Taken a look around your neighborhood lately? Then you certainly know that colorful lights aren’t just for the Christmas tree anymore. And singing Santas aren’t the only holiday decorations making noise.
Americans are spending big money on Halloween costumes, candy and decorations: an expected $3.29 billion this year, reports the National Retail Federation. Nearly half the people in this country plan to decorate their front yards, too, the group says.
And kids are guiding most of those purchases and decorating decisions. Kids’ buying power expected to exceed $51.8 billion by 2006, says Naomi Secor of Kid Power Xchange, a youth marketing research firm.
This year kids have more shopping choices than ever to really tech out their holiday: Fiber-optic lights for decorations, costumes and trick-or-treat bags; fog machines for front porches; and pumpkin strobes that make a plain old candle seem so old school.
From scary movies with special effects to spirited video games to creepy tunes for your iPod, there are loads of wired ways to enjoy Halloween:
COSTUMES
Stock up on batteries
For an extreme Halloween, lights–and sounds–really take costumes to the next level. But using this technology is fairly new.
Fiber optics first began appearing in costumes around 1999, says Courtland Hickey, general manager of Chicago Costume in Lincoln Park. Now it is so widely used you can buy a Superman suit with a glowing “S,” a set of sparkling fairy wings and a Cinderella gown that really twinkles.
Some of the most popular costumes this year also have light-up accessories to give you a glow: “Star Wars” light sabers, princess crowns and “Harry Potter” lanterns.
What if you’d rather be heard than seen? Check out the Shrek get-up that breaks wind. Or, one of the most popular costumes this year, Darth Vader, whose helmet includes a sound box that emits a creepy breathing noise. Feeling wild? Hats shaped like dogs, cats and monkeys also make animal sounds.
But buyer beware: Many costume shops don’t take returns, only exchanges. And some stores stop taking exchanges close to Halloween. So Hickey recommends that kids test out the costume in the shop and keep extra batteries at home in case the old ones are duds.
No cash for talking, light-up costumes? Add your own tech touches, says Emerald City Theatre Co. costume designer L. Nicholas Saubers. Kids can buy strings of battery-operated lights from stores such as Ikea, he says. They are smaller than Christmas tree lights, and can be sewn into a costume.
For sound, Saubers suggests using the sound boxes from “talking” yard decorations. “You can easily take the sound box out and incorporate it into any costume,” he says. Saubers recommends sewing the boxes into your costume.
GADGETS
Hand-held howlings
Plastic trick-or-treating pumpkins used to be the definition of hand-held Halloween. Now kids can download Halloween tunes to MP3 players, get in the spirit with haunted video games and even order costumes to dress up their cell phones.
Rock out to Halloween music while you carve pumpkins or set up a smoking caldron in your front yard. iTunes has a “Thrills and Chills” section (in soundtracks) where music lovers can download Halloween hits such as “This Is Halloween” from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Banned from movies that aren’t PG? Download soundtracks such as “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and you can still get groovy.
Kids who want something that’s more fun than frightening can download songs from “The Munsters” and “The Addams Family.” There’s also Michael Jackson’s ’80s classic, “Thriller.”
Up for some spooky action on the very small screen? For your GameBoy Advance, there’s “Castlevania,” in which players battle bats, ghosts, mummies and zombies. In “Spirits and Spells,” kids can alternate between a girl disguised as a witch and a boy dressed as a devil as they investigate haunted areas.
In “Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King,” players become the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town.
And if you’re dressing up, you’ll want your trusty cell phone to have a nice costume too. Choose from such cute animals as Oinky the Pig, Taz from Looney Tunes or a fuzzy donkey (ExtremeHalloween.com, $10.95).
Fuzzy get-up for your phone just a bit too much? See if your cell phone company has any Halloween-inspired ring tones to download.
DECORATIONS
Electrify your yard with a spooky setting
Gustavo M., 9, of Cicero loves to see his yard turned into a spooky setting. His family has a mechanical ghost that mumbles and shrieks “Boo!” “You just push the button,” Gustavo says.
But often the ghost seems a little too real and scares Gustavo’s brother and cousin. “Sometimes you don’t have to push the button. [The ghost will] just hear you and say ‘Boo,’ ” Gustavo says.
Halloween is full of decorations that howl and flash: Fiber-optic skulls, blinking witches, solar-powered pumpkins, motion-controlled skeletons.
Homemade headstones also can be a cool way to creep out your lawn–until it gets dark and no one can see them. But light them up and add some sound, and your decorations jump from so-so to spooky.
Use battery-operated lights to avoid a long, obvious extension cord, says costume designer L. Nicholas Saubers. You also can light a grave by propping a flash-light behind the headstone to give it a ghoulish glow, or, if your yard already has small lawn lights, position the headstones in front of the lights, he says.
Colored lights can be cool too. To create individual colored lights, wrap colored plastic food wrap around a flashlight. Or get a clear, colored plastic folder from a school-supply store and place it in front of the flashlight. But make sure the folder is see-through. “Otherwise, you’ll just light up the plastic, it won’t throw color,” Saubers says.
Terrifying tunes can really add to the atmosphere. Want to make the trick-or-treaters nervous? Open a window near your scary scene, then park your iPod in a docking station that connects to a home stereo and place it by the window. (Mac sells them for about $40.) Or push your laptop up to the window and play tunes from your computer.
Check out the soundtrack to “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” for a good scare. And the soundtrack to “The Corpse Bride” has haunting piano parts.
And don’t forget the fog ma-chines–they can add an eerie effect for little money. Saubers says party foggers cost about $20 and go “a long way.”
MOVIES
Screen screams
Ever watch an old horror movie? The special effects can be so not scary. Like a zombie popping out of a grave or a skeleton tapping someone on the shoulder. Boring.
In the 1922 silent movie “Nosferatu,” the shadows of a long-fingered vampire creep up a staircase. Maybe it scared early movie fans, but now it seems as scary as The Count from Sesame Street.
But fast-forward to modern times, and new technology really ups the scream factor. The dead folks trying to talk to Cole (Haley Joel Osment) in the 1999 movie “The Sixth Sense” weren’t lame zombies. They all had fresh wounds from dying that looked terrifyingly real.
Realistic horror movies scare Leah P., 13, of Chicago too much. When the girls in her Scout troop rent movies for their annual Halloween sleepover, they have to make sure the films are neither too scary nor too hokey. “We’re having problems coming up with movies,” Leah says.
Kids who frighten easily might want to go for the gross factor. “Beetlejuice” isn’t scary, and plenty of PG picks, such as “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “The Addams Family” and the “Harry Potter” series, will give kids goose bumps but not nightmares.
Freaky films don’t frighten you? “Poltergeist II” is rated PG-13 and takes place in a Chicago high-rise where ghosts haunt a young girl.
PUMPKINS
Groovy gourds
Leah P., 13, of Chicago carves faces, words and creepy stuff, such as spiders, into her pumpkins. They look great, she says, until a squirrel has a snack. At her old house, “the day you put your pump-kin out, it was ruined,” she says.
Technology today can help thwart those hungry varmints. Craft stores sell realistic-looking plastic pumpkins you can carve and put on display with battery-operated lights.
Want to give your pumpkins, real or fake, some extra attitude? Try some strobe lights. Pumpkin Masters sells a Pumpkin Strobe Light for $4.99 at Target and Walgreen’s. This softly lit, five-bulb strobe makes the pumpkin look as if there is a flickering candle inside. For a stronger light show, pop in the Ultimate Strobe Light, also $4.99.
If strobes aren’t in your budget, you still can get a unique effect with backlighting. Light the pumpkin from behind with a flashlight, says Emerald City Theatre Co. costume designer L. Nicholas Saubers. “Point it at the back of the pumpkin so it looks like it’s glowing instead of a flashlight just shining out,” he says.
Tired of the same old grinning gourd? Saubers recommends carving six or seven pumpkins to lead up your front walk. “As you get closer to the door, make the faces look more worried,” he says, “like the pumpkins are scared to be there too.”
