Happy Halloween, everyone!!! To celebrate my absolute favorite holiday, I’ve got a treat for you… no tricks required. If your afternoon is deadly dull, here are 10 frightfully ghoulish quizzes (or other forms of distraction) to keep your spirits up until you can transform to your true self this evening.

1. The Ultimate Horror Movie Quiz.
2. 10 Ways To Survive a Horror Movie
3. What Are Your Chances of Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse? I’m a sucker… I would totally drive across town to see if my family was OK. Well, I’d probably try their cell phones first, but that wasn’t an option.

4. Zombie Killer by Leslie and the Lys.

5. The World’s Most Difficult Horror Movie Quiz Ever (self proclaimed, of course)
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Halloween is upon us… and there’s no better time to take a look at one of the most famous horror stories in literary history: Frankenstein!

ON FILM:

Q: When was the Frankenstein story first made into a film?

A: Way back in 1910, when the Thomas Edison Company produced a one-reel film simply titled Frankenstein. The original negative was apparently destroyed in a fire in 1914, and the movie was thought to be forever lost. More than 60 years later, Wisconsin film collector Al Dettlaff discovered that his archives included a nitrate print of the rare movie.

Here is part one, and here is part two.

Honestly, this film has it all. Suspense, special effects, overacting… and this was 1910! Nearly a century later, how far has Hollywood really come?

Q: Did Thomas Edison himself produce, direct, or have other involvement in the film?

A: No, other than being owner of the company that made it. Frankenstein was filmed at Edison Studios in the Bronx, New York.

Q: Which horror movie legend played The Monster: Lon Chaney Jr., Boris Karloff, or Bela Lugosi?

A: The answer is “yes.” Karloff played the character in the famous 1931 film Frankenstein, while Chaney took the role for The Ghost of Frankenstein and Lugosi played it in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.

Q: Who played Victor Frankenstein and Igor in the classic 1931 film?

A: Nobody. Those characters didn’t exist in that film. The doctor’s name was Henry Frankenstein (although he’s never referred to as “doctor”), and his assistant was Fritz. Victor Moritz was the name of the doctor’s friend (who seemed much more interested in Elizabeth than Henry).

Q: So when did Igor come about?
A: Ygor, as he’s properly known, first appeared in the 1939 sequel Son of Frankenstein.

Beatles references, Blackenstein, Playgirl magazine and why everyone was scared of Franken Berry cereal, all after the jump…

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If you’ve made it this far, I commend you! One more puzzle to solve and you’re home free. First one to send in the correct answer to the challenge below, along with the correct answers found all along the path this week, AND, the logic behind ‘em (which is to say: HOW DID YOU KNOW?), gets a pick of any t-shirt and book from our store.
As with last month, we’re also adding some special prizes this time around for those who come really close, but don’t get all the answers in time. We’ve previously awarded some shirts and books to a couple contestants who impressed us with charts, diagrams, and other complex methods of recording and organizing the clues/answers. So we’ll be on the lookout for the creative among you, as well. This is all to say: it pays to play whether you nab the grand prize or not.

And remember, we’re also giving away a really big, sa-weeet prize to any winning contestant who can defend the title three months in a row. Details on that as they develop, if they develop. (Avery Dale, Ken Laskowski and Colin Utley are our current champions. You can read about them here.)

As comments have been turned off for the length of the hunt, please click on the following link and send your answers and logic to us at: TriviaHunt@Gmail.com

If you missed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday’s challenges, there might still be time to solve them all. No one knows how long it’ll take for one of you trivia junkies to nail down the whole megillah, so make haste, make haste. And now, on the next page, I present the final puzzle, drawing on all the answers you dug up along the trail.

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Happy Halloween! To creep out our readers a little, I’ve assembled a collection of creepy headstone photos. For more, check out this Flickr search.

“Headstones” by Flickr user notratched

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1. Even though she’s not aware of it, today marks my daughter’s first Halloween, and her bumble bee costume is ready to go. I think my first costume was a pumpkin, which I followed up on subsequent Halloweens with Big Bird and a purple Honker. What was yours?

2. A couple years ago, I kept a running diary of all my trick-or-treaters. Unfortunately, I got held up at work and only was around for four knocks on the door. Here was one of them:

“8:45pm: I just had my second visitor: a middle-schooler wearing a red t-shirt with the words “Skittles Candy” lazily ironed on. Even if executed brilliantly, this was a crappy costume. She was half-assing Halloween in every respect. Never even said trick-or-treat. To be fair, she couldn’t say anything to me, since she was talking on her cell phone. She took one Butterfinger. I did not offer her more.”

How are the trick-or-treaters in your neighborhood?

3. Speaking of treats, what’s your single favorite kind of candy?

4. Speaking of tricks, what’s the most memorable prank you ever pulled on someone (doesn’t have to be Halloween related).

And don’t forget to send us your Halloween photos—flossypics@gmail.com. Ransom Riggs will be posting our favorites next week. It’ll be hard to top Paul & Stacy Conradt’s Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett. Have a look:
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We’re witnessing the dawn of a new era in viral: the customizable video. It all started earlier this year with a company called Paltalk, who had stumbled across a technology that allowed them to “customize” certain simple aspects of a video with matching and motion-tracking. The technique was most easily adaptable to text, and so in the midst of a brutal primary election, they released a video in which you could enter anyone’s name — and make it seem as if they were a new dark-horse candidate in the primaries. Make your own here.

You for President

This player won’t let you embed custom videos, so I snagged someone’s customized for-president video from YouTube — a fella named Marc Dussault. And no, he’s not really running for president.

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See how well you know which stars and famous personalities helped sell certain products and brands. Take the Celeb Endorsements Quiz now.

If I go to my DVD shelves and pick any title from my sizable collection of horror movies, chances are there’ll be a lot of biting going on (in the movie, not in my living room). No matter the monster – vampires, werewolves, zombies – movies would have us believe that getting turned into one, and turning others, is as easy as a bite. But if you look at folklore and legends from around the world, getting turned into one of these creatures by a bite from one is, overall, pretty rare. Instead, man became monster by a variety of methods that range from simple to complex, coincidental to intentional. We’ll take a look at some of them if you promise not to try any of this at home.

Vampires

In folklore across Christian Europe, one of the common beliefs you’ll find is that the souls of people who committed suicide, which the church considered unforgivable, were unable to rest in the grave. Their bodies would not decay and they would leave their graves at night to torment the living, who still had a chance at salvation. People who were excommunicated from the church and unable to receive the sacraments and people who didn’t receive proper burial rituals were damned to the same fate. If you angered the Church enough, it was a sure bet that you’d become a vampire, which, of course, kept people in line.

Frequently, though, people became vampires through no fault of their own. Dumb luck methods for becoming a bloodsucker include being conceived during holy periods in the Church calendar, being born on holy days, being the illegitimate child of parents who were also illegitimate, drowning to death, having a shadow cast over your corpse, having a cat jump over your corpse, and being the seventh son of a seventh son. In Romania, it was as easy as being the seventh child in the family.
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Gas Pump Assaulted

48-year-old Michael Mason has been identified as the man who repeatedly shot a gas pump at a Sunoco station Saturday in Naugatuck, Connecticut. He then fled the scene and crashed his car twice before stopping, according to police. Mason is in a hospital recovering from injuries received in the second crash.

When his condition improves, police expect to charge Mason with first-degree reckless endangerment, having weapons in a motor vehicle, first-degree criminal mischief, unlawful discharge of a firearm, reckless driving and evading responsibility.

Police Seek Speeding Muppet

Police in Germany are looking for the driver of an Audi that was caught on several cameras breaking the speed limit. The “driver” as seen in photographs is clearly a Muppet! The Muppet was identified as Animal, the drummer on The Muppet Show. Only after closer examination did the authorities in Bavaria realize that the car is a British vehicle with the steering wheel on the right side. German traffic cameras are aimed at the left side of the vehicle, so the actual driver was not in focus.

Reluctant Groom Sets Hotel on Fire

A man in Japan was arrested on suspicion of arson when the hotel he was scheduled to get married in was set on fire. No one was injured in the early morning fire at a resort hotel in Yamanashi Prefecture.

Tatsuhiko Kawata, 39, had gone along with wedding plans despite already having a wife, the Yomiuri newspaper said.

“I thought if I set a fire I wouldn’t have to go through with the wedding,” the Yomiuri quoted him as telling police.

Dog Risks Life for Kittens

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What does today’s Brain Game – the image below – have to do with today’s date?

HERE is the solution.