Halloween with no costume -- boo! -- that's scary.
The calendar sneaks up, and here it is time to leave for the party with no idea what to wear. Or what to do for a child's outfit. And no time to shop.
Besides, store-bought Halloween ensembles for little punkins and grown-up pirates and princesses can cost anywhere from $25 to $100 and up. Oh, howl!
Relax, it's in the bag. A quick bit of rummaging around the house can be all it takes to dress up and creep on the cheap.
MASKED AND ANSWERED
Halloween has an ancient past of Druids and dread spirits, and costumes have been part of the celebration since way back.
The first mass-produced Halloween costumes were children's get-ups that sold for a couple of bucks at Woolworth's around 1940. Today's Halloween is a $7 billion sales event.
This year's buyers will scare up about $2.5 billion just for costumes, including dog get ups, according to the National Retail Federation. Characters from Minions, Star Wars and Frozen will be this year's top-selling looks, the retailers predict.
Officially licensed movie costumes are tricky to equal at home. But costumes of other famous figures can be put together with makings probably close at hand:
• Apple founder Steve Jobs, with Steve Jobs the movie opening Friday : black, long-sleeve shirt with the cuffs pushed up, glasses, jeans, sneakers, iPhone.
• Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump: blue blazer, white shirt, red tie, orange hair (wig, hair coloring), ball cap that reads, "Make America great again."
• Mad Men's Don Draper: dark or gray suit, white shirt, lapel pocket handkerchief, narrow tie, briefcase, hair oil, cigarette, rueful expression -- apt to be mistaken for Rod Serling.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: pants suit, blond hair (wig), pearl necklace, cellphone.
But even Halloween mask makers have trouble capturing a recognizable likeness of the Democratic presidential hopeful from Arkansas. Of several tries on the market, some of this year's Hillary masks make her look like a fair-haired Betty Crocker, and one a snaggle-toothed zombie.
She appears as Charlize Theron's bald character, Furiosa, from Mad Max: Fury Road, as caricatured on the cover of this month's Mad magazine.
• Orange Is the New Black: orange jumpsuit, pants suit or pajamas, handcuffs or some other restraint.
• Walking Dead-type zombie: the easiest last-minute choice, made of torn and spattered clothes, white or pale face makeup (face powder, talcum powder), shambling walk.
Have a cute costume left over from last year? Too small, too worn, too done-it-before? Rip it, stain it, and go as the zombie version.
Last year's Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtle could be the makings of this year's zombie ninja snapping turtle.
BROWSER WOWSERS
Old Halloween was a night of omens. People looked to flames and stones for guidance. Or today, the Internet -- same thing.
Pinterest, YouTube, Amazon and any number of online Halloween and party suppliers have websites like doors to knock on, trick-or-treating for costume ideas.
The photo-sharing website Pinterest, especially,
is a source of do-it-yourself thinking, such as:
• Rosie the Riveter: blue denim shirt, sleeves rolled up, red bandana.
• Gumball machine: multicolored pompoms stuck on a white top. Wear over a short red skirt.
Or don't just look at a computer screen, go as one:
• Computer error: T-shirt that reads, "My browser does not support a costume." "Watch this space." "I'm whoever you want me to be."
Rather hunt for ghosts in print? How-to books on costuming, available through the Central Arkansas Library System, include How to Create Spectacular Halloween Costumes by Louann Brown and Jason Nemeth and Easy Halloween Costumes for Children by Leila Alabala.
VINTAGE VISAGES
Halloween is all about tradition. The Halloween jack-o-lantern, for example, goes back to old bonfire rites and Irish custom. Tradition calls, too, for homemade costumes, including the classics:
• The bedsheet ghost: nothing more than a white sheet over the head. Snip out a pair of holes in order for the ghost to see.
But it doesn't have to be a sheet -- could be a swath of gauzy cheesecloth, or a lace curtain, even a frosted-looking shower curtain.
If the fabric is partly see-through, then the ghost will appear even scarier with a touch of face makeup, maybe Alice Cooper eyes. Lipstick and eyeliner do the trick in case of no facepaint.
• The guess-what-I-am costume: a sweatshirt made to pose a what-am-I mystery. Black spots on a red shirt, for example. What am I? A ladybug. His and hers costumes of black dots on white shirts: a pair of dice.
Shirt with purple balloons attached to it: a bunch of grapes. With socks and dryer sheets stuck on it: static cling. With tufts of fake fur all over it: cat owner.
THRIFTY SHAPE SHIFTIES
If a dig through the clothes closet doesn't exhume the makings of a costume, the next cheapest place to haunt is the thrift store.
About 70 percent of Americans who dress up for Halloween make some use of old stuff, rather than buy new, according to the Savers thrift store company.
Some wear the same thing every year. Some borrow, some rent. Some make what they can out of what lurks at Savers, Goodwill and other thrift outlets, finding used clothes and accessories and -- who knows? -- maybe even a cast-off Halloween costume.
One way and another, they come up with this sort of droll drapery:
• Beddy-bye: pajamas, footies, stuffed toy.
• Tourist: cargo shorts, Hawaiian shirt, fanny pack, camera.
• "Winter is coming," and it's just as bad as so often warned in Game of Thrones: awful Christmas sweater with snowflakes on it.
SCREEN SCREAMS
Not just desperate moms and partygoers, but even professional monster-makers sometimes make the best of whatever they can find. The Internet Movie Database tells these costume-inspiring secrets:
• In the movie Halloween (1978), the boogeyman's mask is actually a $2 Halloween mask of Star Trek's Capt. Kirk, painted white.
• In The Wolf Man (1941), Lon Chaney Jr.'s werewolf look is thanks to a rubber nose and yak hair singed with a curling iron.
• In A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), bad guy Freddy Krueger's dirty hat and striped sweater came from director Wes Craven's childhood memory of being scared by a hobo.
MINIMAL ANIMAL
No time at all to make a costume? The answer might to be to go with little or nothing:
• Underwear model: nothing but skivvies. (Long johns for the timid.)
• Outer-space monster that looks human: in fact, looks just like you.
• The cable guy: an idea from Easy Halloween Costumes (Kindle) by Tyler Johnson. Promise to be there on time, but then never show up.
Family on 10/21/2015