Farewell, 2012

So here I sit, with mere hours left until the new year, feeling somewhat nostalgic. One last post for the year with a chance to look back and recap.

First, I'd like to wish all of you in the haunt community a belated Happy Holidays! I was ready to post something fun up when I got blindsided by the flu, only to drive to the doctor's office with a 103 degree temperature and find out that I in fact had pneumonia. Five days in bed with antibiotics and I'm still trying to shake this thing off. A bit of a stain on an otherwise great year.

Here now is the Christmas funny posted one week late:




In retrospect, 2012 was a really great year for Highbury Cemetery. Scrapes and I got in a couple of great make & takes with the Northern Ohio Home Haunters Group, making foam tombstones and an incredible talking skull:

I finally got the chance to see Ghost play live in Pittsburgh (where I almost got beat up by an angry bouncer for taking these photos):

Scrapes and I went to the Midwest Haunters Convention in Columbus, Ohio and got to attend our first Masquerade Ball:

And as an added bonus, we were featured in Sic Nic's 2012 MHC Costume Ball promo video!







In October, I got to apply my first makeup on a friend:

 

Mother Nature tried her best, but Trick-or-Treat still went off, even if 3 days late (and although Highbury Cemetery was scaled back this year, we still had a fun time!):

And we were featured in the new 2013 Haunted Halloween Calendar (thanks, Hector!!)

But by far, the highlight of 2012 was in August when Mrs. Highbury and I welcomed Little Christian Highbury to the world. Our finest prop yet and already set to carry the Highbury torch for years to come!

It really has been a great year for everyone here at Highbury Cemetery and 2013 looks set to be even better! We are going to have a Little Scrapes running around, we look forward to attending MHC again this June and I've got some big, big plans to celebrate the tenth year of Highbury Cemetery. I can't wait to ring in the new year and get the new plans rolling.

Thanks again to everyone who stopped by and followed us this past year. We hope you've enjoyed our little slice of madness and we hope you come back for more! Feel free to contact us with any questions or comments and stop back often, as we intend to post more frequently in the coming year.

Now I'm off to take another antibiotic pill and start the countdown.

Everyone at Highbury Cemetery wishes you all a Happy New Year!! Only 304 more days until Halloween!!

The Nightmare Before Christmas - Tim Burton's Original Poem

A beautiful animation for the original idea of The Nightmare Before Christmas!!! Narrated by Christopher Lee.

Dennison's Bogie Book for Halloween (1920)

Highbury Cemetery, 2012

Five straight days of rain, huge time commitments at work, a last-minute weather-related rescheduling and taking care of our newborn son. Even through all of that, we still managed to pull it off. Somehow we all got together and managed to get through another incredible Halloween season. Saturday's rescheduled neighborhood trick-or-treat left many questions as we set up a scaled-down version of our haunt through some light morning rains. Would the weather ever break? Would anybody show up? Would anybody think a scaled back version of Highbury Cemetery would still be cool??

In reflecting on last night's mayhem, I can happily answer "yes" to all of the above! The skies cleared up and allowed us to run all of our lighting. We still had over 100 trick-or-treaters, neighbors and curious onlookers stop by. And we had many compliments and photo requests throughout the night.

After all of the stress of trying to get everything set up and organized, 2012 goes down in the books as another successful year for the Highbury family.

So without further ado, I present Highbury Cemetery, 2012:

A big, big thank you goes out, as always, to everyone who helped set up, scare, and then tear down this year. You all earned your shirts this year! The Golden Zombie awards go out to Sharon, Karen, Scrapes, Andrew and Neighbor Joe for helping making this year so much fun. We couldn't do it without you! 

And of course a big thanks to everyone who cooperated with the trick-or-treat reschedule and made it out to visit us. We enjoyed serving you. And especially the kids that I got to chase all the way down the street. You guys really make trick-or-treat fun!

But a special Platinum Zombie award goes out to Mrs. Highbury, who couldn't help out this year, as she had her hands full with one very special little skeleton:

I can't wait until he's old enough to become one of the members of Highbury Cemetery. I'd say he's already got the look down! 

The Delayed Countdown Is Finally On

So here it is, November 2nd. Halloween has passed with barely a whimper due to rain, rain and more rain and a last-minute rescheduling of the annual neighborhood Trick or Treat. Morale was somewhat low this year, as time constraints really put a damper on the building season and enthusiasm seemed to be waning among all of us.

But as I check the weather, tomorrow's updated forecast is actually calling for sun and dry skies. A look at the clock tells me that in a mere 20 hours, the highlight of the entire season will finally commence.

Highbury Cemetery will rise again.

The props are neatly organized in the basement and garage and a rough drawing of what goes where is almost done. The lights are all set and ready to go and all of the animated props that we are using are fully functional (at least for now). A few minor finishing touches and tomorrow the cemetery will once again spring to life. We will finally have our trick or treat.

It has been a strange Halloween season thus far. With the addition of our newest cemetery member, I really struggled with a shortened list of props to put up this year. I had a tough time admitting that I'd have to put a smaller haunt up. But maybe it's just what I needed. My gloom is turning the corner and I'm viewing this as a chance to hit the rest button. It will give me a chance to step back and re-evaluate everything we have. After a closer examination and a year to plan, I really think 2013 could be a breakout year for us. It will be our tenth year, so I really want to take it to the next level.

But that's 363 more days away. I've got a show to do in 20 hours!


I wanted to do a quick recap of a few things I had been gathering before I call it a night and prepare for tomorrow's transformation.

To start, I was really excited to do my first makeup job. I have been doing my own zombie makeup for years, but oddly enough I have never done makeup for anyone else. So last Saturday, I got the chance. A friend had seen a few of my zombie faces from years past and wanted one of her own. So I gathered up my kit and went to work. I had roughly two hours to get it done and I was actually really happy with what I came up with:

Before:

After:

I also had a chance to sit down tonight and watch the new Chiller home haunter documentary, The American Scream. I wasn't sure what to expect, as the previews had me thinking that it portrayed home haunters as a bunch goofballs (oh wait, what? We are a bunch of goofballs??), but after watching it I was very surprised. I really, really liked it. In searching for a word that best describes it, I actually have to say "heartwarming." Each of the guys who were featured had their quirks and at times it was a little bit hard to watch, but the film did an excellent job of revealing the down-to-earth nature of each of them and their reasons for why they do what they do every Halloween. It's funny because I think I could have just as easily been in that documentary, as my reasons are the same: family and fun!

And finally, I'd like to thank everyone who stopped by and helped us celebrate the annual Countdown to Halloween. We didn't post every day, but we sure had fun sharing our little nuggets when we did post. We had a ton of visitors and we even picked up some new followers. We hope you enjoyed what we had to offer up. I have a few more posts that I need to get to, so stop by again. We'll keep this party going until that lesser holiday with lights and decorated trees and some other things we know nothing about is here! :)

Now I'm going to end this post with some traditional Halloween music. Samhain, The Misfits, and of course, Jan Terri! Highbury Cemetery 2012 photos will be up early next week. See you then!

Happy Halloween!