SHELLAC. This is the stuff that makes jelly beans, candy corn, and other hard-coated candies look shiny. (It might be listed as “confectioners glaze” on the label.) This ingredient also comes to us from the insect kingdom. Shellac is the sticky substance made from the secretions of the female Kerria lacca, an insect found in Thailand.
SILICON DIOXIDE. This substance can be found on every beach. It gets in your bathing suit, your hair, and shoes. Yep: silicon dioxide is sand. And, believe it or not, sand can be found in salt, soup, shredded cheese, and coffee creamer. It absorbs moisture and helps keep the rest of the ingredients from clumping.
VIRUSES. Mom probably never told you to eat your viruses, but if she slapped a slice of bologna on your sandwich, she should have! Bacteriophages—tiny bacteria-killing viruses—can actually kill off a dangerous bacteria called listeria. Listeria causes fever, a stiff neck, confusion, weakness, vomiting, and sometimes diarrhea. Manufacturers spray bacteriophages on ready-to-eat deli meats and hot dogs to keep listeria from growing on these prepared meats. Check the ingredient list for “bacteriophage preparation.”
•••
30 MINUTES
Video game characters aren’t the only ones who can gain or lose time on their “lives.” According to a statistics professor at Cambridge University, people can, too.
Add 30 minutes
•Exercise for 10 minutes
•Eat 1.25 servings of fruit
•Eat 1.25 servings of veggies
•Drink 2 cups of coffee a day
Subtract 30 minutes
•Smoke 2 cigarettes
•Watch 2 hours of TV without moving
•Eat a hamburger
SPOOKIFIED PINS
Looking for a ghoulish accessory? Look no further!
WHAT YOU NEED:
•Discarded magazines
•Clean plastic lids (like those on yogurt or sour cream containers)
•Construction paper in creepy colors, such as black, orange, and slime green (Include a color that’s easy to write on, such as yellow.)
•Scissors
•Glitter glue
•Craft glue
•Glue stick
•Fine-tip markers
•Poster board
•Self-adhesive pin backs (available at craft stores)
WHAT TO DO:
1.Leaf through the magazines and cut out pictures to “spookify.” For example, a photo of a cute kitten can become downright scary when you add blood-red-tipped teeth and a construction-paper witch’s hat. And lovely models turn creepy when you give them “stitched” foreheads and Frankenstein neck bolts.
2.Choose a lid for the base of your pin. Trace around the lid onto the construction paper of your choice, cut out the circle, and use the glue stick to attach it to the top of your lid.
3.Glue-stick your spookified picture to the construction-paper-covered lid. Sparkle it up with glitter glue for a ghostly glow effect (if desired).
4.Next, come up with a scary-funny caption for your pin. Think of what your pin character might say. (“Happy Halloween!” or “Boo!” work, but they’ve been…uhm… done to death.) So go for something clever and original. Here are a few idea starters:
•Bat’s all folks! (bat)
•Bite me! (vampire)
•#1 Speller (witch)
•Trick or treat…or else! (monster)
•Rest in Pieces! (zombie)
5.After you’ve created your caption, use a black fine-tip marker to write it (pin-size) on yellow construction paper, and draw a speech bubble around it. Craft-glue the speech bubble onto poster board to make it sturdy. Wait till the glue dries, and then cut it out. Now craft-glue the speech bubble onto your pin so it looks like your character is talking.
6.To finish, peel the paper off the self-adhesive pin back, and stick the pin back inside the plastic lid. Don’t stop now! Spookify pins for all your friends.
•••
FEAR FACTOR: The Summum company of Salt Lake City mummifies human bodies. Cost? $67,000.
BRAVE HEARTS
When danger strikes, most people freeze or run. Not these kids. They turned into superheroes.
HERO: 11-year-old Prasannata Shandilya, India
THE HEROIC DEED: Stopping a home invasion
WHAT HAPPENED: One evening in 2011, Prasannata was in her room near the kitchen when she heard her parents screaming. Robbers had invaded their house. They were demanding the family’s valuables and brutally beating her parents. Prasannata knew she had to do something. “I tiptoed into the kitchen,” she said, “and prepared a mix of turmeric and chili powder.” Then she slipped into the room with the robbers and threw the spicy mix into their eyes. The robbers fled, eyes streaming. “She has always been a smart kid,” said her father. “We were amazed by her courage and are proud of her.”
HERO: 11-year-old Jonah Yano, Hawaii
HEROIC DEED: Thwarting a car thief
WHAT HAPPENED: Jonah and his 9-year-old sister were sitting in their dad’s pickup truck in front of their house. Seconds earlier, Mr. Yano had walked to the back of the truck to grab something. He noticed a man walking across the street toward the truck, but before he could react, the man jumped into the driver’s seat and took off down the road with the kids. What the car-jacker didn’t know: Jonah is a student of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. “I grabbed his shoulder and started punching his face, telling him to get out of the truck,” Jonah told reporters. Jonah’s fast fists gave his dad time to catch up with the truck and pull the criminal out of it. Jonah said he wasn’t scared, even though the thief was much bigger than he was. All he could think about was protecting his sister.
HERO: 15-year-old Mohamed Ibrahim, the Maldives
HEROIC DEED: Stopping an assassination
WHAT HAPPENED: In 2008, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom of the Maldives—an island nation in the Indian Ocean—stood before a cheering crowd. Nearby, dressed for the occasion in his blue Boy Scout uniform, Mohamed waited in line to greet the president. Suddenly, a man rushed at the president with a knife. Mohamed reacted instantly. He grabbed the knife with his bare hands, deflecting it enough that all it did was rip the president’s shirt. “There was blood on the president’s shirt,” said Gayoom’s spokesman. “But it was the boy’s.” Though Mohamed’s hand needed stitches, his bravery was applauded. How’d he know what to do? His training as a Boy Scout taught him to “Be Prepared.”
HERO: 10-year-old Priyanshu Joshi, India
HEROIC DEED: Saving his sister from a leopard
WHAT HAPPENED: Priyanshu and his sister were walking to school one day when a leopard sprang at the girl. Within moments, the big cat had torn loose her earlobe. “There was no time to waste,” said Priyanshu. “My school bag became my weapon. I began hitting him with the bag. I also punched him.” Luckily, a noisy army vehicle passed by and distracted the leopard. “Otherwise, it would have carried us away,” said Priyanshu. In 2010, the Indian Prime Minister gave the bag-toting leopard fighter a National Bravery Award.
HERO: 8-year-old Reese Ronceray, New Jersey
HEROIC DEED: Saved a kid from drowning
WHAT HAPPENED: Reese was playing near a lake with his 5-year-old neighbor. When the younger boy fell into deep water, Reese remembered an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants in which one character rescues another who is drowning. Reese jumped right in after his friend. He tucked the younger boy under one arm and paddled with the other—the same technique he saw on SpongeBob. “We just plopped and went under the water,” Reese said, “but I kept moving my arms all the way to the surface.” Reese paddled his young neighbor to safety. What did the boy’s mom say to her son’s rescuer? “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” Reese told an interviewer. (Who says cartoons have no redeeming value?)
•••
TONGUE TWISTED
Sixteen skeletons juggle skulls by the seashore.
GRUESOME GREECE
As they say in Greece: “May the earth not eat you!”
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IDIG GREECE
The Greek Orthodox cemetery in Steni on the island of Evvia—an hour east of Athens—looks perfectly ordinary at first. It has classic white marble graves with crosses, decorated with faded portraits of the deceased. What is extraordinary? The open graves: six in all. One open grave has a red bucket sticking out of freshly-dug dirt piled beside it. Another contains a coffin that has been broken open. What’s the story here? Grave robbers? Escape of the undead? Not exactly.
When author John Mole and his family moved to a Greek village in the 1970s, he spotted open graves similar to those in Steni. He, too, wondered what was going on in Greek cemeteries. Mole found his answer when a neighbor invited him to her Uncle Christos’s… exhumation. That’s right. Three to ten years after an official burial, Greek families dig up the remains of their loved ones. This practice takes place all over Greece.
THE HOUSE OF BONES
“The worst part was not knowing what condition old Christos was going to be in,” writes Mole in his book, It’s All Greek to Me. Mole watched his host’s wife, Elipda, dig up the skull, inspect it, and brush off the “brown scabby bits” he hoped were just dirt. Then she kissed the top of the skull and passed it up to another family member. As the skull made the rounds, Elipda kept digging until the grave was empty. Meanwhile, a half-dozen women scrubbed and dried every bone from Uncle Christos’s body and packed them all into a box. Finally, everyone—Mole included—headed to a small building that looked like a storage shed. It was, in fact, the community osteofilakio, or bone house. The bone house would be Uncle Christos’s final resting place.
Here’s the thing: Greece is about the size of Alabama. For a country, that’s not very big. So burial space is at a premium. Add the fact that the Greek Orthodox Church bans cremation, and you get… family members digging up the dead. If the graves weren’t emptied to make room for new arrivals, Greece could turn into one giant cemetery.
DEAD YUMMY
Greeks believe that spirits stick around after the funeral, so families hold regular gravesite parties. The first happens nine days after the funeral. The next: 40 days after the funeral. The celebrations go on and on until the dead—or what’s left of them—are dug up and moved to the bone house.
For these and other gravesite occasions, Greeks have special food for the dead called kollyva. They bake sweet cakes decorated with the words Kalo Taxidi (“Have a good journey!”). And they hand out little bags filled with a mixture of grains, seeds, nuts, and dried fruit. Families lug trays of the stuff to cemeteries on special days for the dead such as “Soul Saturday.”
One widow put it this way: “When you see someone in your dreams, it’s the soul you see. People in your dreams eat, don’t they? The souls of the dead eat, too.”
IT’S GREEK TO US, TOO!
•The word cemetery comes from the Greek word for sleeping place, koimeterion.
•Necrophobia means an extreme fear of death or dead bodies and comes from the Greek words nekros (corpse) and phobos (fear).
•An osteopath is a doctor who treats illnesses by manipulating the bones. The word comes from the Greek osteon—bone.
•Homer’s ancient epic poem The Odyssey follows the journey of the Greek hero Odysseus. In the eleventh book, Odysseus travels to Hades (the underworld) hoping to find a way home. Greeks call this book nekyia. The word comes from the Greek word for dead: necro.
•The grim-reaper figure associated with death was likely based on the Greek god Chronos. In Greek myth, Chronos was the god of the harvest (which is why he carries that creepy scythe) and of time (he’s also called Father Time). As the peasant reaps the harvest, so Father Time reaps the souls of humans—when their time comes to an end.
COSTUMED KOOKS
When kids wear costumes, it’s a fun kind of scary. When grownups wear costumes? It’s a whole nuther kind of scary.
NIGHT OF THE DRIVING DEAD
When police arrived on the scene of a car accident in Portland, Oregon, in 2010, they couldn’t believe their eyes. The five people in the smashed car were all bleeding. Their clothes were torn and splattered with blood and guts. Their skin was white as death. Police feared the worst, until…the five people stumbled out of the car. That’s when officers found themselves face-to-face with…zombies? Nope, just Portlanders dressed like zombies. They’d been on their way to a costume party when the driver lost control of the car and wrecked. “We’re glad that everyone is alive, despite being undead,” one officer joked.
GUMBY GONE BAD
Ever heard of Gumby? He’s a bendy green clay character who starred in a cartoon Uncle John used to watch as a kid. Gumby still pops up occasionally—like at a 7-Eleven store in San Diego, California, one night in 2011. This was not the good-guy Gumby of kids’ cartoons. This was a robber wearing a Gumby costume. When Gumby walked up to the counter and demanded all the money in the register, the clerk thought it was a joke. “I don’t have time for this,” he said. “I’m cleaning.” Then…Gumby reached inside his costume. Was he reaching for a gun? Maybe, but what ended up in Gumby’s hand was just loose change. Frustrated, Gumby turned and ran out of the store…leaving his 27¢ behind on the floor.
ATTACK OF THE COW LADY!
An Ohio woman decided that she really wanted to scare people one day. (And, no, it was not Halloween.) She put on a full-body cow costume and walked to a busy sidewalk in her town. Then the “cow lady” started jumping around and yelling and chasing kids who walked too close to her. She even went into the street and blocked traffic. Concerned citizens called the police. When police arrived, the cow lady started yelling at them, too. That’s when police made what may have been the first cow arrest in Ohio history. The cow-lady was sentenced to one month in jail.
MOVIE MOM-STER
In 2012, Angelina Jolie was starring in Maleficent, a film that tells the Sleeping Beauty tale from the evil queen’s point of view. Jolie stayed “in character” during much of the film shoot, even wearing her costume at home. According to the National Enquirer, Jolie’s six children were “horrified” by their mother’s “hideous makeup and huge horns.” Her son Knox, age four at the time, ran from “Maleficent Mom.”
GHASTLY HEADLINES
Real headlines from real newspapers. (Really?)
Diana Was Still Alive Hours Before She Died
Authorities Pursue Man Running With Scissors
GENERAL WHO RAN SOUTH VIETNAM BRIEFLY DIES AT 86
POLICE ARREST EVERYONE ON FEBRUARY 22ND
HOMICIDE VICTIMS RARELY TALK TO POLICE
City Plans Its First Dog Park, Archery Range
BEHEADING CAN CAUSE KIDS STRESS
17 REMAIN DEAD IN MORGUE SHOOTING SPREE
WOMAN FALLS IN HOSPITAL TOLD TO CALL AMBULANCE
CITY UNSURE WHY THE SEWER SMELLS
Blazing Butt Blamed for Pine Street Fire
POLICE SHOOT MAN WHO WAS STABBING HIMSELF
SEWAGE SPILL KILLS FISH BUT WATER SAFE TO DRINK
THE LEGEND OF PEE-PEE HOLLOW
An Uncle John’s Eerily Twisted Tale!
IKE CRANE DIDN’T MIND crossing the forest to get home in daylight, but it spooked him at night. That’s why he always hurried home as soon as school got out, instead of stopping to talk to Katy Van Tassel—the girl of his dreams.
One day, the drama teacher posted a flyer: Cinderella, Casting Call next Monday. Kids buzzed around the flyer, speculating on who would win each role. “Katy will be Cinderella,” one girl pouted. The girl was right. Katy had played the princess role in every play the school had produced. “That means Brom will be Prince Charming.”
Ike’s saucer-shaped ears perked up. Prince Charming? He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down his spindly neck. The boy who played Prince Charming would get to kiss Cinderella in the final scene. And if Katy was going to be cast in that role, he’d be trying out.
There were only two problems: one, play practice lasted for three hours after school. Since it was late fall, he’d have
to walk home every evening in the dark. Two, the beefy Brom Brunt—who also had a crush on Katy—would definitely try out for the lead role. Then there was problem number three. (I know. I said two problems. But the third problem is just so embarrassing.)
Here it is: Ike had an unusually small bladder, so he had to urinate frequently. Every day on his walk through the woods, he stopped in a hollow full of hemlock trees to pee. And the more scared he was, the more he needed to go. So how on earth would he make it through an entire three-act play?
Just then, Brom Brunt strutted over and scribbled his name on the sign-up sheet. Ike squared his thin shoulders. No way was he letting that oaf kiss Katy, so as Brom stepped aside, Ike added his name.
“Prince Charming?” Brom snorted. “A walking scarecrow like you? Don’t be ridiculous.”
Katy pushed past Brom to add her own name to the list. “No more ridiculous than a guy with the charm of a warthog trying out for the role.”
When the parts were posted, Ike could not believe his luck. He’d won the role of Prince Charming. Brom stewed in the front row during every rehearsal. That didn’t stop Ike from hoping every day that they’d practice the kiss at the end of the last act. They didn’t, until the last practice before the play. “OK, you two.” The director nodded at Katy, then Ike. “Time for the big moment.”
“We don’t really have to kiss, do we?” Katy asked.
The director raised his eyebrows. “Uhm…yes? But perhaps we should save the real thing for opening night.”
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