The Participants

If you want to know which houses are giving out the good candy this year, then look no further than the list below. Remember when you stop by to say thank you by leaving them a comment for all the hard work they've put into making Halloween the greatest holiday of the year.

All sites are listed alphabetically. Keep checking back as updates will be made all month long. It's never too late to join in. Just let us know who would like to be included and send us a link.


All Eyes And Ears

All Things Horror

Anime Hell

Arbogast on Film

Armagideon Time

The Armchair Chef

Art After Dark

Art By Bubba Shelby

Atom Kid

AtomicFox

Azathoth's Abode on the Plateau of Leng

Azathoth's Abode on the Plateau of Leng: The Dungeon

B-Movie Star

Black Sun

Blackwood

Bliss Massacre

Bogleech

Branded In The 80s

Caffeinated Joe

The Captain's Ramblings

The Catalogue of Curiosities

The Cathode Ray Mission

Cavalcade of Awesome

Chuck Norris Ate My Baby

Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom

Cool-Mo-Dee

Crafty Lady Abby

Creature from the Blog Lagoon...in 3-D

Creepy Cupcakes

Creepy LA

Dartman's World of Wonder

Dave Lowe Design

The Davis House News

demonals

Dinner With Max Jenke

Distinctly Jamaican Sounds

Diversions of the Groovy Kind

Doo Wacka Doodles

Domestic Witch

Dr. K's 100 Page Super Spectacular

Draculand

The Drunken Severed Head

Eric M. Smith Illustration

The Fantastical World of Holidays (Folk Art)

Filmkunst

The Fin Tank

Final Girl

Frankensteinia: The Frankenstein Blog

Freddy In Space

Friday Nite Fries

Frog on the Pumpkin

The Gallows

Geek Orthodox

Geekus.org

The Ghosts of Halloween Past

Ghosts! Witches! Monsters!

The Gothic Tea Society

Gravedigger's Local 16

Halloween Addict

Halloween Hooplah

The Halloween Tree

Haunt Style

Hooked on Hypnocil

Horror Host Graveyard

The Horrors Of It All

I Wear Snark Upon My Sleeve

John Rozum.com

Kaedrin Weblog

Kafka's Sister

The Late Late Show

The Laughing Reindeer

Life as an Ewok

The Lightning Bug's Lair

Limerwrecks

Macabre Drive-In Theater

Magic Carpet Burn

Magikal Seasons

Mark Harvey's World

Me, You, and a Blog Named Boo

The Metal Misfit

Michael May's Adventureblog

Mr. Chicken's Yard Haunt

Mr. Macabre's Hallowe'en Celebrations

Monsters Cereal

Monster Crazy

Monster Land

Monster Movie Music

Monster Rally

Monster Spookshow Radio

Monsterland Ohio

The Moon is a Dead World

Moongem Comics

Mother Firefly's Faster Pussycats

Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anyplace Else

Musty TV

My Creative Life

My Ghoul Friday

My Life in Pumpkins

My Little World

My Monster Memories

My Two Yen Worth

Neato Coolville

NeedCoffee.com

Negative Pleasure

Negative Pleasure 2

Olympic Artichoke

One Cadaver, Two Cadaver, Three Cadaver, Four

Orange and Black - The Spirit of Halloween

Panic on the 4th of July

Paper & Plastic Please

Para Abnormal

PeanutGnome's World

Peter's Choice Awards

Plaid Stallions

Plastic Fetish

Plastic Pumpkins

Potato Blog

Psychobabble

Pumpkinrot

Puppatoons

Radiator Heaven

Random Acts of Geekery

Reanimated Rags

Redecorating Middle Earth in Early Lovecraft

The Retropolitian Presents: Tales to Astonish!

Retrospace

Roxana Illuminated Perfume

Scary Salt Lake

Secret Mountain Laboratory

The Sexy Armpit

Sexy Witch

SheWalksSoftly

She's Batty Designs

Shellhawk's Nest

Sketchup/Screw Up

Skull A Day

Spooky Laboratory

squelchbaker blogs.

Step Up to the Mike

Strange Kids Club

Super Blogliness!

Tedwrd

Ténèbres à la lumière

The Surfing Pizza

That Is So Queer

That Was My Foot

Thiel-a-Vision

Things That Don't Suck

13 Visions

This Guy Over Here

Thrill Fiction

Through the Patch

Tiki Ranch

Trick or Blog

Trixie's Treats

Two Thumbs, Eight Fingers...

So, What is this Halloween Countdown Anyway...

...and what do I need to do in order to participate?

These are the two questions I've been most frequently asked about this endeavor.

The Halloween Countdown is something of a virtual neighborhood to go trick or treating in. Imagine a neighborhood where all of the neighbors really got into the spirit of the holiday and went all out with decorating their yards and homes and on top of that also handed out the coolest treats whenever some kid in a costume rang their doorbell. Well, you are that kid in a costume, and the participants in the countdown are the neighbors with the cool houses and candy. When you visit their blogs, you will essentially be ringing their doorbell and shouting "Trick or treat." rewarded by a solid thunk at the bottom of your plastic Halloween bucket which is their post for the day. In a way that's even better than the actual Halloween (no way! I hear you saying) you get to ring their doorbell and trick or treat every single day throughout October. Not only that, but there is bound to be over 100 houses for you to visit each day as well.

As a participant, I suggest thinking of the Halloween Countdown as something of a virtual Advent calendar, only devoted to Halloween. Each day, throughout October, a blogger posts something new pertaining in some way to Halloween, or something emblematic of the season. This can be anything, photos of you as a kid dressed up in your Ben Cooper costume, recipes, crafts, horror movie reviews, holiday reminiscences, board games and children's books of the past, artwork, traditions, anything at all. The daily aspect of this is something to strive for, but is not expected. Veterans of the countdown will tell you how grueling it can be to put together a daily post without much advance preparation. The goal is to have fun, and if you're spending every spare moment composing a daily post, you won't have any fun, nor will you have time to see what everyone else is doing. Do what you can.

Whether you are a blogger participating with a countdown of your own, or someone who just wants to trick or treat without having to decorate their own home, all are welcome. If you are not on the list of participants, but would like to be, just let us know, and provide a link to your blog. If you have more than one blog you'd like to include (you're insane) provide links for both (or more).

Dusk is upon us, and the Jack O'Lanterns are lit and being set outside. Nows the time to put on your costume, grab your trick or treat bag and head off down the street to ring the doorbell of the first house. Happy Halloween!

Just a hop, skip and a jump away...

There are only three more days until the Halloween festivities officially begin! There are a bunch of sites on the list this year, so it's destined to be a full month of with a metric ton goodies for everyone's treat bags...

I thought I'd reiterate that it's never too late to be added to the list, well, unless you wait until the end of the month, but then there's always next year. We're going to do our best to update the list as we get any requests during the month. Also if you'd like to sport a button/badge on your site, you can find some here (with the corresponding HTML), as well as a fun video John K put together.

I can't wait to dig into the content. Look for the list October 1st, at midnight!

Promotional Video

Those of you who check out my main blog, "Random Acts of Geekery," probably saw the first version of this video a few days ago... since then, with this separate blog starting up to coordinate things, I've made a slight revision to the end of it to point people here.

Now, you'll notice if you watch it that I've got a logo calling it the "Halloween Countdown," instead of "Countdown to Halloween." That's because I started working on this back in June or July, and didn't know the "official" title at that time... and I kind of dig the logo I came up with. Of course, it doesn't really matter what you call it, so long as it counts down to Halloween, right?

Anyone who wants to post this video to their own participating blog, feel free to do so! And I promise, next year, if I decide to do a new promo video, I'll check with Shawn and John first to see if they've got any logos planned!

Halloween Countdown Calendar

When asked about the Halloween Countdown one of the ways I typically describe it is as something of an Advent Calendar for Halloween.

With that in mind I thought this would be of great interest to people visiting here. Inky-Dinky has produced a physical Halloween Countdown calendar, with great, creepy, artwork by John Littleboy. As you open the number for each day you will discover behind it, a story about one of the macabre cast you see before you. You can order a copy here . Make sure you tell them where you found out about it.

Just a quick note on spreading the word...

Hello again to all of you creepoholic constituents out there. I thought I'd take a second to address some of the shocking options for those of you who would like to spread the good word about the Countdown to Halloween. Again, the idea behind this site is to simply act as a resource for the growing number of blogs participating in the seasonal fun of writing about all the frightening facets of this wicked holiday.

If you'd like to feature a button/badge on your site...

Banner #1 (200 pixels wide)



Copy and paste the following html onto your site:

<br /><a href="http://www.countdowntohalloween.com/"><img border="0" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2543/3915647547_7a27ffac5f.jpg" /></a><br />

Banner #2 (200 pixels wide)



Copy and paste the following html onto your site:

<br /><a href="http://www.countdowntohalloween.com/"><img border="0" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2580/3915647623_9ffcf89083.jpg" /></a><br />

Pierre Fournier of the wonderful Frankensteinia also created a third, more Halloween-centric banner on a black background for anyone who'd like to use it.

Banner #3 (200 pixels wide)



Copy and paste the following html onto your site:

<br /><a href="http://www.countdowntohalloween.com/"><img border="0" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2670/3922726624_bff7472fb6.jpg" /></a><br />

Or if you'd like a slightly smaller version for three column template blogs: Banner #3 (170 pixels wide)



Copy and paste the following html onto your site:

<br /><a href="http://www.countdowntohalloween.com/"><img border="0" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3504/3922726568_2fc6b73888.jpg" /></a><br />

Also you can follow the Countdown to Halloween on Twitter via the halloween_blogs account.

As John mentioned in the last post, the list is being compiled and will appear here on October 1st. I can't wait for the festivities to begin!

Reminder to Participants

There are now less than 20 days left before this year's Halloween Countdown begins. If you are planning to participate, and have not contacted me, please do so. I'm compiling a list of links to the participating blogs and websites and want to make sure no one is overlooked. You can always be added to the list, even as the countdown is in progress, but why wait? It's no fun creating well thought out posts if no one knows to go look at them.

The list of participant links will be posted here at midnight, October 1st.

About the Countdown to Halloween...

Alright kids, no fooling around. There are four solid weeks left to work on 2009's Countdown to Halloween. That's 28 days of hard work and research to slough through until the party really begins.

A quick note on the intention of Countdown to Halloween. Basically, over the last three years I've noticed an amazing trend in some spooktactular holiday spirit when it comes to the celebration of all things Halloween. There have certainly been those (like Matt at x-entertainment.com) that have been spreading the good word for awhile, and there are a plethora of wonderful sites out there dedicated to making every day of the year a little bit more orange and black, but in the last few years there has been a surge in fiendish fun around the month of October that really gets this dried up and dusty ticker of my beating again. In particular, in the past two years there has appeared a list, usually cobbled together by a couple of swell guys John Rozum and Jon Knutson, that gets passed around from site to site and really makes the whole experience fun and exciting. For one, it provides a virtual vault of horror, a crypt of terror, a, um (well geez, I guess EC Comics should have come up with another great title for me to lift from), oh wait I know, a tomb of dread, a virtual cornucopia of amazing stories, photos, comics, reviews, crafts, toys, songs, radio plays, jokes, and general commentary on a holiday that a lot of us hold dear. This list also serves as a centerpiece for a spur of the moment community, a virtual meeting place, and the type of communal experience where the internet is the perfect forum.

Countdown to Halloween is a home for this list. Note, it's not the home. Part of what makes this season of creepy blog-a-thons so special is that there is no expectation, no rules or guidelines, but all the same I think it would also be beneficial to have a place to point to, a hub. This isn't a union, it's intended as a resource.

So if you're planning on another year of terror inducing blogging during the Halloween season, or if this is your first time trick-or-treating alone, feel free to let your intentions known. You can either comment here at this site, you can add your voice to the comments on Mr. Rozum's blog, or you can @ or follow Halloween_Blogs, on twitter.