This year's halloween decorations may not just spook you, they might turn your stomach. Next to the standard witches, ghosts and black cats, many specialty stores and catalogs are selling creepily realistic corpses, severed limbs and butchered body parts. One catalog advertises an animated ghoul who can vomit into a barrel on cue (special order only, $2,750). An online company sells a Tortured Torso Prop (for $149) you can lean near your front door to welcome trick-or-treaters. Whatever happened to jack-o'-lanterns and Casper the Friendly Ghost? From costumes and props to indoor and outdoor home decorations and table settings, experts and retailers agree that Halloween is turning to the dark side, becoming gorier, more violent and more adult. "This year we are moving away from costumes and more into gory props, because the consumer demand is growing," said Jessica Lutoff, a marketing analyst for Fright Catalog, an online and catalog Halloween retailer. With steady growth in sales, the Halloween home decorating market is huge, coming in second only to Christmas, according to the National Retail Federation. Total consumer spending on Halloween is expected to top $5 billion this year, and a sampling of what's selling says it all. Horchow, the high-end Neiman Marcus affiliate, sells fake buzzards and chocolate coffins. Target sells a 15-piece cemetery kit, a hanging Grim Reaper and an oversize maggot. Spirit Halloween, a Spencer's specialty store, sells the Tortured Torso Prop and a child's costume called Sailor of Death. Fright Catalog, seller of the Vomit Barrel, also serves up John Doe, a latex corpse with a hollow chest cavity for displaying a food buffet inside.

Even the ever-tasteful Martha Stewart has given in to ghastly. The October issue of her magazine shows how to make giant spider egg sacks and white taper candles dripping with "blood" (red candle wax). She smiles next to a table centerpiece made of green-glittered skeletal parts. "There has always been a love of the gruesome in American culture," said Lesley Pratt Bannatyne, author of several Halloween books, "and it's found its way to Halloween.

View: Full Article | Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Now thats my kind of Halloween. More Gore. and Bloody.

Are we now going to see little 18 signs on Halloween catalogues - Warning! Not Suitable For Anyone Under 18! But seriously, some of the props and things sound sick. And overpriced - I mean Halloween is only one day of the year! And if you put away your latex table corpse for next year, odds are they'll be something even nastier next year!

I guess prison life turned Martha Hard!

at least someone still cares about Halloween
I think that this holiday will die out in a few years

mmm airbrushed bikinis

I think it's great ! Halloween at my house is a family tradition. All my friends and relatives come for my party. It was the best one yet this year ! I go all out ... I have five acres and it's decorated from the front of my driveway out to the back of the property! My entire house is set up for the festivities. We bob for apples, have a pinata, a halloween version of win lose or draw, a hay ride and a costume contest for best costume, scariest and funniest.
It takes me weeks to get it all together. But we have such a good time ! The buffet is to die for from low country boil, eyeball deviled eggs to brain jello and mummy toes ! There is no alcohol just good old fashon family fun ! The kids love to roast marshmallows over the bon fire.
Every year it gets bigger and better! I have found that the gorier and scarrier the props the better they like it. I do christmas to but not on the scale of halloween.
Halloween was just a couple days ago and Im already planning for next year.
It's gotten to where it seems like everyone has friends to bring along and as I always say the more the scarrier !
Members of my family have began to help me with certain aspects of the party and thank god for them because it is a very big undertaking for just the two of us.
I'm in the market now for a big foot suit to dress my cousin in. On the hay ride I stop down at the river and tell the story told to me by the old country folk of big foot and family living there in the woods then on the way back the truck breaks down and the lights go out everyone is in pitch blackness in the forest the girls screaming of course. I want to add a bigger thrill of them seeing him(big foot) just before the lights go out! So far the hay ride has been a great success with me now having to do up to three trips. I live way out in the country on the savannah river surrounded by forest with never ending dirt roads going through them so it's perfect for this type of thing.
Im always open to new ideas and suggestions.
Hope you all had as great a Halloween as we did !