It’s almost that time of year, when ghost and goblins and ghouls and gargoyles and gremilins and gays come out at night.

I’m of course referring to Hellaween. And yes, I did spell that correctly, because I live in California where everything is “hella“. Hellaween is the time of year when we either dress up in costumes we’ve been creating and preparing for months, or dress up in costumes we just purchased at Walmart the night before because we couldn’t make up our minds what to wear, or completely forgot about this very important holiday.

Personally, I try to give some thought to my costumes each year. I also try to prepare for them in advance, sometimes purchasing them from online locations, weeks, even months, in advance. Also, most of my costumes require significant makeup, whether I’m going in drag (I went as Eddie Izzard one year), as a Christmas Tree, a dramatic vampyre for a local carnival, or as an evil jester to the work halloween parade.

Regardless of the costume, Hellaween is definitely an event. Sometimes requiring significant redesign of the house to pull off the right look.

A couple years ago, this entailed David draping the entire interior of the hallway and living room in black plastic, creating a very spooky internal haunted room. We even enclosed the front porch in plastic, and set up fog machines that blew fog in through the windows and all the way through the house out the back.

This was a very popular event for our friends, and everyone dressed up in some wild and crazy ways, including an almost demonic Mary Kay consultant, courtesy of Ray-Shelle. Other costumes included a plug and wall socket, 70’s tennis players, Dead-David, me as a Christmas Tree, and a streaker wearing fig leaves and a trench-coat.

After the black plastic halloween, I put the halt on doing these things at our house. Mostly because there is still, 3 years later, black plastic on the walls and little glue rings all over the ceiling. The following year, we ventured over to Niki’s place, and had the party there instead. David did all kinds of lighting displays, including black lights shining onto a fence spray painted with the words “KEEP OUT” and “REDRUM”. Many people attended, and many people got drunk. Fun was had by all.

For Hellaween 2005, we switched things up a bit and had a pumpkin carving party. Friends from all over came prepared with a pumpkin of their choice, while we provided the drinks, and the knives. We had many styles of pumpkin that evening, ranging from hilarious, to naughty, to just plain wrong. But everyone had a great time.

Which leads us to Hellaween 2006. What to do…what to do…it’s looking like we’ll be at Niki’s again, draping black lights, hanging spider webs, setting out icky-sticky lizards and worms, brewing up potions in the cauldron, and enjoying the holiday.

I haven’t decided what to wear this time around, and I may actually recycle some things from previous years…but I feel it is also my duty to share with you some wonderful online offerings for the inner-goth in you. All of these coming from the Hellaween online store at Sarcasm Central.

Here is a random selection of some of their spooky merchandise (most things are available in black or this reddish “cardinal”):

Enjoy, and have a Happy Hellaween!!!