The festival's origins date back to ancient Celtic festivals and in particular a festival known as Samhain. This was a celebration conducted at the end of the harvest season in the ancient Gaelic comunities. The ancient pagans would take stock of supplies to ensure they had enough to see them through the harsh winter. They would also slaughter livestock, so they had food (preserved with salt) to see them through the winter. The ancients believed that on October 31, the great boundary between the two great realms of the living and the dead would break down and the dead would drift out into the earth and cause all manner of woe for the living. The festivals would be heald to ward off the evil spirits with bonfires, costumes, masks, and sacrifices.

Nowadays we know that the dead don't walk on Halloween... or do they?

Here are 13 links to get you in the spirit for Halloween!

Halloween Ghost Stories

Get yourself in the mood for Halloween with these ghost stories, from spooky tales to dark poetry, and from urban legends to real life hauntings, within is something for everyone.

Pumpkin Way

This website doesn't state its purpose but it has a myriad of pumpkins. Look on and be inspired.

Pumpkin Carving

40 easy templates for carving out a pumpkin this halloween. Everything from scary faces to gravestones, this should provide ample inspiration. Best of all you can save them and print them out.

Haunt World

Hauntworld seems to contain a plethora of material about Halloween and halloween events as well as information about haunted attractions. Even the website looks suitably scary!

Halloween Mania

Halloween Mania describes itself as a site that is halloween mad! It does have a lot of information. Resources include recipies, decoration making, and pages about the history of Halloween.

Crow Game

Crow Game is a particularly creepy flash game in black and white involving scarecrows and murders of crows attacking the poor innocent scarecrows. Creepy indeed.

Buy Costumes

Costumes are all important. Making your own is a lot of fun, but sometimes we just don't have the time to set aside to sewing and other such tasks. Proper costmes aren't all that expensive either!

Halloween Origami

How about some Halloween Origami? Nothing beats the art of paper folding as a relaxing way to produce cheap, and interesting looking decorations. The Origami Resource Center provides links to lots of Halloween related instructions.

Terrifying Contact Lenses for Halloween

The All Techno Blog has done a great service to halloween by providing a gallery of freeky Contact and Special Effect Lenses. Some are cool, and some are terrifyingly chilling.

Creepy Pong

Great game for Halloween,

Free Halloween e-cards

Send spooky Halloween e-cards to your friends this halloween, and get everyone in the Samhain spirit.

Cannibal Themed Halloween Supper

For those who think creepy isnt creepy enough, this I make project goes into great detail about presentation of food so that it looks, um, well.... like something that Hannibal Lecter wrote the recipie for.

Haunt Forum

Still not in the Halloween mood? Chat to others at the definitively in season Haunt Forum. There's plenty to chat about from Gatherings and Events to Costumes and Makeup, there's thousands of threads on the go.

Formal Apology
I thought it was hilarious that they were able to sum up every variation of every apology I've ever given anyone in one short form.

Today's BIG Thing
This site claims to have “the awesomest thing on the internet, everyday.” The above link is from August 6, and has a bird that can mimic any sound it hears. I spent at least two hours one day going through a few months worth of awesomeness.

Proof that Girls are Evil
Proof of what I knew my entire childhood! Haha. This page uses simple algebra to prove one of mankind's greatest secrets.

SafeNow.org
I think this site is hilarious. It takes the US Homeland Security site's list of caution-type signs and parodies them all, giving alternate explanations as to what each one could mean.

File Destructor 2.0
This is one of the greatest sites I have ever seen. It's not necessarily hilarious, but just ever over-worked businessman or student's dream. Type the name you want the file to have, how big you want it to appear, and the extension. File Destructor will give you back a file you can send to your boss, teacher, professor, whoever, that will look legit but say it is corrupted! No more late reports, more time for yourself!

Products in Translation
Funny mistranslations of American products from around the world. You have to wonder how these never got checked by someone that spoke English, they come from pretty huge companies.

How To Tick People Off
How to tick people off is an antagonist's dream list, these are all hilarious, surefire ways to get on people's nerves.

24 very strange and funny signs
My favorite one of these is the safe sex ad about halfway down the page. All 24 of them had me cracking up though!

Maddox - Why I am better than your kids
A lot of people have probably seen this one, but for those of you that haven't, you need to. Maddox is a very cynical writer, and in this post he analyzes children's artwork.
Note: this last link has some bad language and could be offensive to some people - view with caution!

The way I see it, if they are capable of sustaining the money for the internet, they are capable of getting real jobs rather than soliciting people online for money. Don't get me wrong, I believe in helping my fellow man (or woman), as a matter of fact if we fail to do that, then we are failing in our job as citizens of humanity, Which is to love and help one another.

I do believe however there are those that take advantage of our natural human compassion and it is them we must be careful of. Love your neighbor, help him when you can, but don't let him take advantage of you. Just a kind word of warning to my readers. Take care and be blessed.

A person can look at the channels that are off to the right side of the Front Page of Propeller. Find one that interests you and click on it. That will take you to the Front Page for that particular channel. I find many very interesting stories that way.

By Friend

As a long time Netscape and now Propeller user I have a long and varied list of friends that I depend on to help me get the news that needs to be seen. Now, this can be problematic because I have so many friends that going to their individual profiles is a pain. But, Propeller has solved that problem for me by having a very handy place where I can look at my Friend's recently submitted stories. Just go to your personal Friends page. You should see a screen that looks like this:

See the place under the big blue “My Friends” caption? It has “Friends Overview”, “Your Friends Recent Activity” and “Friends Submitted Stories”. Click on that last one and you'll see this:

Now, you have a list of all of the stories submitted by your friends. This is a great way to see what your friends are submitting.

By Private Message

This method works well, but it can grate on the nerves of many users. Personally, I get about forty to fifty messages in my PM box each day and almost all of them are heads up requests on stories. It's fine if it happens once in a while, especially with people that are not on my Friends list, but when it's the same people day after day it gets old very fast. However, this is a good way to see some stories that otherwise you might miss.

Conclusion

Basically, there are several ways to best find the stories that you want to see, but the best way is to have a varied and reliable network of Friends and check in on what they are submitting from time to time with the “Friends Submitted Stories”. Good luck and have fun!!!