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

I fed myself a steady diet of the paranormal growing up, in between all the comic books and all the television. The enthusiasm does tend to wane the further away from childhood you get, but it never really goes away. I grew up hoping, believing, that the world was weirder than the grown-ups would tell you. And I liked it that way. It helped that I grew up in West Virginia, where you’re never too far from the woods or a mountain or a swamp, places for mysterious things to hide and then jump out at you.

So of all the really good monster stories out there, let’s go with this one, one of the more vivid incidents in American paranormal history. One reason I’m recommending it is that it has a foot in both Monster Lore and UFO Lore, which traditionally do not overlap until you get deep, deep in the weeds of the newsletters and the pamphlets and the websites that look like they’re still hosted by Geocities. This makes it akin to what would have been the best “X-Files” episode ever: one that features a swamp creature, the flying saucer with Mulder’s sister in it, and Peter Boyle guest-starring. It’s the story of the Flatwoods Monster.

Flatwoods is a very small town in the center of West Virginia, not particularly close to anything resembling a city. On the evening of September 12, 1952, a handful of friends playing football in the school field saw a flash in the sky. It was an object, seemingly fiery, that zoomed overhead and crashed into a hill not far from the boys. Impelled by curiosity to investigate they headed for the hill, picking up along the way a local mother and her two boys, and a 17-year-old National Guardsman and his dog. Darkness was falling. The dog darted ahead up the hillside, barking, and then returned with its tail between its legs and took off back down the mountain. The group pressed on, noticing an odd, metallic-smelling mist. At the top of the hill, they found a pulsating, hissing object, measuring about ten feet across. The search party freaked and backed away. But turning around, they discovered two smaller lights in front of them. The Guardsman raised his flashlight, revealing a twelve-foot-tall creature, floating off the ground, with arms hooked into claws, two glowing eyes and a head, or maybe a cowl, shaped like a spade. And so they ran, all the way back down the hill, to wait for the authorities.

The sheriff came, of course, and more local kids, and the mother led the party back up the hill to investigate. The metallic smell was still there, but the object and the creature were not. The next morning the local reporter came. Revisiting in the light of day, they found skidmarks and pieces of black plastic-like material on the ground. The reporter also received multiple reports of lights in the sky, including one from a witness claiming to have seen a flying saucer take off that morning. A 21-year-old woman some miles away claimed to have seen the same creature weeks before, an event that scared her so badly that she was hospitalized for three weeks. And another woman, the mother of the Guardsman, reported that, the evening before, her house shook like it was coming off the foundation, after which the radio cut out for 45 minutes. And some of the kids who were on the hilltop that night came down with a weird nausea. Two days later, the dog, sadly, started vomiting and died.

It was a big deal, a Close Encounter of the Third Kind, as they came to call it.

This story got into my little-kid head pretty good. In the 70s, my dad’s side of the family decamped from Charleston, West Virginia, for the more rural environs of Buckhannon and Philippi, 125 miles to the northeast. Staying at Grandma’s was always an exercise in the night terrors. The bumps in the night you hear in the country are not the same as you hear in the suburbs. They are more laden with meaning. They are probably monsters. This was before Interstate 79 was completed, so it was a longer drive then than it is now, up and down rolling hills, winding around hollers and valleys of the Allegheny Mountains, crossing creeks and streams. And, as I figured out after we’d moved away from Charleston, that last leg of the drive to Grandma’s traversed Braxton County, which contains Flatwoods, which is why the Flatwoods Monster is alternately known as the Braxton County Monster. In fact, Exit 67 of I-79 is the Flatwoods exit. That was enough to blow my mind. I knew all kinds of really scary monster stories, but none that happened in places I’ve actually been, let alone not 50 miles from where my actual family lived.

The Flatwoods Monster story is emblematic of the time. In the early 1950s, the U.S. was undergoing some UFO hysteria. Even aside from well-known incidents like the crash at Roswell and the Flatwoods Monster, people were seeing lights in the sky and taking seriously for the first time the idea that we might not be alone. One explanation posits that the obsession was a manifestation of the general anxiety of the Cold War; whatever the impetus, the fascination with the extraterrestrial wing of the paranormal became widespread. We’d had flying saucer stories forever, going back to Ezekiel’s wheel through the Martian invasion in HG Wells’ War Of The Worlds, but the 50s brought a high pitch of paranoia about the little green men in the pilot’s seat of the UFOs — or, in the case of Braxton County, one very large one. The story of that night in Braxton County may have faded over time (and the depiction of the actual monster, constructed from witnesses’ descriptions, is not a little bit comical), but it fueled the imaginations of the generation of scientists and researchers (and sometimes, yes, kooks) that went on to define the field, for better or worse. Ivan Sanderson and John Keel both personally investigated the Flatwoods Monster — Sanderson going on to become an eminent cryptozoologist and Keel eventually popularizing the term “men in black” as a prominent UFOlogist.

And of course the inevitable result of the incident was the debunking that followed, including one study conducted as recently as 2000. Sober types were quick to suggest that the glowing object was a meteorological event, or a mountaintop navigational beacon, and that the creature was a barn owl sitting on a tree stump. Additionally, all the witnesses were frightened, and frightened people always see things that aren’t there (or something). This is a pro forma explanation for most of the stories of this ilk, of which West Virginia is strangely chock full. You’ve probably also heard of the Mothman of Point Pleasant, immortalized in the tepid Richard Gere vehicle, but if you poke around you’ll also find the (locally-sourced!) Beast of Bertha Hill; the 19th-century bigfoot predecessor Yayho; the dragon-like Snallygaster of the Blue Ridge Mountains; and even Sheepsquatch, which is just what it sounds like. Wild, Wonderful West Virginia indeed.

But the Flatwoods Monster was one of the big ones of paranormal lore, revisited equally by those who are Ready To Believe and those who would have us be done with such things. It certainly kept me terrified, reading books after bedtime, and whatever town we lived in I’d put the book down around one or two in the morning and look out the window into whatever copse of woods that was near and wonder just what exactly was out there.

Maybe it was a barn owl. Maybe even it was a twelve-foot-tall barn owl. Or maybe it was a hoax — maybe this fellow is legit and not a soul seeking an easy moment in the spotlight. Hoax claims are easy to make and tough to disprove. But the story of the Flatwoods Monster was born in a time when the world was considerably weirder than it is now, when the consensus was a little less jaded and a little more open to consider the impossible as something other than unlikely.

To paraphrase author Warren Ellis, I keep hoping that it’s a strange world out there, and I’d like to keep it that way. It’s why we have monster stories, and it’s why we keep repeating them. And in the case of the Flatwoods Monster, that story’s also a little bit of home, and so all the better.

Previously in series: The Eternal Life Of ‘Twilight’ In Forks, Washington

Brent Cox is all over the Internet.

★ While everyone peered into the Internet for news of the prospect of meaningful weather, the day at hand did nothing to distinguish itself. Ersatz September temperatures met ersatz November dimness, while the trees of Nolita stayed green. Only the last half-hour of daylight achieved anything, filling the streets before sunset with an even, bluish illumination. A photographer unobtrusively sat on a bench, aiming a large lens across the street, taking advantage of the ambiance.

Five Good New Rap Videos To Watch This Weekend Before The Storm Destroys The Power Grid And We Can Never Watch Rap Videos Again

How do you think rapper Danny Brown is preparing for Hurricane Sandy? (He lives in Detroit, so he’s probably not doing anything this weekend except watching the Tigers. We know how much he likes Tigers.) But even if he lived on the East Coast, you kinda get the feeling that he might not be too fazed. He seems like the type of person who could ride out three days in a basement strip club without ever going to sleep or knowing whether or not it’s raining outside. For the rest of us, some very good rap videos came out the past few days. Let’s use this weekend to watch them.

Yow, did AraabMuzik make a great beat! And Styles P sounds just vicious on it. This is what 50 Cent was talking about when he said that the only other rappers who were as hard as him came from Yonkers.

I don’t like the scatology at the beginning of this Action Bronson video. But the rest of it is an enjoyable reminder of the Beastie Boys classic “Sabotage.”

The windbreaker Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire wears in this video makes feel a little better about the fact that — as I am reminded every time I go to my mom’s house and see the framed photograph on top of her TV — I wore a polo shirt of the exact same three colors for picture day my senior year of high school. But only a little bit better.

It’s testament to the enduring greatness of Chief Keef’s smash “I Don’t Like” that the biggest artists in rap are rapping over its beat seven months after it came out. Further testament, and probably even more flattering to Chief Keef, is the fact that I myself have written new lyrics to the song, and recite them passionately whenever I see a pestilent insect. Like this:

“Mosquito/That’s a bug I don’t like!
Cockroach/That’s a bug I don’t like!
Biting horsefly/That’s a bug I don’t like!”

Etc. I can’t believe I just told you that.

How To Make Perfect Risotto

by Eric Spiegelman

The summer after my junior year of college, I worked the prepared-foods counter at a restaurant on Newbury Street in Boston. It was called Stephanie’s, after its owner, who was an amazing chef. Stephanie made chicken breasts so tender you could almost drink them. Her julienned carrot salad sold out before noon every day. The chefs made gourmet mac and cheese in fifteen-pound batches, and there were always a couple pounds left over for the undergrad waitstaff to gratefully take home. But by far the most popular item on the menu was Stephanie’s risotto.

At some point early on that summer it occurred to me that I was surrounded by culinary experts and that I should take advantage of this. I also knew I probably only had time left in the summer to learn one thing well. So I picked Stephanie’s risotto. I picked that item out of all the other things offered at the restaurant because I was living in my first apartment at the time and I wanted to have sex in it. Not really knowing how to convince girls to have sex with me, I picked up a copy of GQ looking for advice, and there was an article that said if I could cook risotto, girls would have sex with me. Risotto, it said, is complicated, which makes it impressive, and it has many variations, so it’s really the only dish a single guy needs to know how to make.

Five days a week for ten weeks I watched the chefs at Stephanie’s make risotto during my lunch hour. Five nights a week for ten weeks I practiced cooking risotto in my apartment’s kitchen. It’s become a thing I order at restaurants solely to compare their risotto to mine, to figure out if they’re doing something I should copy. This is what I’ve learned.

FIRST OFF

Risotto is a simple dish that’s incredibly difficult to do well. It’s just rice with stuff in it. But it’s a different rice, special rice, extremely creamy rice that’s quite demanding to prepare.

INGREDIENTS

Arborio rice: This is sold just about everywhere they sell rice. Don’t get the rice that comes with a packet of herbs and different flavors. Get the plain Arborio. The Trader Joe’s Arborio that comes in a red box works just fine. There are a couple other rices that can be used for risotto, like Carnaroli, which is apparently known as “The King of Rice,” but don’t bother with these until you have some practice. That would be like someone grilling for the first time using a dry-aged rib eye — an atrocity punishable at The Hague.

Stock: Your basic risotto is made with chicken stock, which is the same thing as chicken broth, although there’s some debate about this. Just get the cans or boxes labeled “broth” and don’t worry about it. There are a lot of different stocks you can use — or you can make your own. If you make risotto for a vegan, you can use vegetable stock, but this is far more bland than chicken stock so you have to compensate for this with herbs or other sources of flavor. I once made my own stock from asparagus. It was okay. I’m very much obsessed with veal stock but haven’t tried it yet because I can’t find it anywhere and it takes a long time to prepare from scratch and also I don’t own a stock pot.

Stuff: What do you want to put in your risotto? My personal favorite risotto is mushroom risotto, and I usually pick two or three different varieties of mushroom. Always portabello, often shittake, and chanterelle if I feel like a badass with money to burn. (Chanterelles are $25 a pound! That’s crazy.) Seafood is also good, especially mollusks and crustaceans. Scallops are my other go-to, outside of mushrooms. Asparagus and other fresh vegetables also work well. White and red meats, however, are not fantastic, and are better prepared on their own and served on a bed of risotto or right next to it.

Whatever you buy, get like three or four handfuls of it, depending on how big your hands are, and treat your hands more like shovels than claws. Or, if the stuff isn’t loose, get two packages.

Onions: Use plain, boring, yellow onions. I’ve never had a good experience with white onions or red onions. Shallots sound fancy but their flavor is too subtle to compete with the other things you throw into the risotto.

Herbs: Your basic risotto calls for fresh, chopped parsley. I prefer rosemary, thyme, or tarragon. Fresh herbs are better, but if you only have dry herbs that’s fine too. The difference between fresh and dried herbs is when you throw them into the pan. Dried herbs are added early, before you add the stock. Fresh herbs are added at the very end, after the rice is fully cooked. This is a tip you can apply to all kinds of cooking, by the way. Dried herbs need time to get their flavor into the food; fresh herbs are more of an aromatic and should be added near the end. (I learned that in a cooking class once. I just saved you money.)

Butter, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper: Have these things.

Cheese: You want a hard, dry cheese, grated or shaved. Basic risotto recipes call for parmesan, which works great. Asiago, also good. My favorite is romano. Get the freshly grated cheese that will go bad in a couple days that they sell in the fancy cheese section of the store. Get more than you need because you’ll be tempted to scoop some out and eat it with a spoon.

White wine vinegar: This is my secret little trick! I stole it from one of the chefs at Stephanie’s.

Truffle oil: Do yourself a favor. Buy a bottle of truffle oil. Black truffle or white truffle — it doesn’t matter. Truffle oil is one of the best things that the bounty of nature has in store for all who live in this world. It’s the most worthwhile expensive thing you can buy. Use it on everything.

Wine: For drinking while you cook.

HOW TO PREP

Cookware: You need a large saute pan, at least 11 inches in diameter. A saute pan is the frying pan with the perpendicular walls that are an inch or two high. You also need something to cook the stuff you’re going to put into the risotto. This will probably be a normal frying pan unless you cook something I haven’t thought of. Some recipes say you can cook the stuff in the same pan as the risotto but don’t ever, ever do this. It always comes out terrible. When you make mushroom risotto that way, the mushroom juice stains the entire dish an unappetizing brown. When you make scallop risotto this way, the scallop juice makes the whole dish smell like a pier. Just cook the stuff separately and everything will be fine.

Measuring: The only thing you need to measure is the rice. One cup is enough for two people to have seconds and still leave leftovers for the next day. Leftover cold risotto is really good. Two cups of rice is way too much, and you probably don’t have a pan big enough to cook all that. Do one cup plus a little extra, maybe one and half cups.

Chopping: For one cup of rice you need just over half an onion. Chop it coarsely with a knife. I made the mistake once of chopping the onion finely in a Cuisinart and it made the risotto taste terrible. The onion overwhelmed everything, including my guest, who passed out. Keep your onion’s surface area down and save the Cuisinart for the garlic, which takes forever to chop with a knife. Chop two, maybe three cloves of garlic. Your call there. Some people like a lot of garlic. Also, chop yo’ herbs.

Stock: Every risotto recipe out there tells you to measure out a certain amount of stock. Ignore this. Just have two cans or packages open and at the ready. You will probably not use all of it, but it’s better to have too much stock on hand than too little.

Stuff: It’s going to take at least a half hour to cook your risotto and most of the stuff you’ll want to add will take far less time. Have everything chopped, seasoned, whatever and in the pan ready to go on another burner so that you can just get the flame going and cook the stuff during the last ten minutes or so that you’re cooking the risotto. How much stuff you want depends on the kind of stuff you’re using. Mushrooms shrink when you cook them, so start with an overflowing mountain of them in a pan. For other kinds of stuff, a frying panful will do.

Everything else: Cut two pats of butter. Actually, that’s a lie. You’re supposed to use two pats but, really, you probably want to use like four or five. Have all containers and bottles open and within reach. You are not going the leave the stove for a while. Fill a wine glass to the top with wine, they way they serve you at a bar. This isn’t going in the risotto, by the way. It’s going in your belly.

AND HERE’S HOW YOU COOK THE RISOTTO

Pour some olive oil in the saute pan and throw in the butter. Put this over a medium-high flame until the butter melts. Dump in all the chopped onions. Stir it up. Fry the onions until they start to brown a little. Dump in the chopped garlic. Stir it up. Add some salt and pepper. It you’re using dried herbs, add those now. Cook all this until the onions are good and golden. Now dump in all of the Arborio rice. Turn the flame down to medium.

This is where the real work begins. Grab a wooden spoon and stir the Arborio rice. A lot. Stir the rice consistently and methodically. Get the grains of rice all coated with butter and oil and onions and garlic. Keep stirring. (Get used to it. For the next half hour of your life you will do nothing but stir rice. You will not leave the kitchen. You will not turn away from the stove. Your forearms will get sore but this will not stop you. Your only purpose in life will be to stir rice.)

Stir the rice like this for a couple minutes and then pick up the pan and give it a little shake so that the rice covers the pan evenly. Now pour in a bunch of chicken stock (or whatever stock you’re using). Pour in enough so that all the rice is just barely submerged. The contents of your saute pan should look like a bubbling primeval rice swamp. Now start stirring again.

Stirring the Arborio does two things. First, Arborio rice is high in starch, which makes risotto creamy, and the constant stirring coaxes the starch out of the rice. Second, the last thing you want is for the rice to stick to the pan and burn, and constantly moving it around ensures this does not happen.

I have developed a stirring technique over the years. I stir from the outside in, folding the edges of the rice into the middle all around the pan, and after I’ve done a full circle around the pan I push all the rice from the center out toward the periphery. Then I shake the pan to even the rice out, and do the whole thing again. I have no idea if this is how you’re supposed to do it, or if there’s even a way you’re supposed to do it, but it seems to work and keeps the muscles in my arm from getting too fatigued.

As the rice absorbs the chicken stock, add more chicken stock. Just a little each time. You don’t want the rice to get too dry and you don’t want to drown it either. Be conservative. Pour then stir. Pour then stir. Blank your mind and enter a zen state of stirring awareness. Drink more wine.

The hard part about risotto is knowing when it’s done. After you’ve been pouring and stirring and drinking for twenty minutes, it’s time to start keeping an eye on the doneness of the rice. Risotto is served al dente, which is Italian for “to the tooth,” which is an unhelpful translation. Al dente refers to a certain degree of firmness and there are two ways to determine whether your rice is al dente yet: with a fork or with your teeth.

Here’s the fork method. Take out a single grain of rice and put it on a cutting board and cut it in half. The cross-section of the grain should look like a sliced open Good & Plenty. The outer part will be soft and relatively translucent, and the core will be hard and white. The hard white part is the uncooked part of the rice. Risotto is al dente the moment that white part becomes translucent. Anything longer is too long.

Using your teeth is actually better. It’s faster and you can do it without taking your attention off the pan, which you may have figured out by now is crucial to the risotto-making process. Scoop out some rice and chew it. The rice should give but not crunch or squish. This is the mouthfeel of al dente. If the rice crunches, you need to cook it longer (with more chicken stock and stirring). If it squishes you’ve overcooked it.

Risotto is also not supposed to be clumpy. It should spread slowly on its own like really wet mud when you put it on a plate. This I learned from “Top Chef.” My risotto was clumpy for twelve years and I didn’t know this was a problem until I saw Tom Colicchio yell at contestants because the way their risotto moved on his plate displeased him. This caused me some measure of shame (even though my clumpy risotto still tastes great.) I am presently still trying to master the secret to non-clumpy risotto, and what I’ve figured out so far is that if the rice dries out too much — i.e., if you let the chicken stock absorb without adding more — clumpy happens. I think you need to keep the rice wet enough so that it keeps spreading on its own in the pan, but not so wet that it looks like the rice swamp when you first pour in the stock. Getting the timing right is tricky. If you get worried that your rice is al dente but there’s still too much chicken stock left in the pan, turn the heat way up and stir like crazy. This gets the excess stock to burn off. Don’t rely on this, however. It’s only to be used in an emergency.

Now, if you feel comfortable taking your risotto up a notch, then just a moment before the rice is al dente, add a small dash of white wine vinegar, like maybe a half teaspoon, and stir it in. A little bit goes a long way. Too much and your rice will taste like laundry. White wine vinegar gives the risotto a bit of a lighter taste. I have no idea why.

When the rice is finally cooked, turn off the heat and just dump in all the stuff (that you should have already cooked in a separate pan on the side), the mushrooms or scallops or whatever. Make sure you drain out the excess liquid from the stuff before you mix it into the risotto. Add your chopped fresh herbs. Add salt and pepper. “Season to taste” as they say. Stir all this into the rice, and then sprinkle your cheese into a thin layer on top. I like to stir a bit of cheese in and then add more on top, but then I generally like things cheesy.

Cover the pan of risotto until its ready to be served. Transfer it to a gigantic bowl and bring it to the table. And then, just before you eat it, drizzle some truffle oil on top. Don’t do this in the kitchen; do it at the table in front of people. It’s a subtle way of telling them, “not only did I just make you risotto, but now I’m pouring truffle oil on it so how about that.”

Also in Half Baked: Perfect Tarte Tatin In 10 Easy Steps

Eric Spiegelman is a web producer in Los Angeles.

These ridiculous amateur astronomers don’t recognize extraterrestrial craft, and mistake them for horrifying NATO drone-mother crafts who give birth to thousands of drone babies.

“Cookie Puss, an ice-cream cake come to life, was the embodiment of the brand’s low-budget, home-brewed ad approach — appalling by just about any aesthetic measure yet incredibly memorable if not straight-up haunting and psyche-scarring. As such, these spots burned themselves into the cultural memory, especially for people who grew up in a certain time and place: New York, New Jersey and Connecticut in the 1970s and 80s. But their impact has been much broader; Howard Stern, the Beastie Boys, ‘The Family Guy,’ Regis and Kelly, Philip Glass, Patton Oswalt and countless other comics have meditated upon or referenced Cookie Puss, to say nothing of cousin Cookie O’Puss — with his poor version of an Irish accent — or Fudgie the Whale, Hug Me Bear or Dumpy the Pumpkin.”
 — Here’s a look back at the tri-state weirdness that was the Carvel advertising experience.

No, literally, the Internet is over. Average packet loss today in North America? 32%.

What Was Your First (Or Favorite) Halloween Costume?

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 held hands and shouted “red rum” at drunk people.

Charlotte Cowles, senior editor of The Cut

Before I hit my late teens and Halloween became an excuse to wear the sluttiest outfit I could possibly muster, my mom made majority of my Halloween costumes on her sewing machine. This was so sweet and maternal of her, and I was totally ungrateful and just wanted one of those store-bought Disney costumes. (My best friend in second grade, Julie, had this gorgeous yellow dress that Belle wears in Beauty and the Beast and I was sickeningly jealous.) Anyway, there was one exception: When I was six, my mom made me a truly kick-ass mermaid costume that featured a lovely tail made of green silk. She stuffed it with filling so that it was like a big fin-shaped pillow, and sewed it to a long green skirt so that it flopped around when I walked. For obvious reasons, that was my favorite Halloween costume.

Kerry Folan, editor of Racked

Thirty years later, I still wonder what private joke my very sweet, very Catholic mother was making with herself when she sewed me into a devil costume for my first Halloween.

The neighborhood I grew up in was unpretentious, middle class, and above all, parochial: An imposing Catholic church sat square in the middle of the well-kept Colonial houses, its elegant steeple rising above everything else in sight. As we got older, my brother and I would run loose after school in our disheveled plaid uniforms with the other neighborhood kids — nearly all of whom attended the Catholic grade school around the corner from our house — and be called home for dinner at 6:00 each evening by the church’s punctual Angelus bells.

As the center of the community, the church very naturally steered the Halloween activities, too. In the afternoon, the little kids paraded around the field in all their costumed glory. Later on, trick-or-treating dads with cans of Budweiser in hand would lead their disguised progeny along the short-cuts across the church grounds (in our neighborhood, children received candy while their parents received roadies). And later still, the older kids would gather in the parking lot to do everything teenagers always do on Halloween. In a word, there was no way to ignore God on All Saints Day, or any other day, if you lived there.

So I like to imagine my mom smiling to herself as she stitched the tiny red costume — complete with trident and devils’ horns — for her two-year-old daughter. Perhaps she already knew that her children would learn to exercise the outer limits of her patience, and that she would answer every test over all those years with ecclesiastical kindness.

Tavi Gavinson, editor-in-chief of Rookie

One of my first Halloween costumes was a teacher at age four. I wore blue zig zag-printed pants, like all educators do, and collected candy in a tote bag my mom had that said “TEACHER STUFF” on it. FUN! At an age where I could’ve dressed like a FAIRY and sincerely believed I was one, I for some reason thought dressing like I had my dad’s job would be just a blast.

Heather & Jessica, Fug Girls

Jessica: My first Halloween costume (that I can completely remember) was a fairy princess. I must have been three or four, and my Grandma made it for me — she made a lot of my Halloween costumes, because she’s pretty crafty. My dress was pink, and obviously I had a magical wand and a crown, both of which were covered in little paste jewels and had ribbons all over them. I MAY have worn my crown for several months thereafter, just with my usual ensembles. As everyone knows, accessories really do make the outfit.

Heather: I suspect my first one was the Sunmaid Raisin girl when I was three or four, and as an adult I am fond of the year I went as Karl Lagerfeld, but my very favorite as a kid was Annie — I had a red curly wig relatively like hers, and although it killed me that I didn’t have the EXACT red dress nor the EXACT black patent buckle shoes that went around the ankle, I did my best to substitute. I loved it so much, I don’t even know if it entirely counts as a Halloween costume, because I was prone to wearing it on random Tuesdays and such.

Laurie Henzel, publisher of Bust

I love Halloween so much, and for a few years in the 80s, my gay boyfriend and I went as famous couples, (Sonny and Cher, Nico and Brian Jones etc.) but I think my favorite was Salvador Dali and his wife Gala. I wore a glamorous gown and fashioned a hat with a giant lobster on it; he did a tux, cane and crazy moustache. I love doing historical characters because you can research fun facts and incorporate them into the night.

David Hershkovits, founder and editor of Paper

When I went as Barack Obama in 2008 and got all these funny looks from people on the street.

Kristian Laliberte, senior editor of Refinery29

There was a point and time when I actually purchased an Ed Hardy trucker hat and True Religion jeans. And, actually wore both of them. Non-ironically. A year later, in the heart of Christian Audigier-dom, I looked back and realized my egregious sartorial mistake. To atone, my Halloween costume addressed those sins and I went as Last Year. I piled on all the gnarly Ed Hardy, True Religion, Affliction (even a rabbit-fur lined Juicy Couture sweatshirt), shit I could find…and got spray-tanned. I guess I could use it again and go as “Jersey Shore.”

Jessica Misener, senior editor of The Huffington Post Style

When I was in first grade, my mom, who’s an avid sewer, made my sister and I unicorn costumes for Halloween. They were full-on jumpsuits made of shiny lilac satin, complete with mane and a unicorn horn stuffed with fiberfill. We made skits based around our unicorn characters and it was the bomb diggity. Actually, I wonder if I still have mine.

Tracie Egan Morrissey, senior writer at Jezebel

When I was in eighth grade I dressed as a pregnant nun. I wore the costume to my Catholic school, but I didn’t get in trouble, I think because that would’ve required an uncomfortable conversation about sex. Instead, they told me to remove the pillow from my stomach, so my costume morphed to “teacher.”

Anna North, senior editor of BuzzFeed Shift

When I was in grad school I decided to go as Robin Hood, and it turned out one of my classmates was a hunter, so I ended up driving way out into the woods to borrow a real bow from him. He also cut me off a tree branch that I used as an arrow. I was really proud of myself because I felt like I’d been on a quest, like I was going to actually become some kind of woodland hero.

Maureen O’Connor, senior editor of The Cut

My first Halloween costume was a brown paper grocery bag, which my mother cut three holes into, for my head and arms. We drew a clown outfit onto it, and she painted my face with a lipstick.

Amy Odell, editor of BuzzFeed Shift

My favorite was Daft Punk. I went with a friend and think I took the gold helmet. I guess the fact that I don’t remember is a sign it was an awesome time.

Jenna Sauers, writer at Jezebel

Halloween is not really celebrated in the country where I grew up, New Zealand. I remember once around age 12 some friends and I got dressed up — I don’t remember as what, but we were probably pretty half-assed — and tried to trick-or-treat in our Christchurch neighborhood. It didn’t work; most people were confused by this group of oddly dressed middle schoolers on their doorstep asking for lollies. One elderly man wouldn’t even come to the door. We went home and watched the original Halloween movie and scared ourselves half to death instead. So I don’t really have a concept of Halloween that predates my move to the U.S. when I was 18. I started to get really into Halloween when I realized it’s a great idea for a holiday: an almost totally secular opportunity for play and temporary self-transformation, with lots of drinking.

I’m very particular about my costumes. I believe in making my own — I never buy pre-made — and I do not believe in going as anything “sexy.” My favorite costume so far is probably the one I wore in 2009. I went as a Reverse Mermaid — you know, René Magritte’s painting of a fish with the legs of a woman, or a woman with the head of a fish. I spent really too much money (for just a costume) on a couple yards of silver, blue, and green stretch lamé at a poky little store on W. 39th St. First, I used some leftover curtain tape to make a kind of harness that went over my shoulders. Into the pockets of the curtain tape, I inserted the tape-wrapped ends of two bent wire hangers that together formed a pointed frame over my head. Then I made a pattern and sewed a stretch lamé fish head — sort of a giant hoodie with a misshapen hood part that would fit over my frame, with a hole for my face. I then cut hundreds of semi-circular scales out of the rest of the stretch lamé. I sewed the scales to the hoodie in rows, staggering them like roof tiles and working from the bottom up to cover my stitches. Lastly, I made puffy, three-dimensional fish lips that went around the face opening in the head and puffy little fish eyes (two circles of leftover black suede from an old thrift-store skirt I’d been cannibalizing were just right for the pupils). Underneath the arms I attached cheap green chiffon, ridged with radial pin-tucks to suggest fins. Add control-top nude hose and boy shorts and we’re done. It was a really great night. I went out to a total shit-show of a warehouse party in Williamsburg and was right up front for Bad Brains. Later, Brooklyn Vegan took my picture without my noticing while I was eating a falafel at 4 a.m. I was pretty proud of that costume. I don’t believe in recycling Halloween costumes, so I’ll probably never wear it again, but it’s still in my cupboard, harness, wire frame, deformed fish-head hoodie and all.

Molly Simms, senior editor of Bust

As a kid, I dressed as The Devil and Dracula several times, but one of my favorite costumes was circa my mid-20s, when I went as Wendy (from Wendy’s). I painted the corporate logo onto a huge piece of posterboard, and stuck my head through the circle; only her head is visible in the image, so I just wore pants and Converse. I was super comfortable, and I only partially destroyed the posterboard by the end of the night (with a combination of booze and out-of-control dancing).

Dodai Stewart, deputy editor of Jezebel

My first was Princess Leia. But my favorite, the one I did for like ten consecutive years, is Dorothy. I have homemade ruby slippers, which trail glitter all over the city, and a gingham dress someone made for me. My favorite on another person is when my sister, in fourth grade, went as a lab rat. She had adorable ears and whiskers and then syringes and bloody bandages hanging from her costume, which I think was long johns.

Kat Stoeffel, associate editor of The Cut

The first Halloween costume that I remember asking for was a unicorn. It’s weird to me, in retrospect, that a childhood interest in unicorns would translate into the desire to be a unicorn, and I guess for that I blame the very trippy 1982 animated film The Last Unicorn, in which a unicorn turns into a princess and, I think, back again. Asked how she constructed a child-size hood with a freestanding horn, my overachieving mother says, “Trial and lots of error!”

Dana Thomas, fashion writer and author of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster

When I was six, my mother made me a costume to be Little Bo Peep: long skirt, bonnet (I already had a peasant-style blouse, this being about 1970). As it happened, we were in Miami because my father had a convention at the Fontainebleau, and I didn’t have a shepherd’s cane with me to complete the costume. So my mother took one of my Dad’s golf club irons — the humor in that being my Dad had bought and dragged golf clubs to Miami though he had no idea how to play — and tied a big pink bow around it, and that was my cane. I went to the party with all the other convention kids in a big, cool suite of the hotel, ate huge cheeseburgers from room service, watched Disney’s Babes in Toyland, and then the organizers gave out costume awards. I won Most Original, because of my nine iron with the big pink bow. The prize: a Mickey Mouse watch.

Verena von Pfetten, editor-in-chief of Styleite

My brain appears to have blacked out any early memories of my first Halloween costume. (My mother is many things, but a seamstress she is not, so at an age when homemade costumes ruled the scene, I probably wore a lot of garbage bags and miscellaneous hats.) But my favorite costume was also my first foray into that hormonal bastardization of Halloween, wherein the goal of the night is apparently to make oneself as creatively attractive as possible to those around you. My friend and I had decided that it would be great fun to dress up as Thing 1 and Thing 2 this year — “Such comfort! Such joy!”, we naively thought. We wore matching red sweatsuits, dyed our hair blue, and teased it sky-high. We were proud (and comfortable) in our leisurely ensemble until we saw another pair of Thing 1 Thing 2s — these wearing tight red mini dresses, bobbed blue wigs, and teetering precariously in stiletto heels. I later walked in on them having a threesome in one of the party’s darkened bedrooms.

Connie Wang, global editor of Refinery29

The best part about being Dr. Zizmor’s before-and-after patient was making the zits out of the Elmer’s glue and popping them later during the party for entertainment. They actually squirted white goo, which was pretty awesome. I cut some old sweats in half and glued them on top of these tie-dyed party and and black camisole (the ‘after’ patient’s I-now-have-confidence look), and made my boyfriend dress up as the doctor himself, complete with rainbow headband. The only downside was that all that fake pimple makeup wasn’t the best thing for my face, and I actually broke out in real-life zits the night after.

Related: Super Sexy Women’s Halloween Costumes

Nadia Chaudhury has graduated from dressing up as a princess because party dresses were easy to dressing up as Tami Taylor (with her Coach). Connie Wang costume photo by Maayan Zilberman.

There are no new jokes, but what’s funny here is going to be the sudden conservative silence.

“The television program ‘The Biggest Loser’ is touted as a display of how diet and exercise can help individuals lose weight — no matter their starting point. But new research suggests the program’s extreme depiction of exercise is more likely to turn people off than get them off the couch, say researchers from the University of Alberta.”