Monday, October 3, 2016

Nightmare on Query Street 2016 Free Pass

Contests are subjective. I like to take some of that out of the equation with an equalizer like a free pass! It lets someone who might not make the finals go before agents and get help from mentors. This is one of my favorite parts about any contest I help host. 





So let's talk about this opportunity.

All you need to do is leave a comment on this post and use the rafflecopter to be entered. Everyone gets a free entry. There will be other extra entry options that you can skip or use for bonus chances.

Something a little harder this year. I want you to describe your favorite Halloween decoration you put out every year or maybe one you had as a child. Give me that description below in a comment, then use the rafflecopter to record that you entered. It can be scary or not. No extra bonus points but extra fun if you want to send me a picture of the decoration on twitter (@Michelle4Laughs) under #NoQS. I'll RT and share them.

I know some people don't decorate, so you can take a picture of an item at your local store next time you're shopping. (Note: I'm not asking you to buy anything, just get ideas there.) I won't be rating you on your ability with words, so relax and have fun with it.

Here's the little doodad I got at the our Blueberry Festival. I'm not sure what it is, but it looks to be a mix between a creepy egg boy and a sad zombie. I needed a decoration that wasn't a pumpkin because I sadly lack variety. :-) 




It's been brought to my attention that some countries don't celebrate Halloween. I offer my condolences at missing all the free candy. But we want to hear from you, too! Instead, please comment with a description of a popular holiday unique to your country. Let us know what we are missing. 

This will run from today until October 10th when the rafflecopter will pick one winner. The Free Pass winner will bypass the slush and become one of Michelle's Minions for Nightmare on Query Street. They will work with a mentor to polish and then be entered in the agent round, where 25 agents will read their work.

Don't forget to use the rafflecopter if you comment or your entry will not be processed.

And that's it!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

96 comments:

  1. A giant black widow spider, complete with legs as long as a Volkswagen beetle

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  2. A wreath on my front door with all of the Nightmare before Christmas characters. :D

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  3. I'm a huge Disney fan and I love,love,love the haunted mansion at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland. So obviously, my favorite Halloween decorations are a haunted mansion snow globe and Nightmare Before Christmas ornaments.The snow globe's hitchhiking ghosts glow and shimmy back and forth to the tune of Grim,Grinning Ghosts.

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  4. I hang cutout garlands of black ravens and Jack o Lanterns in all the windows and light orange pillar candles.

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  5. Pumpkins. Every year, we carve intricate pumpkins. Some scary, some funny, but everyone one given ample attention. Last year's theme was scary movies (Pennywise, Jason, and Sam - from Trick 'r Treat).

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  6. We had a stuffed candycorn smiley guy I used to like staring at that still sits on our tv speakers every fall

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  7. Every year we carve pumpkins. Lots. Creations vary, but every year there is a puking pumpkin (seeds and pumpkin guts spewing out of his mouth).

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    1. As a child, coming home from school, there would be a day when I would see the two poseable cardboard skeletons in the front window signaling that Halloween was just around the corner. From that point forward I would change the pose on the skeleton every morning before school and without fail, when I returned home later in the day, my mom would have changed them to a different pose. This went on every day until Halloween (my favorite holiday then).

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  9. Carved Jack'o'lanterns with flickering candles inside ��

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  10. As a kid, my family rarely celebrated Halloween. But we did carve pumpkins! We'd post in the mirror and concoct all sorts of crazy faces, have our mom snap a photo, and then "help" Dad carve it into our pumpkins. We came up with a few doozies!

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  11. As a child, coming home from school, there would be a day when I would see the two poseable cardboard skeletons in the front window signaling that Halloween was just around the corner. From that point forward I would change the pose on the skeleton every morning before school and without fail, when I returned home later in the day, my mom would have changed them to a different pose. This went on every day until Halloween (my favorite holiday then).

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  12. My mom has these little stuffed ornaments. Satin, colorful. They're only the size of the palm of my hand. A white ghost, a green-faced witch with a black dress and orange-striped socks, and a black bat with orange eyes. She's had them since I was a kid. I keep trying to steal them, but every time I'm home she searches my bags, making sure I don't abscond with them! *Sigh.*

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  13. I'm lucky to have a mother who is super crafty and loves to make holiday decorations! Almost every Halloween decoration in my house was given to me by her. Cute and cheap, two of my favorite things. My favorite decoration right now are three cases that were covered in cream paper. Each vase has a letter cut out of the paper, which spells out Eek.

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  14. One Halloween decoration is out so far at my house. It is a Ty Beanie Baby pumpkin guy. I remember my son young and trick or treating when I see it. He is 28 now and trick or treats with his two children. Ah, the memories a little bit of orange and green stuffing holds.

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  15. We weren't big Halloween people-- largely bc my parents live in the middle of nowhere-- but we ARE candy people. My mom picks up candy corn and Halloween-colored Reese's and Hershey minis by the pound every year and fills candy dishes and mason jars, and I've always loved how bright and cheerful it looked (until I singlehandedly devoured it all).

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  16. When my husband and I were dating, he had a tarantula as a pet, which terrified me. For Halloween one year, I bought him a basketball-sized, stuffed spider with red eyes and yellow stripes. I perch it on top of our couch every year at Halloween, and every year there is at least once that I scare myself when seeing out from the corner of my eye.

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  17. I used to have this beautiful vine of pumpkins I would wind around the wooden slats on my porch above a pile of real pumpkins. The tops of each pumpkin had little windy leaves and mini-vines to end authenticity. They've since seen better days, so my porch looks a little lonely this time of year. *Heads to Etsy for replacements*

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  18. I've loved Halloween since my earliest memories. My favorite decorations were, and still are, carved pumpkins, though I've added headstones and witchy items over the years. I love scary, but not too scary. This year I added a scary garden gnome.

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  19. I have an incredible skull from Cabo San Lucas for Dia de los Muertos! It's a new addition but follows a long tradition of decorating with skulls for Halloween. Skurry stuff!

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  20. We have a dog skeleton that talks when you get close to it. It looks a lot like our chihuahua that died a few years ago, and my children are convinced it's him!

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  21. One of my favorite Halloween decorations was actually these little bright orange plastic bags that could be filled with paper and be shaped into grinning jack-o-lanterns. We'd leave them in the bushes, and sometimes on the steps. In the dark, those things scared me as much as they scared the kids!

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  22. My favorite Halloween decoration has always been the Jack O'lantern ever since my older brother and I would pick out the pumpkin, draw out the face we wanted and cut it out. I'm a sucker for the classics.

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  23. My sons have these hideous realistic looking pose-able rats which I truly hated at first. But when my cat actually pounced on one, I grew to like them and hunt them down to set out yearly.

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  24. You can't beat a traditional pumpkin with a proper flickery candle.

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  25. My mom has a face mask where one side is painted black and the other side is painted white. When I was a child, she would put it on and freak me out. I am now in my 30s and my mom is in her 70s. She still has that mask and sends me a text of her wearing it every Halloween. It still freaks me out.

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  26. My favorite decoration was a stuffed black cat I'd been given, which I named Mogget (after Mogget from the Abhorsen series). Sadly, Mogget disappeared years ago.

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  27. When my daughter was four years old she surprised me by making her own Halloween decorations. They were just two pieces of typing paper she colored with markers. One was entirely orange with a jack-o-lantern face. The other was white with a ghost face. They were so amazing for a four-year-old that O rolled them to make paper lanterns. Ten years later, they are wrinkled and worn, but we still pull them out and roll them into lanterns every year. I should laminate them this year...

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  28. Pumpkin with a family of ghosts carved into it.

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  29. If I had the time, energy and money - my house would be a haunted house I could charge admission to! Sadly - I'm kind of lame (sad lol), so my go-to decoration is webbing. My front porch is always extra cob-webby during October. :)

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  30. My family doesn't celebrate Halloween, but I do devour in all the delicious candy (I probably give my dentist a Christmas bonus after my visit). When I was five my mom got me a pumpkin she bought for Fall. You flip the top of the stem and the candy comes flying out!

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  31. Halloween was never a big deal in my family, but I always did like carving pumpkins.

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  32. For Halloween, I like to bring out the Daruma wishing doll that a dear friend brought back for me from Japan. The pâpier-maché head is painted in red, black, and gold, except for the eyes, which are left blank (making it a bit scary-looking and somewhat akin to a jack o'lantern). The tradition is to for the recipient to paint in one eye to represent a goal and then paint in the other eye when the goal is achieved. I haven't painted the eyes, not because I don't have goals(!), but because I think it's beautiful as is—and like keeping eyes open to any possibility.

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  33. Australia is one of those countries that largely doesn't celebrate Halloween...though there was a brief surge of interest about five years ago, but it quickly died...to the extent that I decorated and had a bowl of candy ready last year, and not one person knocked! Maybe I decorated too scary...there were giant spiders and cobwebs. Some were even fake.

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  34. My favorite Halloween decoration is a little plastic Jack-o-Lantern on a stick with a solar panel on the back so it can glow at night. We never really celebrated Halloween, but my parents bought it for me as a kid because I would make a face like a Jack-o-Lantern when they asked me what Halloween looked like.

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  35. I have a black Halloween tree with orange, globe-shaped lights. I decorate it with a collection of Halloween ornaments I have gotten over the years on vacations, my honeymoon, etc. I live in the woods and when my family and I take a walk every night after supper we love to see the lights shining through the trees.

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  36. I only do one Halloween decoration: Indian Corn. It's simple, natural and non-commercial. When the season ends, the squirrels eat it.

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  37. My favourite Halloween decoration wasn't so much a decoration as it was a prop. My parents had a cassette player and an amazingly scary soundtrack they always played, with all the lights off, and came to the door in scary costumes to terrify the neighbourhood kids. Loved it every year!

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  38. My kids love Curious George's Halloween special about No-Noggin (scarecrow that lost its head), so now when I put up our old scarecrow--its straw hair is falling out; its hat coming unglued; an eye is missing--they love it, because they're waiting to see if it will lose its head. <3

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  39. I have a little stuffed werewolf named Anatole with a t shirt reading "Happy Howloween!" I also have a ceramic crow in a pumpkin with springs for legs.
    Thanks!

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  40. I have always been an anxious person, so my mom was nice enough to only put out fall decorations and not scary ones. But I absolutely loved the pumpkins and crafts that we created together. And the tradition still stands :)

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  41. We didn't really decorate much, but my favorite decoration is a light-up Jack-o-Lantern we put in the front window. I prefer the cuter side of Halloween. :)

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  42. I have this giant ceramic candy bowl that I bought when I rented my first place more than a decade ago. It's hand painted with candy corn and witches feet and little wrapped candies--it just has so much movement in the illustrations! Now my own kids love it! It's festive and fun without being spooky!

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  43. There was no Halloween in Germany when I was a child. But what we did have was St Nicolas Day on December 6. Though his day is celebrated in all of Germany, the following custom is apparently only practised in my region (and is still today): kids will dress up (or not) and go from shop to shop, singing a St Nicolas song or saying a St Nicolas poem (we played the former on our recorders - the musical instruments, not a tape recorder!), and would get sweets, tangerines, nuts and the like.
    I remember my elementary school teacher warning us not to go into the homes of strangers but to only go into shops.

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  44. My favorite decoration is an oil painting of pumpkins in a field.

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  45. There are lots of creepy decorations listed here. My creepiest decoration isn’t something I can stuff into a four-dollar plastic storage container, and then hide away in the garage/attic for eleven months out of the year. It is my great-great-grandmother Elizabeth’s tombstone, which graces the fireplace in my ancestral home—face up. We try to cover it up as best we can. But when Halloween rolls around, and the real ghosts come out to play, all bets are off.

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  46. One Halloween long ago, my children and I came home to our newly remodeled house to be scared by a laughing ghost. The construction crew hung it outside our porch as a gift for the kids/joke for Mom. It's motion-sensitive. I grew to hate it more each day, but my kids loved it so much, I couldn't take it down. One year, it mysteriously vanished. I told my kids it flew up to ghost heaven. I have no photo because I did not want to immortalize it.

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  47. Our family didn't really celebrate Halloween, but we did put out the occasional pumpkin, usually mini ones I couldn't resist buying at the grocery store/farmer's market/places that sell pumpkins. We never carved them, though, sadly.

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  48. I love Halloween! It's my favorite holiday so I have lots of decorations I love, but I think my favorite memories are of my dad's outdoor speakers he made himself and the old black light he only put out for Halloween. He would blast creepy music through those speakers and the blacklight made the whole front of the house glow and he always put out luminaries leading up the driveway to the house where my mom was dressed as a ghost glowing under the black light giving out candy.

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  49. Every year I put out a display of a lighted Jack-o-Lantern, a singing ghost, a dancing skeleton, and a witch with a candle. Placed on a black tablecloth with a candy corn motif, it's a real Halloween treat!

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  50. I would have to say, my favorite halloween decoration with my own family (we never decorated as kids) is the pumpkins my kids carve. It's a great memory and we get some strange carvings!

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  51. I have a tie between two things, for two very different reasons. The first is a hand-blown glass pumpkin. We got it from a local artisan at the MD Renn Faire. I love it because it is beautiful. The second is not pretty or very grand, but it's a homemade wreath I made with my son last Halloween. He was so excited to see it hung on the door this year. It made me happy that I choose to keep it.

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  52. We didn't decorate growing up but my daughter is obsessed with Halloween! Last year my dad bought her this three foot tall jumping spider that is motion activated. She set it up in our living room and literally kept it out until mid November!

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  53. We never really decorated much in my house. But it has been a tradition to put out a carved pumpkin every year. He's usually just standard looking with ragged teeth, a wide smile, and triangle shaped eyes.

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  54. My favorite Halloween decoration was the pumpkin I carved out and put a candle in. I put it on the front porch to show trick or treaters we were open for business and handing out candy.

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  55. My dad had a glow-in-the-dark skull he'd set on his nightstand every halloween. When i got older it became tradition to hide it in my brother's bed to scare him :) he's 22 and still scared of the dark. He thinks it's my fault

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  56. My husband bought and hung a 6 foot inflatable and glowing spider by our front door for me and had it up when I got home from an SCBWI conference. It's been my favorite ever since.

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  57. Pls use @ChrisKnoblaugh. My favorite decoration was made by my dad. He took a large black plastic garbage can, and covered it with strips of black cloth forming arms and a head. He drilled a hole in the top, and rigged a pull cord so that when he pulled it the arms and a head would appear. When kids would come to our door, he would slowly stand up inside the can and silently walk up behind them. When they turned to leave, a six foot black "shadow man" was standing behind them growling menacingly. They always ran.

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  58. My favourite Halloween decoration is our Christmas lights -- we turn them on every year at Halloween. We live in a neighborhood with lots of elderly folks who aren't keen on doing Halloween, but turning on the Christmas lights mean families from all around the streets around know we've got candy ready and waiting!

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  59. My favorite Halloween decoration, as a child and now as a parent, is making my own tombstones out of cardboard boxes. We paint them gray and use Sharpies to write funny or scary lines. "I"ll be back!" etc.

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  60. My favorite Halloween decoration, as a child and now as a parent, is making my own tombstones out of cardboard boxes. We paint them gray and use Sharpies to write funny or scary lines. "I"ll be back!" etc.

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  61. My favorite Halloween decoration was always the giant spiderweb my mom would make. We had a porch that had a large 'window' area that she would tie wool string to, and she would let us help make a giant spider made of tissue paper and electric tape. Always was awesome to see while walking back from school!

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  62. Skeletons. I love skeletons. Favorite Halloween decoration ever since I was in kindergarten and saw my first one. I was such a strange kid. So imagine my delight when I learned about candy skeletons. Oh and saw Jack Skelllington. :)

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  63. A few years ago, I found a trio of skull votive holders - decorated in Day if the Dead style... but they are in the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" pose.
    They sit on my mantle every year, and they have become one of my favorite decorations.

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  64. On my jewelry box is a hollow cat figurine that I put candles in and it glows really nicely. I light it every night in October

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  65. Being Scottish, Hallowe'en was more about *Guising* (look it up!) than what you guys call trick or treat. Sadly, trick or treat seems to be taking over here as well... :(
    As I grew older, My Hallowe'en tradition was to read all of Ray Bradbury's "The Halloween Tree", and even if I couldn't get a turnip - (You have not LIVED until you've tried to make a lantern out of a turnip! This was before pumpkins invaded in the last 10 or so years) - I would always make one out of SOMETHING (usually a potato!)
    I still read The Hallowe'en Tree each year, and sometimes I broadcast it for charity on my radio show.

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  66. My comment is actually just above (Joseph Lamb) but rafflecopter would not open when I made it... sigh! ;)

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  67. My favorite Halloween decoration was when my mother transformed my childhood home into a haunted house for me and my neighbors back in New Jersey. It was a lot of fun for a young one as me and not as scary as the local community clubhouse. Wisps of white webbed and skeletons cut-outs with some pumpkins. The garage and the backyard was also decorated it as well.

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  68. Growing up in the UK Halloween wasn't such a big thing (although its getting to be now), but I have to say that doesn't mean I didn't like scary decorations. The thing I remember most was the luminous plastic skeleton my parents bought for my brother one year. It was always hanging in his room. And, if I ever went in when it was fairly dark it would scare the life out of me. As tall as a fully grown man, if there was a breeze blowing, its movable limbs would wiggle in the breeze. A fair few times I'd find it hanging in my own room, ready to make me jump.

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  69. My family never decorated much for Halloween, but every year without fail, we always get together to carve Jack-O-Lanterns. I'm still not very good at it, and my octopus last year looked more like a cyclops, but I love doing it! And the seeds are a plus.

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  70. Got an ancient porcelain pumpkin my parents had. Stick a candle inside and leave on porch. After all this time, no one's broken it!

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  71. My favorite decorations are hand-blown art glass pumpkins and gourds that I arrange on our fireplace. I bought the first one (about 3" tall and signed by the artist) about 5 years and now have a total of 8, the tallest of which is about 9". Every year I try to add at least 1 to my collection.

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  72. We carve happy pumpkins and leave them on the front porch a week ahead of Halloween. For the next week, the squirrels move in (like Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater) and gnaw away at the insides. By Halloween, the pumpkins look like ghouls.

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  73. We don't decorate. But if I COULD go buy stuff and decorate I'd put sugar skulls everywhere. They're my favorite.

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  74. My favorite Halloween decoration is ANYTHING at Disneyland during Halloween! ;)

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  75. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  76. Growing up, my dad would put out a giant ogre costume in front of our house. One year, he got into the costume and scared the older kids who came to our door. We were definitely the scariest house in the neighborhood that year.

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  77. My fave Halloween decoration is a teapot shaped like a pumpkin. (couldn't figure out how to post a pix of it here though).

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  78. I've always loved jack-o-lanterns. When I was a kid we would draw faces on the pumpkins with sharpies and scoop out the seeds and then my dad would cut out the shapes we had drawn. Then we would roast the pumpkin seeds to snack on. :)

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  79. We have a little ghost, probably about 6 inches tall. He's half opaque, so when you switch it on he lights up dimly. He also has a big, silly that my kids love.

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  80. A cute small skeleton made from cadaver bones!

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  81. Every Halloween my family make and hang a scary life size effigy from the porch. On Nov. 05th we burn it on a bonfire to commemorate the capture of Guy Fawkes, a mercenary who plotted to overthrow our King and blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.

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  82. At my workplace, some of my co-workers love to put out that candy bowl with motion sensor that has a mechanical hand that tries to smack you when you reach for the candy. I always loved trying to sneak candy away without tripping the sensor.

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  83. My favorite Halloween decoration had to be a giant three-foot stuffed bat with an abnormally creepy face. Somehow, I convinced my father to get it one year, but unknown to my parents at the time, I didn’t see it as a Halloween decoration. I saw it as a friend, and I insisted it stay in my room all year long.

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  84. I had a 3-foot tall anatomically correct skeleton we used for home-schooling. My mother and I named it Fred George, and I would always dress it up in a costume for Halloween, peeking out the front window.

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  85. We used to make black and orange paper chains to string all over the house. But then again, we made paper chains for everything :)

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  86. Our favorite decorations are the jack-o-lanterns carved by our kids. Their imaginations run off and it's great to see the different designs each year.

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  87. You can't have Halloween without bats!

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  88. Every year I make a new pentacle for the house out of random things found in the yard during October. It doesn't live long, the yearly pentacle, but it decorates the door or stoop until the November bonfire. Last year, flowers were the main material. A purple and black ribbon blew into the yard this morning that will join the twigs and branches.

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  89. We didn't decorate because we lived in an apartment, but I loved going to other people's houses and seeing what they did. In particular, I liked simple ghosts made of sheets and lights. They always spooked me out.

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  90. My favorite Halloween decoration was a cat. Not just any cat. A large inflatable cat that sat with its tail wrapped around a gravestone and the following spooky words scrawled across it: Hershey's Candy. Okay, so perhaps it wasn't spooky. It did mean a lot to me though. I had just moved into my first house and had little in the way of decorations. I was new to the neighborhood and both nervous and excited. I was also very broke, so although I wanted to decorate for Halloween that year, I simply couldn't afford to.

    Then one kind neighbor who worked for Hershey's gave me the cat. They also gave me a giant pumpkin that liked to roll away with every gust of wind, but that's a whole different story. The cat was cute, adorable, and best of all: shaped so that I could tie it to my house and not have to chase it down the street on windy days (unlike certain pumpkin decorations). The cat stayed strong until halloween, advertising to all the kids in the neighborhood that I would be giving away Hershey's candy.

    Unfortunately the cat did not survive long. It developed a small hole that left it with its head hanging and tail drooping the day after Halloween. I still don't know how I will top that decoration this year, and I shall not be eternally searching for another cute cat decoration to replace it.

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  91. My favorite Halloween decoration is-Mr.Dem Bones-a life-size skeleton that sticks to your door, and you can position his limbs to your fancy. Now days, he depicts my editing mood. He's not happy. Nope. But, I just made some coffee and ate a butterfinger...okay, two butterfingers. So, now he's doing a jig. He's got mad skills.

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  92. My wife and I are Disney Haunted Mansion fans. When our daughter was born I made a wood-carved silhouette of the Mansion with three ghosts hovering in the front. We added a small 4th ghost when my son was born. Kids are 12 and 16, so we've had that decoration as a family tradition for 16 years now.

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  93. We went to Dollywood recently and picked up a ghost and pumpkin created by a chain saw and paint! Can't wait to display it!

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  94. I've got a Halloween witch on my foyer table that you push down and she pops up with a wicked cackle--scary and adorable!

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  95. We used to have one of those large, adjustable limb, cardboard skeletons that my Mom hung in the picture window. Being a home of five boys, the skeleton's limbs would often be manipulated in weird and odd positions. When Mom saw people walking down our street laughing and/or pointing at the window, she would yell, "BOYS!!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NOW?"

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