LIttle Post of Horrors

Happy Halloween to all! Here's a random collection of stuff for the holiday:

• Happy 38th birthday to KNTU, where I worked in college. (Legend has it that the first words uttered over the air were expletives, accidentally spouted out by a student worker who didn't know the mic was open when he started the music at the wrong speed.)


• Not only did KNTU go on the air on Halloween, but it used to be headquartered in an allegedly-haunted house for a number of year. Read my ghost story on the subject.


• But in the meantime, an investigator has successfully debunked the mystery of the courthouse ghost in Santa Fe, New Mexico.


• As I've said before, I only rely on polls for their entertainment value, and this one is entertaining: An AP/Ipsos poll says that nearly one in four Americans believes in ghosts.


• An Ohio couple who work at a haunted house got married there last week.


• This house isn't haunted yet, but a Pennsylvania couple have come up with a clever sales incentive: Anyone who buys their house gets their money refunded after the couple dies.


• A high school in suburban Long Island has banned Halloween costumes after last year's incident where three senior girls showed up dressed as kids' book hero Captain Underpants. (Normally, I'd give school adminstrators a hard time about silly dress-code requirements, but I totally understand this one; letting people wear costumes would totally junk any school's security measures, and making someone wear, say, a school ID badge with his or her costume would pretty much defeat the purpose.)


• One of the weirdest stories--that's only connected to Halloween by a coincidence of timing: A truck stopped for a routine traffic violation in Royse City (east of Dallas) turned out to contain a load of severed heads (don't worry--they were medical specimens "headed" back to Arkansas from a Ft. Worth training facility).


• And finally, the state of Iowa decided to tax jack-o'-lanterns after officials decided that they were used more for decoration than for food.

And if you're a Chipotle fan, don't forget to dress like a burrito tonight to get a free one.

UPDATE: How about a quick quiz--How old is too old to trick-or-treat?

Not really a Halloween story, but it fits: Beware of vampire electronics in your house.

All caught up: I've finished all the pending posts again. Enjoy my restaurant review of a new local entry called Cooppie's, and help me celebrate my fifth anniversary as owner of Kevmobile 1.2 this week.