The time has come for a special Halloween treat: Ormon Grimsby’s NBC17 Halloween Special.
Tune in or set the DVR for 6:30 a.m. on Halloween or at 9:30 a.m. Sunday or following the 11 p.m. news Sunday night to watch as Raleigh’s only horror host offers a little fright and a lot of fun.
Stay tuned here for the video of the show coming soon.
SLEEPY HOLLOW, N.Y. — A couple set to say I do this weekend was suddenly told “I won’t” by the pastor.
They’d planned a Halloween wedding in legendary Sleepy Hollow, New York home to the “Headless Horseman.”
Walking down the aisle in a centuries-old church amid the ghostly legends of Sleepy Hollow.
That’s how engaged couple Lisa Penensky and Jim Nieves of Elmsford, New York, pictured their Halloween wedding.
They booked the Old Dutch church next to the Old Dutch graveyard 13 months in advance.
Now the pastor has canceled the wedding in a dispute over music.
“Those were the theme songs to the Addams family and the theme song to the Munsters,” said Pastor Jeff Gargano.
“He was offended apparently by the Munsters and the Addams Family which we find kind of ironic being where we’re standing right now,” said groom Jim Nieves.
But the reverend Gargano, the new pastor in the nearly 325-year-old church, says he wasn’t expecting a Halloween-themed wedding.
Both the bride and groom were going to wear black.
Costumes were optional for the guests.
The pastor felt the Munsters and Addams Family were inappropriate for a church wedding.
“Not all secular music would be inappropriate in a wedding. Some can be done. But we felt those two particular pieces – kind of ditties- were disrespectful,” said Gargano.
“I don’t know what his personal point of view is and where he draws the line of respect. This seems to be a personal issue with him,” Nieves said.
The pastor said he tried to be cooperative, offer the couple other options, even told them he would marry them in the church graveyard.
“There’s nothing in the contract stating that we are not allowed to listen to a certain music, there’s nothing in the contract stating that we have to dress a certain way as if there was any sort of dress code. I think there was just a failure of communication on their part,” said Nieves.
“I think quite frankly, two different sets of assumptions,” Gargano said.
Jim says he and Lisa will still get married on Halloween, at their home.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled 610,000 flashlights sold at Target stores nationwide.
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Halloween Q&A
Q. I see a lot of churches have “trunk-or-treat” events this time of year. What is “trunk-or-treat”?
A. Trunk-or-treating is a sort of Halloween tailgating in which people gather in a school or church parking lot to hand out treats from the backs of their vehicles.
A 2006 story in the New York Times about the growing popularity of trunk-or-treat quoted 6-year-old expert Keifer Convertino: “You go trick-or-treating when you go to people’s houses to get candy. You go trunk-or-treating when you go to people’s cars to get candy, and that’s much better because you can go around the cars a million dozen times and you don’t even get tired.”
Many parents and churches embrace trunk-or-treating as a safer alternative to going door-to-door.
Q. Where did the tradition of going door to door for candy on Halloween originate? – J.T.
A. The ancient Celts in Ireland believed that the souls of the dead walked freely on Oct. 31. But the souls weren’t trick or treating. The tradition of asking for treats dates back to the “All Souls’ Day” parades in England, during which the poor would beg for food. Families would hand out pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. Historians date this practice to the eighth and ninth centuries. Other cultures have similar rituals linking food to the dead, but the English tradition is probably the one with the most direct line to the modern custom of trick-or-treating in the United States, as English settlers brought the custom to the New World.
By Jeff Houck
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
What’s the point of having Halloween anymore? Seriously.
Is the point to scare each other with costumes? If so, we’re failing miserably. When vampires become the new sex symbols, the idea of walking around with fangs and a cape becomes a tad dated. From a costume standpoint, it seems the goal is to give women the latitude to wear skimpy outfits in public that they would march in protest over every other day of the year.
Is the holiday’s point to gather as much candy as possible? If so, we’re again pulling an F on the culinary scorecard.
It wasn’t always so.
It used to be that a candy trip through the neighborhood was like collecting bars of gold from a chocolate Fort Knox. Giant planks of Hershey chocolate were commonplace. Massive Milky Ways were a reason to get out of bed that morning. The Nestle Crunch bars were so big, it sounded like bones breaking in your head when you gnawed on one.
Then came the great miniaturization of the 1970s. Only the candy makers didn’t call it that. They disguised their portion skimpiness by using the worst two-word combination ever created: Fun Size. What exactly is fun about a candy bar the size of a postage stamp? Size matters, especially when it comes to candy.
It isn’t that we’ve lost our interest in candy. I read last week that the top search terms for Halloween candy on Yahoo! in the past month are, in order: 1) Candy corn 2) Candy apples 3) m&m’s 4) Butterfingers 5) Mars candy.
I’m sorry, but those are lame.
To me, Halloween without some element of danger is a waste of time. (Minus the razor blade in the apple, of course.)
Tired of cute, peanut butter pumpkins and dainty, ghost-shaped Peeps, I went in search of candy even Freddy Krueger could love.
My favorites:
Monster Gummy Tentacle ($2.50, Walgreens). Now we’re talking! You eat a foot-long invertebrate appendage, you’ve made a statement. Oddly, the gummy tentacle is raspberry flavored. I never considered that a giant tentacle would have a fruity aftertaste. Go figure. If that’s not your speed, they also sell a Monster Gummy Earthworm, which is, again oddly, watermelon flavored.
Liquid Cherry Candy Blood Bag ($1.50, Walgreens). This sticky pretend IV bag is such a colossally bad message to send — “Hey kids, blood is candy!” — but it does meet the gore quotient. That it was made in China soothes no nerves whatsoever. Why not just give out samples of Mainway’s Bag O’ Glass?
Blood Balls Bubble Gum (25 cents, CVS). Again with the blood. I think I speak for all men when I say that the very name of this product makes us alternately giggle and cringe. The “mega sour mouth coloring gumball” might take the visual blood metaphor a bit too far. Then again, I could be wrong.
Skeleton Pops ($1, Dollar Store). Sold in a coffin-shaped bag, the skeleton’s body is the stick for the red lollipop head. Extra points are earned for the ultimate decapitation that occurs when the lollipop endures the Saliva O’ Death treatment.
Grave Grabbers Gummy Candy ($1, Walgreens). Pound for pound, it’s hard to beat gummy candy for elastic grossness. This hand-shaped candy packaged in a gravestone features decomposing tendons and gray skin with yellow fingernails. You might not want to eat it, but I guarantee with 100 percent certainty that it will achieve the exact reaction you want if you leave it in someone’s bed after they go trick-or-treating. But you didn’t hear that from me.
Phillips Corn Maize owner Michael Phillips carved a unique path through his four-acre corn maze to honor N.C. State’s late women’s basketball coach.
Rather than a random course of twists, turns and dead ends, Phillips cut a path through his corn field in Cary to resemble the likeness of Kay Yow.
Admission to the maze is $10, with a portion of the proceeds going back to a cancer fund established in Yow’s name. In January, Yow died after a more than 20-year battle with cancer.
By Michele Sager, Media General News Service
Witches and vampires will continue to roam the streets this Halloween, but the down economy is expected to spook consumers into spending less for the haunting holiday.
The National Retail Federation recently released results from its 2009 Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, which showed total Halloween spending is expected to fall 18 percent to $4.8 billion, down from $5.8 billion last year.
The number of adults planning to dress up is expected to drop slightly from 35 percent last year to 33 percent this year. Witches and vampires top the list for adult costumes this year, likely sparked by the “Twilight” and “True Blood” book series.
Princess, witch and Spider-Man costumes top the list for children this season. Customers can find the most popular costumes in a range of prices at local retailers. For example, the starting price for a witch is $9.99 at Walmart and can go up depending on the type of costume and added accessories.
Say hello to Ormon Grimsby, host of Raleigh’s only horror-host show “Monster Creature Feature” and an overall creepy guy.
Watch a video introduction here.
Ormon has agreed to work with us here at NBC17 this Halloween season to talk about local happenings and to also do a special edition of his show just for us. Look for that show Halloween weekend. Details to follow !
For now, meet Ormon, the undertaker for the already dead with a bad diet and some skin problems. Just don’t tell him I said it 
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Halloween Party
NSPIR Investigators, George Matthis and Jason Parrish, answer questions submitted by NBC17 viewers.
When there’s something strange… and it don’t look good… who you gonna call? National Society of Paranormal Investigation and Research! Ok, so it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “Ghostbusters”, but that’s because that’s not what they are. And don’t you forget it.
By Laura Barron, NBC17 Reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — N.C. State Campus Police are preparing for Halloween crowds this Friday — especially since UNC Chapel Hill has scaled back its celebration on Franklin Street.
Last year 13 businesses hosted the first ever “Haunted Hillsborough Hike,” drawing almost 3,000 people to Raleigh. In Chapel Hill 80,000 thousand Halloween revelers crowded the streets.
Check out the lists below for the most popular searched costume choices on Yahoo!
The top searched costumes include:
1. Joker Costume
2. Fairy Costume
3. Pirate Costume
4. Flapper Costume
5. Witch Costume
6. Tinkerbell Costume
7. Catwoman Costume
8. Playboy Bunny Costume
9. Indiana Jones Costume
10. Red Riding Hood Costume
The top searched political masks include:
1. Sarah Palin
2. Barack Obama
3. John McCain
4. Ronald Reagan
5. Bill Clinton
6. Richard Nixon
7. George Bush
8. Joe Biden
9. Michelle Obama
10. Arnold Schwarzenegger
11. Hillary Clinton
12. Abraham Lincoln
The top baby/infant/toddler costumes include:
1. Lion
2. Monkey
3. Ladybug
4. Pirate
5. Minnie Mouse
6. Butterfly
7. Bumblebee
8. Fairy
9. Tinkerbell
10. Elvis
The top searched dog costumes include:
1. Hot Dog Costumes for Dogs
1. Bumble Bee Dog Costume
2. Lion Dog Costume
3. Yoda Dog Costumes
4. Dog Rider Costume
5. Batman Dog Costumes
6. Headless Horseman Dog Costume
7. Elvis Dog costume
8. Tinkerbell Dog Costumes
9. Star Wars Dog Costumes
A decision by Duke University’s student government will change the way students celebrate Halloween this year.