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Celebrated on the night of October 31 Halloween is an ancient tradition. Children go out trick-or-treating dressed up as anything and everything, while other popular activities include ghost tours, bonfires, fancy dress parties, staying in haunted buildings, carving pumpkins into lanterns, and of course, scary stories and horror movies also have their place. The tradition began in europe and was also carried to North America in the nineteenth century by Irish immigrants.

The festival’s origins date back to ancient Celtic festivals and in particular a festival known as Samhain. This was a celebration conducted at the end of the harvest season in the ancient Gaelic comunities. The ancient pagans would take stock of supplies to ensure they had enough to see them through the harsh winter. They would also slaughter livestock, so they had food (preserved with salt) to see them through the winter. The ancients believed that on October 31, the great boundary between the two great realms of the living and the dead would break down and the dead would drift out into the earth and cause all manner of woe for the living. The festivals would be heald to ward off the evil spirits with bonfires, costumes, masks, and sacrifices.

Nowadays we know that the dead don’t walk on Halloween… or do they?

Here are 13 links to get you in the spirit for Halloween!

Halloween Ghost Stories

Get yourself in the mood for Halloween with these ghost stories, from spooky tales to dark poetry, and from urban legends to real life hauntings, within is something for everyone.

Pumpkin Way

This website doesn’t state its purpose but it has a myriad of pumpkins. Look on and be inspired.

Pumpkin Carving

40 easy templates for carving out a pumpkin this halloween. Everything from scary faces to gravestones, this should provide ample inspiration. Best of all you can save them and print them out.

Haunt World

Hauntworld seems to contain a plethora of material about Halloween and halloween events as well as information about haunted attractions. Even the website looks suitably scary!

Halloween Mania

Halloween Mania describes itself as a site that is halloween mad! It does have a lot of information. Resources include recipies, decoration making, and pages about the history of Halloween.

Crow Game

Crow Game is a particularly creepy flash game in black and white involving scarecrows and murders of crows attacking the poor innocent scarecrows. Creepy indeed.

Buy Costumes

Costumes are all important. Making your own is a lot of fun, but sometimes we just don’t have the time to set aside to sewing and other such tasks. Proper costmes aren’t all that expensive either!

Halloween Origami

How about some Halloween Origami? Nothing beats the art of paper folding as a relaxing way to produce cheap, and interesting looking decorations. The Origami Resource Center provides links to lots of Halloween related instructions.

Terrifying Contact Lenses for Halloween

The All Techno Blog has done a great service to halloween by providing a gallery of freeky Contact and Special Effect Lenses. Some are cool, and some are terrifyingly chilling.

Creepy Pong

Great game for Halloween,

Free Halloween e-cards

Send spooky Halloween e-cards to your friends this halloween, and get everyone in the Samhain spirit.

Cannibal Themed Halloween Supper

For those who think creepy isnt creepy enough, this I make project goes into great detail about presentation of food so that it looks, um, well…. like something that Hannibal Lecter wrote the recipie for.

Haunt Forum

Still not in the Halloween mood? Chat to others at the definitively in season Haunt Forum. There’s plenty to chat about from Gatherings and Events to Costumes and Makeup, there’s thousands of threads on the go.