September 28, 2015 — The Halloween Season may be mostly defined by weather and harvest and changing leaves, but often the best place to find the season is in the cold, sterile software of the Internet. Below, I've corralled links to recent news stories, upcoming events, random blog posts, and media from across the web, all related to This Dark Season. So—as inappropriate a verb as it is for this time of year—let's surf some Halloween:
1. This year, the General Mill's monster cereals come with one of three box gimmicks (phone game, glow-in-the-dark masks, or a building a castle from the boxes), depending on where you buy them.
2. Check out these New Yorker Halloween covers over the years.
3. There's a Halloween Book Festival on October 3 in Massachusetts.
4. The Frankenstein light switch will make you scream, "It's Alive!" every time you flick it.
5. The Onion skewers Fall people.
6. "Now That's What I Call Music" unveils its first ever Halloween album. And it's pretty good.
7. For Halloween, an Amsterdam club is having a Blade-style blood shower rave.
8. ABC Family's 13 Nights of Halloween is...what it always is.
9. The Purple Stuff, a short, laid-back Halloween podcast worth checking.
10. Guy goes in search of the new Starburst Halloween Mix.
11. Halloween is catching on in Japan.
12. Vincent Price's cook book has been reissued and timed with Halloween.
13. Halloween at The Stanley Hotel (of The Shining infame) looks like a blast.
14. A photo tour of this year's Scare L.A. Halloween convention.
15. Del Monte is actively promoting its bananas as a "healthy alternative to candy." Ha.
16. The director behind the in-production Halloween Returns talks all things Michael Myers.
17. I'm just going to use the original headline here: "9,000-Year-Old Decapitated Skull Covered in Amputated Hands."
18. A look at the English town where Bram Stoker started Dracula.
19. Universal Studios Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights is 25 years old.
20. Check out this NASA photo of the Witch Head Nebula.
21. Here's a Kickstarter for what seems an extremely legit Hollywood Horror Museum.
22. The full story of the disappearance and return of Disney's Hatbox Ghost.
23. The Chicago Field Museum is touring its mummies for the first time in its history.
24. The Wall Street Journal, of all places, gets in on the Halloween fun with tips for turning your home into a haunt.
25. The Villain Spelltacular Show at Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, featuring the Sanderson Sisters of Hocus Pocus.