Here's something for Nate Silver to work on, now that the election is over and he won the New York Times World Cup of Poker: What should we make of the fact (!) that 68% of Republicans believe that actual demons routinely "possess" humans here on Earth? How is that going to trend or lean or whatever, during the next election cycle, or after a bold demon marketing attack on America?

Public Policy Polling did a "lighthearted" Halloween survey last week (PDF), and the results should not make you too relaxed about the next four years, or the Thousand Year Reign of Satan, or anything really. When more than [...]

What are you going as for Halloween? As that's the question so many people are asking right now, I thought it'd be fun to revisit the costumes of Halloweens past. So I asked a group of writers at various fashion-slanted blogs and magazines to share their first—or favorite—Halloween costumes. Here's what we got (some with bonus pictures!!!).

Leah Chernikoff, executive editor of Fashionista

My favorite Halloween costume was actually pretty recent. My sister lives in New Orleans where they do everything big so a few years ago we went all out to be the creepy twins from The Shining. We wore blood-stained matching Land's End school uniforms and [...]

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On Tuesday, October 18th, just two days before he was executed, Time suggested Muammar Gaddafi as one of its "10 Best (Topical) Halloween Costumes for 2011." "You'll need," Time suggested, "An unruly black wig (or this mask)."

Time linked to the "Daffy Gaddafi Mask." But while it is certainly daffy, it's hardly the only Gaddafi mask available. It's also not the only assassinated terrorist leader costume this Halloween.

Dear New England Patriots,

Thanks for ruining my kid’s Halloween. Given a choice of either trick-or-treating or seeing the Vikings vs. the Patriots, my 6 year-old chose to endure a four-hour car ride and attend his first ever NFL game. What he got in return was a swift kick in the pumpkins when you made him turn in his “dangerous” costume before he could enter Gillette Stadium. Truth be told, he didn’t even care about wearing his costume to the game, but I guess we were emboldened and delighted by YOUR statement to fans and the media.

I've made it well-known that I'm not a huge fan of children. So now that parents have been lulled by science and journalism into finally believing that "there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger's Halloween candy," I'm finally going to strike.

There was a loud but muffled scream, and when I looked up, the kid was gone.

It wasn't that scary for me; I did know where he was, more or less. But this was what I was leaving my wife with, on the other end of the phone:

[Child's screaming.] Fuck! Shit. Uh, I gotta call you back- [Screaming continues in background.] [Call disconnects.]

I was standing by the elevator bank, all by myself. The screaming was coming from the other side of a closed elevator door.

My 8 year old trick or treated as Artemis Fowl, but people in Brooklyn thought he was Mitt Romney and were actually kind of mean to him :(

— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) November 1, 2012

":(" indeed.

Part of a series about monsters and other scary things happening here through Halloween.

What makes for a very scary story? It helps to be a child when you're hearing the tale, because you're already terrified of everything after dark. It's also a good idea to be at home alone while you're reading, so that every burp of the water pipes or cough from the weird neighbor in the next apartment sounds like the foretelling of your horrifically slow murder at the hands of THE DERELICT CLOWN. This is due to the power of The Devil, who creates suspense.

Without suspense, the glaring holes in most ghost stories become [...]

What are YOU dressing up as for Halloween? I am planning to go as "Slutty Cultural History of Slutty Halloween Costumes." That or "Slutty Godzooky." I'm still torn.

The jack-o'-lantern traces its origins to the Dark Ages’ British Isles, where once upon a time, as oral histories convey, they were carved from turnips, illuminated with swamp gas and held aloft to protest the excesses of the financial elite. In sophisticated neighborhoods, the jack-o'-lantern has evolved into a tool for clever parents to send amusing political jokes to one another and to demonstrate their artisanal bona fides. The puking pumpkin simply won’t suffice anymore. A range of genius o'-lantern alternatives exists, but these mostly work indoors only. I’m going to show you how to design and carve a spirited jack-o'-lantern for your stoop that will shock and [...]

And now: the final installment in our quirky and bizarre month-long review of the horrorful.

Horror movies are great at illustrating just how awful most human beings are. And not the killers, I mean the victims: whether they be valuing self-preservation over everything (and everyone) else, ignoring the obvious presence of a supernatural menace or marching bravely and directly at seven-foot-tall men with giant machetes. And if you take the daft lack of self-awareness inherent in horror characters (barring our Mike), mix it with the cringe-inducing lack of self-awareness of John Hughes characters and add a huge amount of pretense, what do you have? Art school students. [...]

Celebrating Halloween is like going to the opera: some people hate it, some love it, some people hate it but pretend to love it, and everybody’s dressed like an Italian swashbuckler. Halloween and the opera are also alike in that they’re both journeys that couples seldom embark upon separately. (Who spends girl's night out savoring the libretto in Don Giovanni?) The couples who enjoy Halloween tend to do so because it’s a chance to show off bilateral creativity while hanging with friends and maybe getting wrecked. At this very moment, legions of couples are anticipating this coming weekend with greater fervor than the Snickers-craving rugrats for whom the holiday [...]

So last week I was wondering to what extent, geographically speaking, Beggars' Night was celebrated. Growing up in Buffalo, we always went trick-or-treating the night before Halloween, October 30th-Beggars' Night. And on Halloween…well I don't really remember what we did on Halloween. Watch Home Alone? Maybe we went trick-or-treating again? As a kid, I pretty much thought that the way we lived was the way everyone did. Our nasal, elongated vowels. Ordering chicken wings together with pizza. Living in the same place as basically all of your relatives. Six-years-old-me believed Beggar's Night was everywhere.

Part of a series about monsters and other scary things happening here through Halloween.

With its crisp autumn weather and golden piles of leaves and the smell of fireplace smoke on city streets, Halloween is the best time of year. Staggering beneath great stacks of costume boxes, UPS deliverymen maneuver through mazes of foam tombstones and doorways crowded with organic heirloom jack o' lanterns. Even the seasonal aisles at the corner chain drug store are worth lingering over this time of year, in a way nobody dawdles around the Eastertime merchandise or inflatable lawn pools of summer. Even the shabby costume superstore that appears for six weeks within some [...]

We had a great idea for a "group costume" you could do with some friends from work or the therapy group or whatever, but a quick yet exhaustive search on eBay shows there are no Halloween masks for Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Herman Cain or the rest of them (the "other Mormon," Buddy somebody?). Other than the actual candidate, Mitt Romney, the only GOP Primary figure available in weird rubber mask format is Newt Gingrich. And his mask dates back to when he was Speaker of the House, in the 1990s, and people otherwise uninterested in politics were briefly fascinated by the [...]

And how was your nutso, record-smashing, disconcerting Snowtober? One hopes you weren't trapped on a diverted plane for seven hours or a victim of the (bizarre) Amtrak shutdown or one of the three million without power or, you know, one of the nine dead. Happy… Halloween?

Photograph by Rachel So

tonight i am DJing a loft party in midtown for halloween and on the subway ride here there was a zombie sitting next to me playing solitaire on her iPod nano, a samurai trying to secure his sword to his belt by tying it up with excess fabric, and two Nicki Minajes with pink wigs and pink eyelashes dancing on those poles on subway cars that you hold on to so you don't fall down when the train lurches. right now i am in the loft setting my computer up and one of the organizers is off somewhere getting me a cable to connect my hard drive to my [...]

My technique was to always wear a hoodie. (Thankfully, most movie theaters are overly air-conditioned, though still I often sweated right through my clothes.) The hoodie was because, when I put a finger in each ear, that way I would still have something free to pull down over my eyes. For I was the world's most horrible horror movie wuss.

And yet I kept going to them. I never actually had to walk out, though once I almost threw up in the Union Square Theater… fifteen minutes before the previews even started. While the lights were still up.

Abe Sauer, our Target-shopping correspondent (of course), has found what is clearly the Halloween costume of the year. It's sort of a Mr. Microphone version of Mr. President? It's also marked "for adults only." Basically we are going to see a lot of Obamas robbing banks. (Everyone can retire their Richard Nixon masks now.) Also white people in blackface. And black people in Obamaface! Also for the tea party set this "Adults' Colonial General Costume" is mandatory. Mixing and matching is a winner.