Apple Bobbing

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I love Halloween. It’s the best time of the year.
The candy. The costumes. The cool breeze in the air.
Most of all, I love apple bobbing.
Fill a washtub with water, toss in a few apples, put your hands behind your back, and then try to catch an apple with your mouth.
It’s so fun!
Ever tried other fruits?
Bananas are way too easy.
Watermelons are just too big.
No, it’s best to stick to apples.
I know one guy who likes to bob for lobsters, but that’s taking “choose your lobster from the tank” a little too far.

Vlad

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They called Count Vlad a crossdressing pervert.
He likes to wrap himself in bandages and sleep in an Egyptian-style coffin.
“They think I am a mummy,” he laughs. “While my assassins hunt for canopic jars with my vitals or try to torch my body, I just laugh and smile.”
I asked him about the dress, heels, and lipstick.
“That’s none of your business!” he hissed.
Tonight, he goes with a red wig.
“It’s my lucky hair,” he says, and walks out into the night.
He won’t have much trouble getting blood tonight at the bar.
Crossdressers eat that look up.

Axe Murderer

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The judge banged his gavel and called the court to order.
“Fred Axemurderer, you are charged with two counts of first degree murder. How do you plead?”
A blood-soaked figure in torn overalls and a hockey mask stood up.
“Well, let’s see,” he said. “You have my axe over there. Next to it, videotapes of the murders. Beside that, my signed confession. What more do you want?”
All the while, Fred’s attorney was shouting “HE PLEADS NOT GUILTY BY REASON OF INSANITY!”
You see, only a crazy man would give up the massive revenue potential of a sequel. Or two.

Salad Life

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Before he made monsters, Dr. Frankenstein started with trying to bring salads to life.
At first, he thought that he needed different varieties of lettuce, but in the end he was thoroughly convinced that sliced radishes were the secret.
Time and time again, Igor would throw the switches, sending millions of volts of electricity through a tangled maze of wires and into the salad bowl.
Aside from an impressive shower of sparks, the salad never did come to life.
Today, salad dressing makers try to convince us they have the secret.
No, folks. It’s just a salad. Nothing fancy here.

Cursed Town

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They say Westchester’s a cursed town. I wouldn’t know.
I was sent here to computerize the county’s record-keeping. Getting all those stacks of marriages, births, and deaths from the old ledgers to my laptop for processing down in Albany.
Three days in, The Town Hall burnt to the ground.
Here’s the weird part… everyone ever born in Westchester vanished like smoke. As if they’d never existed.
And everyone who ever died and got buried here, well, they weren’t dead anymore.
Not a problem for those not born. But the rest, well…
Damn Zombies make you wish you’d never been born.

The Burning

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The townspeople burnt the old witch at the stake.
She went up like a pile of kindling.
They tossed her spellbooks on the flames. Spellbooks are just paper, so they burned quickly.
Then they tossed her broom on the pyre.
Big mistake. Brooms have a hell of a lot of magic in them, so what they did was just like throwing a box of dynamite on a bonfire.
That was the last witch that town burnt. There was nobody left to burn the witches.

The Mad King

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King Rasmussen The Mad
For centuries, that name has haunted us.
If you listen carefully, you can still hear his living corpse shout and scream bloody murder from within his ruined castle.
Trapped inside a warlock’s time-bubble, his dying moment has been preserved for all eternity.
Sure, by law, he is still king. And we must obey his orders.
So that’s why we have hired deaf laborers to seal him up forever. They are filling in the cracks of the castle, and then they will pile dirt on the stone
Maybe we’ll plant some apple trees when it’s all over.

Haunts Me

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My little girl was shrieking. Confused.
Her back legs were limp. She fell off the bed, dragging herself.
Scared beyond description.
I called my wife, called a cab, got dressed. Got her into a carrier and out the door.
The emergency clinic said it was a blood clot. They’d try to thin it with drugs.
When they took her in back, I heard her meowing her “WHERE’S DADDY?” cry.
Go home, they said. Sleep. Come back to check her into the day clinic.
Two hours later, they called.
I should have been there for her.
And that’s what haunts me.

Holiday Decorations

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Don’t believe everything you see in the movies, kid.
These ghosts in the dining room were a part of our Halloween celebration.
Seems it’s pretty easy to twist ghosts out of phase with the netherworld and bring them into ours.
Spooky, aren’t they? They sure make great decorations.
For Halloween, that is.
Getting rid of ghosts, well, that’s not so easy.
And there’s no exorcists or Ghostbusters you can call to get rid of them.
That’s why we’ve got ghosts for Thanksgiving this year.
Maybe they’re Pilgrim ghosts?
Or Indians
Just ignore them, and help me peel these potatoes, okay?

Pumpkin Carving

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Okay, a true story:
I couldn’t decide how to carve my Halloween pumpkin, so I just left the knife stuck in the side of the pumpkin and put it up on the shelf.
It sat there for a day, two days… but I just couldn’t come up with any ideas on how to carve it.
I got really frustrated at that, hit my fist on the table, and it jostled the pumpkin so it rolled off the shelf and dropped to the floor.
As it fell past me, the knife slashed against my arm.
That’s right. The pumpkin carved me.