The Alley Cats - Night of the Living Dead/Escape from the Planet Earth

Rare 1979 footage of band rehearsal at their studio in Los Angeles filmed by director Dennis Dragon, features classic Alley Cat songs, Night of the Living Dead and Escape from the Planet Earth.

Ghost - Secular Haze

Starting off 2013 with some music news! Two weeks ago, Ghost announced that they will be releasing their second album, Infestissumam, in the spring. Along with the announcement came a new website and the release of the new single, Secular Haze. (And it looks like you can still download the song free here!)

And if this news wasn't enough, they posted the video below on their new YouTube channel, revealing that they will have a new singer, Papa Emeritus II, for this release.

It looks like I'll have some new tunes for this year's propbuilding season. I can't wait for this release to hit the shelves!





And if you're reading this today (Jan. 19), they will be playing the P3 Guldgalan Music Awards show in Sweden. I don't know Swedish (outside of IKEA), but you can stream the show live here.

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!