Houseful of Halloween - Page 3

Sourcing the ideal Halloween music is an important part of haunting your home or bringing a creepy display to life. Recordings of classic mid-century movie and TV show themes can play a huge part in setting up the ambience. Don't forget Bobby 'Boris' Pickett's famous 1962 hit, 'Monster Mash'—"it's a graveyard smash!"

"Classics like the surf guitar sound of the Munsters theme...or Lurch's harpsichord will always inspire chills," says El Gato Gomez. "Anything with a harpsichord really just makes my brain tingle.

"I love Halloween novelty records too, especially spoken-word stuff and sound effects records. The album covers of those records are the epitome of retro Halloween perfection."

The most unforgettably haunting sounds we associate with Halloween are the eerie strains of the theremin. An electronic instrument invented by Leon Theremin a century ago, the theremin relies on invisibly bending electromagnetic fields, lending a 'tone of worldly dread' to everything, from creepy soundtracks to spooked-out Halloween houses.

You've heard the theremin's otherworldly sound in the 1994 movie Ed Wood, in the Beach Boys' classic 'Good Vibrations,' and in '50s sci-fi and horror movies like Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. The sound of a theremin can creep out a graveyard like nothing else.

Creating your own mid-century modern-style Halloween is great fun—and you don't have to get fancy to pull together cool, retro-style Halloween decorations.

Last Halloween, Dante Pascual, an Eichler owner in the Balboa Highlands tract of Granada Hills, decorated the front of his home with a simple, yet cleverly designed ghost.

"I couldn't just create the ghost-made-of-bedsheets," he says. "I thought that the ubiquitous [overhead] Eichler ball light could double not only as the ghost's head but also illuminate the sheet from within."

Cutting the eyes and mouth from black construction paper, Pascual recalls that he must have made ten different shapes for the mouth until settling for the right one, inspired by Japanese TV character Domo the monster.

To decorate the steps of his Eichler, Pascual carved one of his favorite characters, Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas. He added to the vignette a 'Jack O' Bauer' lantern, from a limited production run by Bauer Pottery that they produce each year.

To keep costs down, Denise Albertini buys online, or at local stores like Spirit Halloween. "I'm very old fashioned—nothing bloody, scary…We have a 12-foot-tall skeleton that Home Depot sold one year. His name is Tiny. He's a kick!"