Ouch! My head fell off.

Frankenstein's Bride nude

My friend John brought these photos to my attention. Photographer Aleksey Galushkov created these sexy shots of Frankenstein's Bride showing some skin. I've censored the pics, but you can see them in all their glory at the Retro Atelier.

Creepy toy photos

Artwork by Richard Edson.

Vintage Halloween masks

What a great idea! The people at CSA IMages have taken high quality photos of inexpensive masks against brightly colored backgrounds. They look beautiful!

Zombie Survival Guide

I love this attacking zombie shot of Naija Blue by Jeff Cohn!

(Click here to see more photography by Jeff. ***Warning, some of the images on his site are NSFW.)

Monster maker

George Higham is many things - a writer, sculptor, photographer, and filmmaker. If you ask him what he does though, he'll boil everything down to the very succinct phrase, "I make monsters."
Ranging in size from one inch to over seven feet tall, his monsters can be seen in many places, including on a deck of tarot cards, in a book of fiction and atop Joe Coleman's wedding cake. Check out some more of these magnificent monsters here.

Haunted Lenticulars

I love lenticulars! My house is filled with them - vintage lenticulars, advertising lenticulars, light-up lenticulars, custom lenticulars, etc. That's why I was particularly thrilled to receive a haunted lenticular for Christmas. The one I got (shown on the left) is by the folks at The Ghoulish Gallery. They are one of at least 5 companies that have started producing these types of images in recent years. While I don't know anything about the quality of these other companies products, I can tell you that the lenticular I received looks wonderful. The image is crystal clear. I couldn't be happier.

You can check out more of The Ghoulish Gallery's products at --> http://www.theghoulishgallery.com

And if you've have any firsthand experience with other haunted lenticular companies, please let me know what you thought.

Take your photos at dawn or dusk

That was the #1 tip given to me by Dave Gugel, creator of the fantastic display you see on the left. Most people make the mistake of photographing their displays during the day (when it's difficult to capture any sort of spooky "mood") or when it's already dark out (which causes obvious lighting problems and often leads to the implementation of the dreaded "camera flash"). At dawn and dusk, there's just enough light out to take your pictures easily without a flash, yet not so much light that haunted displays lose those wonderful dark shadows. Plus, being able to capture some stormy clouds in the distance is sure to add dimension and character to any photo.

To see more of Dave's display, click here.

This is how a Halloween photo should look

There are so many horrible photos of Halloween displays out there. The shots are usually blurry, or too dark, or poorly composed. If you try hunting online for high-quality photos of yard haunts, you'll likely have to dig through hundreds of shots before you come up with just a couple that are well-conceived and artistically shot.

Here's one of the good ones...

In fact, this is one of my favorite photos to come out of the 2006 Halloween season. It was taken by a very talented Oklahoma-based photographer http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/store.aspx?p=41423 and features the yard of a really nice guy who goes by "Slimy" on www.hauntforum.com