Horror Movies, Halloween party, Pumpkins
Horror Movies is an unsettling genre of films that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, disgust and horror from viewers. This type of movie often features scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural. Horror movies frequently overlap with the fantasy and science fiction genres, as well as the thriller genre. Horror movies often deal with the viewer's nightmares, hidden worst fears, revulsions and terror of the unknown. Themes or elements often prevalent in typical horror films include ghosts, torture, gore, werewolves, ancient curses, satanism, demons, vicious animals, vampires, cannibals, haunted houses, zombies and masked serial killers. Conversely, stories of the supernatural may not be classified as a horror movie. Early horror movies were based on classic literature of the gothic/horror genre, ie. Dracula, and Frankenstein. Today the term "horror" is applied to films which display more explicit gore, jump scenes and supernatural plots.
A Halloween Party is generally held on or around the annual holiday of Halloween that is observed on October 31. Most parties are held on the Friday or Saturday before the holiday. Halloween Party activities generally include trick-or-treating, costumes, carving jack-o'-lanterns, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films. Halloween costumes are traditionally modeled after supernatural figures such as monsters, ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils. Over time, the costume selection extended to include popular characters from fiction, celebrities, and generic archetypes such as ninjas and princesses. There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween parties. One common game is apple dunking or apple bobbing, in which apples are floated in a tub or a large basin of water and the participants must use their teeth and no hands to remove an apple from the basin.
A pumpkin is a gourd-like squash of the genus Cucurbita and the family Cucurbitaceae. It commonly refers to cultivars of any one of the species Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita mixta, Cucurbita maxima, and Cucurbita moschata. They typically have a thick, orange or yellow shell, creased from the stem to the bottom, containing the seeds and pulp. Development of artifacts and symbols associated with Halloween formed over time. For instance, the carving of jack-o'-lanterns springs from the souling custom of carving turnips into lanterns as a way of remembering the souls held in purgatory. The turnip has traditionally been used in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween, but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which are both readily available and much larger – making them easier to carve than turnips. The American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837 and was originally associated with harvest time in general, and associated with Halloween in the mid 19th century.