Zombie mask SCORE at Kroger!

Went to the local Kroger (grocery store) to buy some coarse ground black pepper...scored this great zombie mask for $15.00!

Halloween Hot Sauce

My previous business, Haunted Hot Sauce has died, its been buried and has now clawed its way back from the grave as Halloween Hot Sauce! Do you like Halloween? Do like hot sauce? Then you'll LOVE Halloween Hot Sauce!

Halloween Hot Sauce creates flavorful, high-quality hot sauce for Halloween...or anytime! Each hot sauce is wrapped in a creepy, vintage, apothecary-style label and comes topped with a scrap of “burial cloth” that’s been securely attached with a toe-tag!

It's a decoration! It's a delicious hot sauce! It's perfect for Halloween parties!

Halloween Hot Sauce...the OFFICIAL hot sauce of Halloween! You think that's a bold claim? See for yourself at HalloweenHotSauce.com!

Is your Mort Safe?

I learned recently that bars, stones and fences were installed on top of and around ancient grave-sites in order to protect deceased loved ones from grave robbers. These were called MORTSAFES!

A Google image search for mortsafe yields astounding results!

I'd LOVE to make one of these!

Here's the iron bar variety

How about an iron coffin!?

And here's a full-blown cage!

Many, many more pics and Halloween decorating ideas here! ( http://tinyurl.com/97l2oph )

Hershey's Pumpkin Spice Kisses!

I haven't tried these yet but CandyBlog.net describes them: "The taste, though sweet, has a great harvest spice flavor - it’s mostly nutmeg with a little cinnamon and perhaps ginger or allspice and maybe a hint of clove."

Get them at Target!

Yankee Candle Witches Brew Score!

I do enjoy the YANKEE CANDLE Witches Brew scent a LOT! Here's what I scored at the 2012 Yankee Candle Halloween Preview party.

There's also a Yankee Candle called BLACK CAULDRON BREW that's made up of black licorice, anise and cloves but unfortunately that one is only available online and at the time of this writing, is sold out.

Thirdly, they have a limited edition jar named HAPPY HALLOWEEN that ALSO smells like black licorice, anise and cloves so I'm sure it's the same recipe as BLACK CAULDRON BREW above. I sampled it at the Halloween Preview Party and it was a bit too "black licorice" for me. I guess I'm a bigger fan of the earthy patchouli in the Witches Brew scent.

They have a candy corn fragrance and a pumpkin spice fragrance as well. I'm not a fan of candy scented candles and the pumpkin spice fragrance is wonderful, but common and found elsewhere for a lot less money.

Yankee Candle Halloween Preview Party!

I love this time of year!

Yankee Candle 2012 Fall Scents

Speaking from personal experience, the Yankee Candle Fall scents "HARVEST WELCOME" and "TREEHOUSE MEMORIES" are glorious!

Yankee Candle describes them as the following:

Harvest Welcome
"Welcome home! Cozy up with this inviting combination of farm-fresh pumpkins spiced with just the right amount of brisk autumn air."

Treehouse Memories
"Warm, earthy woods wrapped in sweet, familiar spices evoke memories of crisp Autumn days spent amongst the changing leaves."


They have four other Fall scents too. Season's Blessings, Whoopie Pie, Caramel Pecan Pie and Apple Pumpkin.

Season's Blessings smells a bit too "grapey" in my opinion. I don't buy food scents (Whoopie Pie is supposed to smell like chocolate with vanilla frosting) and Apple Pumpkin probably smells like apple and pumpkin!

I recommend Harvest Welcome and Treehouse Memories highly!

See them all here: http://www.yankeecandle.com/whats-new/new-fragrances

I can't wait for their Halloween scents arriving in August!

Halloween at Garden Ridge 2012

It's that time of year again....JULY, when Garden Ridge stores display their unique and reasonably priced Halloween merchandise. For a home haunter like myself it signals prop building "crunch time".

Here is a link to my Facebook page where the rest of the photo album is available:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.321691541259257.74278.100002552417400&type=1 target="_blank"

If you have to "Friend" me to see this link, please do so!! We should be friends already anyway!

Stay Rotten,

Victor "The Undertaker" Ives

Haunted Hot Sauce: R.I.P.

Haunted Hot Sauce is closed permanently.

Thank you all so much for such a great ride all these years!

Over the past 8-9 years my crazy "hot sauce in a coffin" idea has really turned into something special. Anyone who's ever talked to me or purchased one of my products (in a coffin especially) knows the amount of work I put into everything I do.

Well that amount of work has finally caught up to me. Haunted Hot Sauce has grown to a level that I can't keep up with anymore. My customer service is beginning to suffer, I'm behind on all of my projects with partners, it takes me waaay too long to fill orders...and this is in JUNE, wait til it starts to get busy! I have a day job and a family and right now I'm spending all morning before work filing orders. I work all day. I spend all evening, every evening making the coffins...weekends too! It's consuming me like a drug! Everyone around me is being affected and everything I do aside from Haunted Hot Sauce, and now INCLUDING Haunted Hot Sauce is suffering...so before I start really dropping the ball with customers' money, and quality of product and time to fulfill orders...I'm having to close the coffin lid on a successful and fulfilling project.

I appreciate more than you know all of those who have supported this crazy idea! Anyone who would actually buy zombie hot sauce in a coffin with moss and maggots are my kind of people!

I'll still be making Halloween props and decorating my yard for halloween, building creepy costumes, attending haunt conventions (maybe even more now), making pumpkin spice liqueur and doing what I do, I just won't be selling hot sauce online every day anymore.

You can keep in touch with me through Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/Victor.TheUndertaker.Ives

or through my blog at http://hauntedhotsauce.blogspot.com/.

HauntedHotSauce.com the hot sauce site is going away. The Undertaker isn't.

Please keep in touch.

Thank you.

Stay Rotten,

Victor "The Undertaker" Ives

TheUndertaker@HauntedHotSauce.com

FEARnet Food Review - Haunted Hot Sauce

FEARnet's Carl Lyon did an excellent review of all of my Haunted Hot Sauces. Check it out HERE!

Season of Shadows - Last Post

The last blog post by a dear friend, John Wolfe. I don't have words to describe how I feel. He's the classiest, kindest, most meticulous person I know...an inspiration to me and countless others. Life is indeed an occasion and you definitely rose to it. I wish you peace dear friend.

Season of Shadows - Last Post

The Undertaker on Gravedigger's Local

The Undertaker was asked a series of 5 unusual questions on Gravedigger's Local: A Handful of Dirt.

CHECK IT OUT...if you DARE!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY 2012 ALL! Look forward to BIG THINGS from www.hauntedhotsauce.com this year!

The Undertaker's comin'!

...and don't you forget it!

Haunted Hot Sauce Halloween 2011

Just a few days shots of my small display this year. More than quantity, this year was about lighting and ambiance.

Click Here to see the photos.

Or Click Here to see the fancy slideshow.

OUTSIDE: The entire house was illuminated by three blue spotlights hidden in the trees.

INSIDE: Red spotlights shone through the boarded windows which made the house scream "EEEEEVIL!" I didn't have time to detail the Styrofoam "boards" but that made no difference at night as they appeared as silhouettes when lit from behind.




WITCH JARS: I made a dozen of these quickly the night before Halloween. Hung at varying heights from the huge Magnolia tree and lit with tea lights, they were VERY effective in creating interest, movement, contrast and a ghostly atmosphere.




THE COFFIN UNDER THE STAIRS: Illuminated by a hidden red spotlight from above, inside this coffin is where I hid one of those sound activated "haunted hedge" shakers. Everyone that approached it was greeted by a violent shaking, rattling sound and guttural growls coming from within the coffin. My fog machine dispersed thick fog from under this coffin at regular intervals.



I actually got to hide in here for a while to scare trick-or-treaters.


THE CEMETERY: Each tombstone was illuminated by a blue/green LED light "expertly" duct taped to a spray-painted black paint stirrer stick and shoved into the ground in front of the tombstone. A few had LED candles and others had oil lanterns hanging from them.



One of my only "night shots".




The same shot the morning after.




The wilted and faded cemetery flower urns I made can be found elsewhere in my blog.




I realize that the inside of this coffin looks too "new" but at night, illuminated by the flickering oil lamp, that goes unnoticed.


SUMMARY: This year's display was creepy and beautiful. Red light streaming through the boarded windows, blue light illuminating the entire house, each tombstone illuminated by it's own blue/green light, flickering candles and oil lamp flames and glowing witch jars swaying in the slight breeze. Haunted organ music, crows and the moans of restless undead souls were heard.

I'll use the lighting tricks I learned along with much greater detail for next year so keep an "eye out" for Moonlit Hill Cemetery - Halloween 2012!


Click Here to see a few more shots!

Cheers! Enjoying some Halloween holiday Spirit(s)

I had no idea when I started toying around with the making of pumpkin spice liqueur that it would turn into such a fun and rewarding project! Cheers! Happy Fall! HAPPY HALLOWEEN SEASON!!!

NOTE: The original recipe for Pumpkin Spice Liqueur was posted here on HalloweenDrinks.net

I want my Mummy! (sort of)

THIS is maybe the most realistic looking prop I've seen from Spirit Halloween in a while. It hangs in a cloth box made to look like a crate. It's motion sensitive. When it's triggered the eyes light up red, it shakes and it goes into a sort of "comedy routine" which ruins the effect in my opinion. The voice sounds to me like George Costanza from Seinfeld.

It costs $99.99 which with a 20% discount coupon might be worth it if I can hack into it and make it growl menacingly instead of complain. It's supposed to utter 4 phrases but I've only heard one.

See more pics and a video HERE

Halloween T-shirts at Walmart

Impressive Walmart! The zombie one glows in the dark and they're only $5.50!

Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale

It's that time again, when various pumpkin beers hit the market. I like the packaging of this one but I'm not getting any "pumpkin" from the taste. I've tried adding my own pumpkin spice syrup to beer but the sweetness of the syrup doesn't mix well with it. Maybe I should try adding just the typical pumpkin pie spices. (ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon) and leave out the sugar and water. Any recommendations?

It's corpsin' time!

I'm working on a half-corpse to possibly carry in the upcoming Dragon*Con parade on Labor Day weekend. She'll "interact" with the crowd and others throughout the day.