Well September is here folks, and that means it’s time for all of us Halloween fans to emerge from our crypts and reroute our paychecks straight to Spirit of Halloween stores! If you’re like us however, sometimes you can get burned out on Halloween by the time the actual holiday rolls around. If you’re a victim of this, we suggest trying out some of our pre-Halloween rituals that are guaranteed to get you in the mood without diving into the Halloween-heavy stuff just quite yet.

Fall Scented Candles

There is no better way to get yourself into a spooky head-space than by lighting up a few appropriately scented candles. I think the common misconception here is that you need to spend an arm and a leg on genuine Yankee Candles, but that’s not true. I was just at Michael’s the other day and they had all their big jar “knockoff” candles on sale 3 for $10, an insane deal! They even smell halfway decent too. I recommend the Pumpkin Donut in particular, but I think the real winning strategy with these candles is going to be layering. Most of these candles smell okay on their own, but if you light up two or three scents simultaneously, you’re in for a Fall scented, sensory explosion! Use your best judgment and mix scents that make sense. Or don’t. It’s really up to you!

Phantasm

The tricky thing about celebrating Halloween early is making sure you aren’t completely burnt out on it by the time October 31st rolls around. I’ve heard so many people naively think that there’s no way they could possibly get sick of their favorite holiday, but you certainly run the risk! I like to take this into consideration every year and make sure I’m saving the real “meat and potatoes” for October. So what does one watch for two whole months before popping in the classics? Phantasm of course! I think it’s great to acknowledge that while we’re ready for a change of scenery, it is still Summer after all (technically), and Phantasm bridges that gap quite nicely. There’s something about the movie that just works for this time of year. It gives you that great ‘in-between’ seasons feeling - the shots of the red planet feel like a late Summertime heat wave, and the night time shots at the cemetery feel like something you’d experience on a cool, early Autumn evening. While I love all the Phantasm sequels (yes, even Ravager) I really think that the original is the one you want to put on at this time of year.

As a bonus, here are a few more of our favorite pre-ween movies to bridge the gap! Child’s Play 2, The ‘Burbs, Darkness Falls, Pet Sematary, Fright Night (remake…yes really), and Beetlejuice... who could forget Beetlejuice?

More Family Friendly Viewing Options

We get that not everyone can watch gory slashers all the time. For those of you with kids, or just kids at heart we have a few more options. Scooby Doo On Zombie Island is a perfect choice. With ghosts, zombies, witches, and crazy cat ladies it’s great to get you in that spooky mood, and being set in Louisiana helps bring in a bit of that warm weather vibe. Not to mention it’s one of the best Scooby Doo movies of all time. We’d also suggest Gravity Falls. This one was after our time but it’s actually a pretty good watch, lots of paranormal antics and they even managed to work in a Halloween episode (in the form of Summerween) even though the series is set over the course of summer vacation.

Build Some Props!

We here at DemBoys love a home haunt, and have been doing one almost every year in some capacity since we were in middle school. Most of our props have been hobbled together by our own two hands with a lot of help from online tutorials and duck tape! One thing we’ve learned over the years is that you want to avoid doing as much of the building during the actual Halloween season as you can. Not only does it get cold which can make prop building even more challenging, but who wants to be playing Tim the Tool Man when you could be out doing one of a million Halloween activities instead?

There are a ton of fantastic resources online to give you ideas for your home haunt props. I suggest joining a Facebook group or two, as there is a huge community willing to share information on how to make a plethora of different props, most of which require nothing more than a trip to Home Depot and a few hours on a Saturday afternoon. If you’re not into Facebook, then I’d suggest checking out some YouTube videos on the subject (I’ve listed one below to start you off) or my personal favorite, the incredibly underrated documentary, The American Scream. This documentary was directed by the kid from Troll 2 (a DemBoys approved film if there ever was one) as he follows 3 families in Massachusetts throughout the Halloween season, showing the progression of their home haunts leading up to October 31st. If you have any interest at all in the prop/haunted house side of Halloween, this documentary is essential viewing!

Make A Seasonal Playlist

One of our absolute favorite ways to get into the spooky spirit is to make your very own Halloween playlist! This is one that we cannot emphasize enough, because creating your very own Halloween playlist every year helps set the mood for each and every season. We really do recommend making a fresh one each year, and trying to stick with a distinct theme as you go along. Last year for example we stuck with pretty standard Halloween fare - a spooky assortment of songs that blended well with the season in a classic fashion. Songs like Thriller, Somebody’s Watchin’ Me and The Monster Mash played on a loop to give us a very traditional holiday. This year we’re taking our season in a completely different direction by creating a playlist filled with things like Type O Negative, White Zombie and Korn to give us a more “Halloween 1999” feeling. It may seem like a silly thing to limit yourself to a theme, but it’s actually quite fun and it requires you to think outside of the box. The Halloween season can run all of us ragged by the end, so this is a fun and relatively inexpensive way to get a bit more life out of the season. I’ll link both of our Halloween playlists below to give you a bit of inspiration while working on your own!

Well, that’s about all we have for you in regards to the “pre” Halloween season. We hope that we’ve been able to inspire you to look for the little things to get every last ounce of spooky goodness out of the short time we’re allowed every year to let our inner monsters roam free! If you have any more fun traditions that we might have missed, be sure to let us know down below.

Grab Digital or physical copies of some of the movies we recommended by clicking below

Physical	Digital

Pre Halloween Prep!