Every year as trick-or-treat approaches, we see lists of ranked candy going around the internet. Most are opinions, hoping to draw comments. Some are based on sales or some other concrete metric. But now Walt Hickey did some real research. First, the website FiveThirtyEight staged a poll where people would select the better of two kinds of candy at a time, in order to rank their popularity. Then he crunched more number to determine why some candies rose to the top. Neither the expense nor the sugar content explained the rankings.

So if it’s not price or sugar, there must be something about what’s in the candies that make some better and some worse. With the fervency of a stay-at-home dad who recently learned of a child’s mild peanut allergy, I scoured the internet for descriptive ingredient data about all the candies in our data set. Were they chocolate? Did they contain peanuts or almonds? How about crisped rice or other biscuit-esque component, like a Kit Kat or malted milk ball? Was it fruit flavored? Was it made of hard candy, like a lollipop or a strawberry bon bon? Was there nougat? What even is nougat? I know I like nougat, but I still have remotely no clue what the damn thing is.

A statistical analysis of ingredients in the ranked list indicates that we indeed have preferences that are common across the population. Duh. So Hickey proposes designing a Frankenstein bar, if you will, that includes all the popular ingredients. I disagree. The Reese's Cup proves that often the simplest ideas are the best. Read the ranked list and the nuts-and-bolts research that went into it at FiveThirtyEight. -Thanks, Tim!

(Image credit: MBisanz)

Every year, Josh Sundquist (previously at Neatorama) comes up with a delightfully clever Halloween costume that incorporates the fact that he has one leg. For Halloween 2017, he returned to his early love of trampolines by becoming the bouncy Tigger!

Here’s my Halloween costume! pic.twitter.com/KhgcfP1exO

— Josh Sundquist (@JoshSundquist) October 27, 2017

See Sundquist's costumes from previous years.

Tom BetGeorge always goes all out for his Christmas light shows. This year, the neighbors are being treated to the same attention to detail in a Halloween light show! This house in Tracey, California, tells the story of The Nightmare Before Christmas, starting with the song "This is Halloween."

(YouTube link)

With tons of LED lights, projections, computer-controlled sequences, music, and a drone to record it, this is a step beyond in Halloween decorating. I have two ceramic pumpkins with a string of orange lights stuck inside each. -via Geeks Are Sexy  

No one would serve a cake with glass shards in it -at least no one you'd want to know- but these just look like glass. Food artist Hellen Die (the alter ego of TV writer Tye Lombardi) shows us how to make this gruesome cake that should only be served at adults-only gatherings.

This cake is dangerously delicious.  A deep dark buttermilk chocolate cake wrapped in thick white marshmallow fondant stabbed with shards of sweet sugar glass, topped with a white chocolate skull, and drizzled in sweet raspberry blood is a showstopping way to say Happy Halloween!

Learn to make all the components of this Halloween dessert at the Necro-nom-nom-nomicon.

Looking for somewhere scary to visit before Halloween? You don't have long left, but don't worry, Thrillist has you covered with a different scary place in each state. Even if you live in a huge state like California, a state beside you might have a haunted destination nearer to you (unless you live in Alaska, of course).

The only problem with the list is that it chooses to combine haunted house attractions like Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Orlando with purportedly real haunted places like the Villisca Axe Murder House in Iowa. Both might offer fun frights for the adventurous, but going to to a real cemetery is a lot different than visiting an amusement park. 

Either way, the list has a lot of great destinations for Halloween fans.

Look at this little darlin' in her first Halloween costume! Three-month-old Macie is Rapunzel, and her dad is her tower. Macie's mother Megan made the costume, and tells us about it here. The there's amberilyn, who played Secret Service agent to her son's POTUS last year.

#TulaHalloween #tulaween

A post shared by Amber Marie (@amberilyn) on Nov 1, 2016 at 10:27am PDT

You can see eight pages of great Halloween costumes that incorporate a baby in a carrier at Bored Panda. -via Metafilter

Halloween is the first candy holiday of the dark days of winter. The temptation can be too much for some of us. But once we get through Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Easter, we'll be ready to go without for a while. Meanwhile, you have to forgive us adults who haven't quite grown up yet. This is the latest comic from Alex Culang and Raynato Castro at Buttersafe.

Young people used parlor games for fortune-telling at every holiday, but Halloween is when the spirits are closest to the material world. In centuries past, many games and rituals surrounding Halloween were used to determine who one would marry, or whether one would marry at all. Evidence of these rituals survives in postcards, and many of them had to do with apples. We bob for apples for fun, and for the enjoyment of seeing others completely soaked, but at one time, apples could tell your fortune. Peel one and toss it; the shape it falls into will be the first initial of your true love. Mark apples before bobbing for them; which one you retrieve will tell you your future. And trying to bite swinging apple on a string could seriously lead to a kiss when you're competing with the opposite sex. Even stranger was the use of the produce most often associated with Halloween: cabbages. Read about the bygone fortune-telling rituals of Halloween at Messy Messy Chic, and see of collection of vintage Halloween greeting cards that tell the stories.  

(Image credit: Flickr user Dave)

Where's the best place to celebrate Halloween? In the land of the original Gaelic festival of Samhain, which is where Halloween originated, of course. The city of Derry, Northern Ireland, revived Halloween in a big way in 1986, and today the annual festival is one of the biggest Halloween parties in Europe. Last year, 75,000 people showed up.   

The only remaining fully walled city in Ireland, Derry looks the part for Halloween. The massive stone walls that girdle the city and the Gothic Revival Guildhall just below the ramparts could be a set from a 1960s Hammer Film Productions horror flick. Families were walking about in full ghoulish makeup that would have made George Romero (“Night of the Living Dead’’) proud. We had stumbled into a Renaissance Faire crossed with a nightmare — in the best possible sense, of course.

We followed the throngs to the plaza in front of the Guildhall, where the Haunted Harvest Market was in high gear. We found vendors selling jewelry for every imaginable piercing, face painters who were creating the sunken eyes and random gashes to fit any type of undead character, and the street food vendors of “Hell’s Kitchen.’’ Band after band provided a soundtrack that ranged from traditional Irish music to Irish country to heavy metal rock.

And that was just the first day of the festival. Read more about Halloween in Derry at the Boston Globe.  -via The Week

See also: The official website for Derry Halloween.

(Image credit: Flickr user Greg Clarke)

How does one celebrate Halloween in Japan? The holiday wasn't a thing until a critical number of American ex-pats made it so, and they dressed up in costumes and did what the Japanese do -ride the commuter trains. In the 1990s, trains became a place for partying on Halloween, and even in the days leading up to October 31st, much to the annoyance of officials and regular commuters.

Year after year, the Halloween trains continued to get more and more rowdy. At the turn of the century, I remember hearing English-teacher friends say that if their school found out they rode the Halloween train, they’d lose their jobs.

Everything seemed to reach fever pitch in 2009 when protesters appeared at Shinjuku Station in Tokyo carrying signs that read, “Stupid Gaijin, Get out of Japan!” and “We Japanese Don’t Need Halloween!”

This was after police had to patrol train station platforms on Tokyo’s Yamanote Line the year before, holding up English language warning signs for the Halloweeners.

Things have changed. This year, the train company in Osaka is sponsoring public Halloween party trains, one for adults and another for children. Maybe it's a case of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." At least that way, the party trains can be separated from the everyday commuters. Read the history of Japan's Halloween trains at Kotaku.  

(Image credit: Flickr user Tim Brockley)

Have you seen the dancing mummy on your local weather report? He's a CGI mummy doing the twist, and he's the star of a very popular Halloween graphic that appears to be used at least once a year in every television market. What wasn't included in the graphics package was a warning that this mummy has a supernatural power. He makes every meteorologist who looks at him start dancing. Badly.

(YouTube link)

News Be Funny  made a compilation of clips using this same graphic at dozens of TV stations. Maybe your local weather forecaster is in there! -via Tastefully Offensive

People spend over $9 billion on Halloween every year, and a big chunk of that will be for Halloween costumes. Keeping us supplied with scary, funny, creative, sexy, and trendy costumes takes teams of designers busy all year long. But they swing into high gear when a new meme pops up just before Halloween.

3. THEY CAN DESIGN AND PRODUCE A COSTUME IN A MATTER OF DAYS.

A lot of costume interest comes from what’s been making headlines in the fall: Costumers have to be ready to meet that demand. “We’re pretty good at being able to react quickly,” says Pilar Quintana, vice-president of merchandising for Yandy.com. “Something happening in April may not be strong enough to stick around for Halloween.”

Because the mail-order site has in-house models and isn’t beholden to approval from big box vendors, Quintana can design and photograph a costume so it’s available within 72 hours. If it's more elaborate, it can take a little longer: Both Yandy and Weeks had costumes inspired by the Cecil the Lion story that broke in July 2015 (in which a trophy hunter from Minnesota killed an African lion) on their sites in a matter of weeks.

11. DEAD CELEBRITIES MEAN SALES.

It may be morbid, but it’s a reality: The high-profile passing of celebrities, especially close to Halloween, can trigger a surge in sales. “Before Robin Williams died, I couldn’t sell a Mork costume for a dollar,” Weeks says. “After he died, I couldn’t not sell it for less than $100.” This year, designers expect Hugh Hefner to fuel costume ideas—unless something else pops up suddenly to grab their attention. “Last year, when Prince died, that was almost trumped by [presidential debate audience member] Ken Bone,” Berman says. “He became almost more popular than Prince.”

Another thing about selling trendy costumes is that a customer won't want to wear the same costume a year later, so there's another sale coming. Read more secrets from Halloween costume makers at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: MVASCO)

For most horror movie fans, one of two movie monsters will always reign supreme -vampires and zombies. Fortunately for those who just can't get enough of these two terrible creatures, Collider has taken the time to rank the best films that feature each of the creatures. The vampire list includes the classic Dracula (of course) as well as more modern classics like Fright Night and Blade -but sorry Twilight fans, you'll have to look elsewhere for your validation. 

The zombie list has all the George Romero films you'd expect as well as some more clever takes on the genre -like Sean of the Dead and Paranorman (though I felt Fido deserved a place on the list as well).

So visit Collider to see their ranking of the best vampire movies and the best zombie movies and then come back here to debate their choices.

Webcomic artist Liz Climo always has a great time dressing up her animal characters for Halloween. I think the whale's idea is pretty clever, even if he does have to explain it. I love the banana porpoise and Superotter, too. Then there's Batman and his psychic, and the witch and her cat. Be sure to check back for more critters getting ready for Halloween at Hi, I'm Liz.

The Salem Witch Trials get all the publicity, but it was far from the only witch panic that invaded colonial America. In Hartford, Connecticut, witch hysteria gripped the community in 1662 and 1663, so much that it came to be known as "The Year of the Witch." It all started with the death of eight-year-old Elizabeth Kelly, who died of an unknown ailment. Suspicion instantly led to Judith Ayres, who nobody liked anyway. She was arrested for witchcraft, and for good measure, they arrested her husband, too.

Judith and William were subjected to that indispensable part of any good witch trial: the "water test." The couple were bound hand to foot and tossed into a pond. If they floated, that was proof positive they were witches. If they sank, well, at least Judith and William would have the satisfaction of knowing that they would die vindicated.

To no one's real surprise, the pair floated like a pair of corks. A ghastly death at the gallows awaited them.

Luckily for the Ayerses, there were a few people in town who had not come down with the prevailing hysteria. These supporters managed to arrange a jailbreak, and the couple fled to Rhode Island, leaving behind their two sons, ages five and eight. One wonders what sort of lives those boys went on to have.

Unfortunately, the departure of Judith and William did not signal the end of the Hartford witch panic. In truth, it was just getting started.

The young girls of Hartford started talking about witchcraft, and accusing others of the practice. One suspect named an entire coven, including her own husband. Read the account of the Year of the Witch at Strange Company.