No matter where you live, you're bound to hear some sort of urban legend about your town, city or state. While it would be a little insane to do an article with all the urban legends from all the cities in America, this collection of the scariest urban legends from each state is filled with delightfully terrifying local tales. While you'll obviously want to read the one from your state, if you really like scary stories, it's worth the time to read them all. And, of course, like many collections of urban legends, some of the stories are actually true -like the California one.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

Holiday songs are nothing new. Whenever Christmas approaches, we will all be bombarded on our radios and at the malls we visit, by various Christmas carols, classic songs and novelty tunes. “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks is as expected at Yuletide as electric razor commercials for Dad or diamond ring commercials for your girlfriend.

More recently, we have Randy Brooks' “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” Even Hanukkah now has Adam Sandler's recent classic “The Hanukkah Song.” These are all categorized as "holiday novelty songs.”

But for Halloween, for the past almost 50-odd years, we've all become accustomed to listening to the musical strains of a man named Bobby "Boris" Pickett and his main contribution to musical immortality. It is almost impossible for most of us (especially those of us who grew up in the '60's) to think of Halloween novelty songs without immediately thinking of "The Monster Mash."

Robert George Pickett grew up in a movie theater in Massachusetts where his father was the manager. Like countless millions of kids before and after him, he fell in love with the movies and dreamed of growing up and becoming a movie star. Bobby started doing impressions of the various movie stars he'd see on the silver screen. He did various impressions of the stars he loved, but by far, his favorite movie star was horror movie icon Boris Karloff.

Haunted houses are bigger than ever. There are more than 1200 professional haunted attractions in the U.S., many of them running all year long. The people that work at these "haunts" are dedicated to their craft, so they come together of the annual HAuNTcon, the Haunted Attraction National Tradeshow & Convention. It's held in a different city each year, in late January or early February. There are seminars and classes on fright acting, props, makeup, and setting up a business. There are all kinds of weird things for sale. There's a costume ball, tours of nearby haunted attractions, and a chance to show off what you can do. Leonard Pickel, founder of HAuNTcon, says the people who come are a close-knit group.

“You would think they’re creepy, but haunted house people are the best people on Earth. We get all our frustrations out scaring the crap out of other people,” Pickel said.

To Leonard, the warmth that permeates HAuNTcon is consistent with the very nature of haunting, which—while antisocial on the surface—is fundamentally about forming a connection. “When you scare somebody, they get an adrenaline rush. But you get an adrenaline rush, too. It’s symbiotic.”

Read about HAuNTcon and the people who attend each year at Fusion.

You recall the LED Stickman costume that Royce Hutain made for his toddler daughter Zoey in 2013. He improved on that to make it a Minnie Mouse costume for her in 2014. This year, he and Zoey collaborated on a new costume: a thunder cloud! She is “Princess Cumulus.”

(YouTube link)

The costume is adapted from an inflatable suite with Arduino-controlled LED strips underneath. The fart sounds for thunder are Zoey’s contribution. While they had fun with this one, it is impractical for going door-to-door, so she will trick-or-treat as Wonder Woman.  -via Tastefully Offensive

San Francisco is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, and the City by the Bay is full of proud citizens who adore their city despite the grime, the crime and the soaring rent costs.

These proud San Franciscans show love for their city in creative ways, and since Halloween is such a big deal in the city it's the perfect time to dress up as an SF landmark, like the leaning Millennium Tower.

It's not hard to come up with a San Francisco-themed costume idea, just look at all the cool stuff they make in the city, like the best croissants in the U.S., the most banal modern art, and the self-driving car. (Illustrations by Kelly O'Grady)

See San Francisco-Themed Costume Ideas here

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Everywhere you look on the ‘net, there are tips for making your Halloween celebrations easier or even more fun. As he does sometimes, John Green takes some of those ideas and tests them to see if they really work the way they are supposed to. He doesn’t take a lot of care, so your results may vary, but you get the idea. My contribution: use a large rubber glove, cut the glove off with scissors, including each finger. But his result is funnier, in the Halloween episode of the mental_floss List Show. 

PS: I have never found a better way to carve a pumpkin than by using a hole-boring drill bit and a sawzall. Done in two minutes.

Get ready for Screen Junkies to ruin your childhood (again) with an Honest Trailer for the 1993 Tim Burton movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. They say they are doing this for Halloween, but isn’t it supposed to be a Christmas movie?  

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I have my suspicions that this trailer contains things that aren’t really in the movie. Or was it really a Hot Topic ad?  -via Tastefully Offensive

The first time a witch rode a broom in popular culture could have been in the illustrations of a book published in 1451. French poet Martin Le Franc’s Le Champion des Dames (The Defender of Ladies) shows two women flying with sticks between their legs, although only one is clearly a broom. At least, that is the oldest evidence we have of the legend of witches flying on brooms.

According to Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History, edited by University of Pennsylvania history professors Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters, Le Champion des Dames has “the first such illustration in the pictorial history of witchcraft.” Le Franc’s long poem about virtuous women is interrupted by a discussion of witchcraft, and the covered heads of the two women marks them as Waldensians. This Christian movement emerged in the 12th-century. With its tenet that any member could be a priest, even a woman, and perform sacraments and preach, the bloody ire of the Catholic Church soon followed. That these heretics would also meddle with the supernatural was not a leap, but why the broomstick?

What people said about witches and what they did with their brooms is pretty suggestive, if not downright prurient. Read more about witches and their brooms at Hyperallergic. Link contains some art nudity.

Halloween may be on a Monday this year, but that doesn't mean you can't have a Halloween party on the weekend or even enjoy a few fun cocktails the night of. If you're looking to celebrate with a little buzz this year, but want to make sure your drinks suit the mood, here are some fun cocktail recipes perfect for the spookiest day of the year.

1. Candy Corn Cocktail

Candy corn is a highly polarizing creation with some diehard fans and a lot of outspoken enemies. You don't have to like the candy to appreciate this delightfully layered cocktail though since they incorporate the fantastic flavors of whipped crime vodka, sour mix, pineapple juice, grenadine and fresh whipped cream.

2. Black Heart Cider

No, this recipe doesn't actually involve making your own hard cider from scratch as that would take months -it does, however, contain cherry cider -hence the name. With black vodka, cherry cider, muddled blackberries and sparkling wine, this pitch-black cocktail is surprisingly light and fruity as well as creepy-looking.

Stephanie Pokorny made an E.T. costume for her 2-year-old son Jack with a crochet hook and a good eye. She didn’t use a pattern, but just tried it on him as she went along and stopped when it was big enough! The costume is one-of-a-kind, so she won’t be making another, no matter how many requests she gets. Read more about the project at Pokorney’s website Crochetverse. -via Everlasting Blort

God Save the Queen. #NYC #halloweendogparade

A photo posted by phoebe (@phoebsie) on Oct 22, 2016 at 12:26pm PDT

The annual Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade was held today, and the dogs really put on the dog! You can see the Queen and her corgis were there, as well as this “sheep” dog.

This dog was hilarious. Meet Cilantro - A Dog In Sheep's Clothing #halloweendogparade

A photo posted by Jake Dietrich (@jrdeets) on Oct 22, 2016 at 12:31pm PDT

There was a rock band in attendance.

Halloween is our annual excuse for impersonating someone other than who we are. This guy was making his best effort, but was shot down for having motivations far beyond reality. He won’t try that again. This is the latest from Buttersafe.

At first glance, this looks like a big Halloween decoration (and it is), but just watch what it does.

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Help! I’ve been eaten by the garage! Amanda Destro Pierson made this monster garage for her home in Cleveland. It’s proved to be so popular that she is working on marketing a kit to sell for Halloween next year, so that every garage can be monstrous. Meanwhile, here’s an Instructable tutorial to get you started on your own. -Thanks, hearsetrax!

Devon made a silicone mask for her boyfriend Peter as part of a sculpting class at Make Up Designory NYC. The finished product is jaw-dropping! She posted the process of the mask being made, which meant making a mold and model of his whole head. See how she did it, plus more pictures of the finished product, at Unreality.

Have you ever dreamed of living in a haunted house? Making that dream come true is as easy as believing the home you are in is haunted. But if you want a haunted house that has been scaring other people for years, you can certainly purchase one. For example, there’s the Priestly House in Canton, Mississippi.

Originally built by physician James Priestley in the 1950s, this Greek Revival home stayed in the Priestley family until the 1990s. When new owner Frankie McMillan moved in, she became concerned that Priestley’s wife, Susan, hadn’t gotten the message to clear the premises. McMillan claimed to have seen Susan in hallways and in the bedroom where the woman is believed to have died. The home was restored in 2004 and is listed for $699,000.

There are a range of locations, prices, and ages among the eight haunted houses on the market right now that you can check out at mental_floss.