrapped in 1967.

Can you believe that I never noticed it was Friday the 13th yesterday? I usually look so forward to those days. They always talk about it on the news like it’s some huge event and people are convinced some horrible thing will happen. I enjoy that part of it, not really the day itself. I just think it’s a crack up that people put so much onto a number and a particular day. They made crap loads of those Friday the 13th movies just based on our irrational fear of that day! According to the Wikipedia entry there is no definitive answer as to where this came from. It seems to be mostly a 20th century superstition, but you can read more about it yourself here. If you do have a fear of that day maybe reading the entry will help you not be scared of it. I’m all for scary days, but in my life it’s just for fun. I don’t take it seriously as a couple of my readers seems to think. Lighten up people and enjoy life a little. Next time Friday the 13th comes around enjoy it for the silliness that it is. Now, I know if I don’t answer this I will be bombarded with emails, so yes I do like the movies and the second one is my favorite.

Okay I’m not sure how I feel about this. Wal-Mart now carries coffins and urns for all of your funeral needs. I mean I guess it’s okay, just weird. Now when you search on urns you get funeral urns mixed in with the coffee urns. Kinda creepy. When it comes time to bury Great Uncle Mort you can now go down to your neighborhood Wal-Mart and pick up your coffin. Well, actually you can’t. You can only order them online, but still the image is there. It makes me think of the Target lady on SNL. If you haven’t seen Kristen Wiig play her it’s really funny. The Target lady is a Target cashier who is very excitable and covets everything people are buying in a very shrill voice. She then frequently disappears during the transaction to get one of her own. What would she do if someone checked out with a coffin in their cart? Anyway, Wal-Mart is offering them for $895 to $2,899, so it’s pretty cheap compared to the thousands of dollars that coffins usually cost. Still weird, though. Coffin price check in aisle 9!

Well, after spending the last month searching for the best Halloween decorations, recipes, costumes, decorating my new house and watching movies here are my thoughts. LAME! Okay not totally lame, but not as good as in years past. My biggest gripe was Halloween decor or the lack there of. Every Halloween I have spent hundreds of dollars on new decorations for the store and for the house that I could not live without. This year I spent $19.00 and that was just for spiderwebs, candles and misc. crap. WTF?! My thoughts are that with the bad economy they just didn’t really come out with anything new and scaled back on some of the more pricey items. My favorite has always been animatronics. I love things that move and say things. The ones they had this year were cheap looking and weren’t all that scary frankly.  Costumes were pretty lame as well. I wanted to post the scariest costume of the year, but I really didn’t see anything that was worth even a wimper. Some of the bad costumes that were popular, like Micheal Jackson and Octomom, were just in bad taste and stupid. Decorating our new house was great and everything worked better than we had hoped. We even got voted as the scariest house in the neighborhood, but there were a few that were really close. We’ll have to step it up a bit next year. Movie selection in the theaters was not even worth discussing, though rarely is it. All I can say is I really hope next year the economy is back on track and decorations are plentiful. This is my favorite time of the year and I found it depressing to go into stores that normally have huge Halloween displays and only had pitifully small racks of cheesy decor. Just my two cents.

Now that it’s going to start getting cold, this Crime Scene Scarf might be good to keep the chill away. It is just hilarious! I must have it.

As often happens, I was reminded of something when I found this. A couple of years ago we were just going about our business at the bookstore when suddenly multiple police cars arrived at the apartment building next door. I employ a bunch of curious people, so we all had our noses plastered to the front windows.

Turns out we had a double murder next door! A little too real for my blood, but it was interesting to watch the drama unfold. For the next two weeks there was what we started to refer to as the “murder truck” parked out front which appeared to be some sort of CSI RV. This of course started to drive us crazy because the RV blocked one of the entrances to our parking lot and the police were not willing to move it.

Now, of course, they taped off the entire area. Being the wicked-minded person that I am, I began to covet this police tape for my store. If you’ve read the About Me page you would know that I have a haunted used bookstore and if you haven’t well then get to it! Anyway, we all decided that we couldn’t take it while it was still technically a crime scene, so we waited. Eventually the murder truck was gone and they were done with their investigation. We decided to wait until the next morning to take some tape. When we came in they had already removed it. And put it in our dumpster! In the end we didn’t have to steal it at all. Now it’s cool to know that our crime scene tape is the real thing. And yes, they did catch the guy who did it.

Okay, so like many of you Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday and October is my favorite month. Mainly because of Halloween, but also because it finally starts to cool down. Scary Jane doesn’t do summer. Anyway, starting on October 1st, every day I will blog about something related to Halloween. It could be a costume, a decoration, a craft or just anything related to our favorite holiday. I realize that pretty much everything I cover could be called a Halloween item. For this month though, I want strictly Halloween stuff. Things you wouldn’t necessarily put in your house during the year. More of the cheesy decor type stuff, if you know what I mean. I have many things I plan on blogging about, but thought I would send out a message to everyone in case someone’s got an idea of something I should cover. It could be a recipe you make every year, a decoration that you made and would like to share or just a link to a fun item. Pretty much anything goes. So, send in your ideas to jane@scaryjane.com and I’ll try to cover them all.

Due to an unforseen event I spent the last week in the hospital. I’m sorry that my posts came to an abrupt stop, but I am back now so watch out! Look for my first post to appear later today.