And the Number of the Hallowe'en Horrors is 666

Its Halloween! That time of year when we draw black waters from the well of cosmic truth with death, draw deep breaths of chill, grave-leaden mist with darkness, and draw white, chalk outlines around corpses in the alleyway with evil. Woo!

Behold Death. He's wearing his Loch Ness Monster costume this year. Basically it's a dark green robe, a dark green handle for his scythe and a kind of lizard mask on the blade. It looks great and boy is he committed to the role. We've been trying to get him out of the swimming pool for hours!

Here be Darkness. She's been trying to teach the zombies about the miraculous power of make-up. I don't think it's going too well. Lipstick is supposed to stick to lips, not the other way round. There's bits of face everywhere!

Yonder is Evil. He's dressed up in a long, white robe with a little cardboard halo fixed onto his head with a piece of wire. He does that every year but it's hilarious every time!

Attack of the Giant Snip-snip

It was a close thing, but this jelly-legs just barely escaped from the enormous snipper of a giant snip-snip.

Webspinner

Image: Mike Quinn

Spiderman. He just doesn't make sense!

It's not the whole 'bitten by a radioactive spider and now he's a bit like a spider' thing. That's fine. That's great. That makes perfect sense. Well known fact, that is. The problem is the 'now he's a bit like a spider'.

Gnome Plant

Image: Tab Tannery
Hemitomes congestum

Gnomes are well-known for their love of mushrooms. They sit on them, play fiddle on them, fish in the lawn from them. And judging from those hippy beards and the fact they so often try to catch fish in the lawn, they probably eat some carefully selected ones, too.

So you know their special plant is going to be odd.

A Whole Lot of Leg

Image: NOAA

You might think that the strange thing about this deep sea Hermit Crab is that it's walking around with a giant flower on its arse...

But that's because you haven't seen it walk yet!

Not Baskets With Stars On

Image: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

You'd think something called a 'Basket Star' might be a little gold sticker, or maybe a nice knitted affair to tie onto your wicker basket.

Mueller's White Knifefish

Orthosternarchus tamandua

Darkness will do strange things to a body...