I know it’s a little early for most people to be thinking about Halloween, but not me. Every year we try to outdo ourselves and everyone else on the block. The only way to do that is to have your eyes open all year round. I have been buying remote controlled spiders for years and have never found one that really works well or is all that realistic. A while back I ordered one from the UK and it finally arrived. Unfortunately I could not seem to find this guy here in the US, so I had to wait. This Radio Controlled Spider is far and away much better than all the ones I’ve seen. I got the Black Widow, but it is also available in a Tarantula, but I’m not sure you can get that one anymore. You’d have to look around. It was designed by the Natural History Museum as an educational toy. Yeah, right. Maybe an education in how to scare people out of their minds. Anyway, he measures quite big at approx. 12″ wide and 10″ long and runs on 6 AA batteries and 1 9V battery. Like other radio controlled spiders you can hear a little motor, but the plus with this one is the look and movements which are far superior to any I’ve seen before. I can’t wait to try it out on Scary Hubby, though he’s used to my attempts to scare him, so I don’t know how well that will work.

Apparently I’ve been out of the loop on card games or should I say card decks. I’ve been playing with the same damn set of cards for the last 10 years. I had no idea that Bicycle offers all sorts of great theme card decks. As I was poking around on Amazon the other day I came across the Guardians deck. Totally cool, so I started looking around some more and OMG! so many neat sets. I was drooling. Literally. It always makes me so happy to see big companies do things with their products that are a little outside of the box. Some innovative person within their company thought that just making the same card deck in blue or red wasn’t enough. Why not branch out and make themed sets that will get people to buy even more sets of cards. I mean I know they were thinking how can we make more money. People play with the same cards forever, like me. I can’t fault them for wanting to make more money. Don’t we all? I just mean that they set out to see what people wanted. There are bunches of us ”weirdos” out there and it’s nice to see them catering to us once in awhile too. We don’t all shop at J Crew. Anyway, got carried away. I was just going to point out my favorite of all of their special sets, which is the Black Ghost deck or maybe the Karnival Midnight is my favorite. They also make the Tragic Royalty deck, Karnival Assassin, Black Spider, Shadow Masters and many others that aren’t necessarily creepy just really cool. If only there was a vampire and a zombie deck then it would be perfect. Now go throw away that crappy deck you’ve been using for years and get yourself one of these creepy suckers.

“Are you tired? Run-down? Listless? Do you poop out at parties? Are you unpopular? The answer to all your problems is in this little bottle.” Well, maybe for Lucy, but not the modern woman or man. I love the Vitameatavegamin episode of I Love Lucy. For some reason I thought of it when I came across this Voodoo Ritual Kit. I know, strange connection. A reader actually sent me the link to this great Folk Art site and that was where I came across it. You can get them for all sorts of things like Love & Passion, Fertility and Get That Job, but the one that caught my eye was the Unhexing kit. That’s what made me think of the episode. Granted, I often find connections in my every day life to Lucy episodes, but that’s neither here nor there. I just thought that if you were feeling these things maybe you were hexed by someone and are finding you need to get yourself unhexed. So, maybe the answer to all of your problems are in this little box. For $59.00 (ouch!) you can once again be awake, alert, popular and ready to party. Well, if you have any money left afterwards, you might. The kit comes complete with instructions, coffin box, Voodoo doll, candle, potion oil, mini Gris-Gris (what’s that?),  parchment paper, and incense. It may do the same as Vitameatavegamin, but I wouldn’t get too excited about the drunk part unless you add some liquor to the kit.

*Thanks Rebecca for the link

I know I claim to love all things scary and I do, but I draw the line at clowns. Clowns scare the crap out of me and not just because of a movie called It. It seems I may have been born with this fear. I’m not sure how it started. It might be the fact that when I was little Scary Jane there was a small clown painting in my room that was supposed to be cute. I remember laying in bed staring at it and trying to go to sleep. I probably had bad dreams about it. I finally made my Mom take it down. That coupled with the numerous movies and TV shows that featured a killer clown made me what I am today. A quivering idiot at the sight of any clown. Actually the ones that are not meant to be scary are the ones that scare me the most. Those painted smiles cover up the fact that they aren’t really smiling. The Ventriloquist Clown Doll scares me the most. Makes me think of that old movie Magic with Anthony Hopkins. You know the one where the ventriloquist dummy takes control and murders people. So, take a murderous dummy and then make him a clown and you have the one thing that will make me run down the middle of the street screaming in terror. If anyone was thinking of getting me that for Christmas can I please get a cute zombie doll instead?

Do you have that family member that kinda gets on your nerves? The one you dread seeing every year, but you still have to buy a gift for. Well here’s the perfect gift. A Voodooz Doll! There are four different dolls available: Ezili, Uchawi, Baka and Kennis. Each little voodoo doll has an articulated internal skeleton and is approximately 10″ tall. It comes with voodoo pins, mojo bones, binding twine, a chicken foot and a journal. These are extremely popular little dolls and only a limited number were made. They can be hard to find. If they are no longer available at the above link look around on the internet. I have found them regularly on ebay. Just make sure you stick the pins in and curse it before you give it to them or they could use it on you!

For those of you that can’t get your crap together and get all of your shopping done in a reasonable amount of time here’s a great last minute stocking stuffer. Hollywood Zombie Trading Cards brought to you by Topps. Now this is a card series to die for! Ha! Pun intended. This set of cards features 72 celebrity parody cards just like the old Wacky cards that I covered a few months ago here. Each card has a zombified parody of a celebrity with a story ripped from the gossip headlines. Every fourth pack also includes one of ten Glow-In-The-Dark Morbid Mug Shot so you can collect them all. With names like Paris Hellton, Britney Speared and Tom Ooze you know these cards are perfect for the wickedly minded people out there such as myself.

I came across this wonderfully creepy doll artist, photographer and storyteller the other day and had to share her with you. Her name is Christy Kane and you can see all of her amazing creepy dolls and read their stories on her website. Ms. Kane has a great sense of humor and writes these amazing little stories about each of her creations. She also wrote a book that tells the story of her dolls called Tales of the Sisters Kane. She even produced a short film on one of her dolls called Callalilly which can be seen below. Do yourself a favor a check out this eerily peaceful little film. Scary daughter found it to be pretty scary. Each of her creations are original and one-of-a-kind and can be purchased at etsy.com. She also sells t-shirts and jewelry featuring photographs of her dolls. If you have an odd way of looking at life the way I do you will fall in love with the talent of this woman like I did.

Are you tired of vampires? Are you sick of hearing about the Twilight stars? Well, I am! So hears more. Actually this one is more interesting. My Mother-in-Law of all people alerted me to this. Just shows how cool she is. Anyway, it’s an iPhone app called Vampire Transformer that was created by Peter Facinelli (Dr. Carlisle Cullen from Twilight) and the 211me.com team. It allows you to transform a photo of someone into a vampire. You can blend your photo with one of over 30 vampires to create your own personal vampire. Then you can send your creations to Twitter, Facebook, and their online Vampire Gallery. It’s all done with layers, so the more layers you use the grosser you get. You do have to have an iPhone to get the app. I downloaded it earlier and I’ve been having a blast with it. Try doing it to pictures of your pets or babies. That’s when it gets really twisted.

Now that holiday shopping is in full swing I thought I’d pass on good gift ideas that I come across on my wanderings around the net. My big problem is always finding gifts for the stockings. Mainly because I firmly believe that all stocking stuffers should fit into the actual stocking. No laying it on the mantel next to the stocking for me! Keeping that in mind I found a great stocking stuffer for that zombie loving relative. I’m also hoping that since I’m posting about it Scary Hubby will get a clue and get me one. This is the Dismember-Me Plush Zombie. You can pull off both his arms, his legs, pull apart his body, remove his head and pull out his brain. Just think if you get a whole bunch of these you could make your own zombie movie! How funny would that be? Well, actually that’s exactly what ThinkGeek.com did with them. I swear I thought of it first, though.