31 Days of Halloween - Day 1

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Welcome to the 6th annual Halloween Countdown. Every day throughout the month of October I'll be posting a variety of tricks and treats for your enjoyment. This means that it will be a month long holiday from the usual business at this blog such as "Ask Me Anything" which will resume the first Monday of November.

What you'll find instead are a wide range of posts pertaining to all manner of creepy seasonal things. I'm continuing to do post about my daily movie viewing throughout the month. Hopefully you'll find more recommendations of horror movies to watch than horror movies to avoid at all costs. There will be one new feature added this year, which will continue into next year. People really responded to the daily Halloween riddle that ran during the 2007 - 2009 Halloween Countdowns. I really wanted to add something again that unified the countdown here as a themed regular daily feature. So this year I bring you...

Free Halloween print and cut-out masks. Every day this blog will feature one, sometimes more, Halloween masks that you can print out at home, cut out, and wear. This is perfect for those last minute costume parties you aren't prepared for.

Finally, for anyone who wants to join me on facebook I'll be featuring a different Halloween related video there every day throughout October. Be sure to mention the Halloween Countdown if you choose to friend me there.

New this year is my companion blog The Grim Gallery a place where I'm posting all of my thousands of weird photos and images of monsters and other strange beings at a rate of one a day. This month's posts all lean towards being relevant to Halloween.

You can also peruse my past halloween Countdowns by checking the October archives from the years 2006-2010 in the archives to the of this post.

Also be sure to check out Countdown to Halloween where you'll find links to hundreds of other blogs and websites participating in this year's countdown as well as contests and cool merchandise to spook up your home for Halloween.

Now for the first treat I'm going to drop in your bucket.

I'd like to recommend to everyone who is enamored with Halloween Lesley Bannatyne's book Halloween Nation. Bannatyne has written, or edited several books about Halloween (including this one).  Halloween Nation takes an in depth and fascinating look into what Halloween means today to all of the adults who celebrate it with exuberant devotion. She interviews artists, musicians, spirit mediums, parade organizers, prop builders, yard haunters, zombie walkers, collectors and others in her entertaining and enlightening quest to document Halloween in the modern world.