10 Candies I’d Snag If Adults Could Trick-or-Treat

 

I think it’s ridiculously unfair that adults aren’t allowed to go trick-or-treating. We work all day, pay bills, go to doctor’s appointments, put gas in the car, and try to make responsible decisions. If there’s any group of people who deserve to let their hair down and just enjoy a night of spooky frolicking, it’s us.

I want to dress up as the Lone Ranger, Sam, or even Eeyore, then walk the streets ringing doorbells and collecting all the free candy I can carry.

So, since society frowns on grown-ups trick-or-treating (for reasons I still don’t understand), I’ll just live vicariously through this list instead.

With that said, here are ten candies I’d want more than anything else on Halloween night.

I love the classic KitKats and wouldn’t be mad if that’s all I got, but nothing beats the flavors coming out of Japan. My favorite is the milk tea, though I’d happily gobble up the wasabi just as fast.

Take 5 has to be my current favorite candy bar and has been since it first debuted. This delicious concoction is packed with pretzels, chocolate, peanut butter, caramel, and peanuts. The only thing missing is potato chips.

Butterfingers are just about the perfect candy bar, and I absolutely loved them as a kid. Bart Simpson may be an annoying character, but he’s right about this one. I don’t even care when it gets stuck in my teeth.

You can keep your Almond Joys. I’ve always thought the nut throws the texture off—it’s like putting rocks in marshmallows. All you need is chocolate and coconut. So I’ll trade you my Almond Joys for your Mounds.

Did you know that if you bite into the right cookie, it looks different than when you bite into the left one? I thought I was seeing things when I first noticed it, but then I looked it up and discovered they do it on purpose. All that really matters, though, is that Twix is so freaking good.

Junior Mints are so versatile. I put them on my mint chocolate chip ice cream, and I’ve also been known to toss them into popcorn, mixed nuts, or even Greek yogurt with sugar-free chocolate pudding mix. Naturally, they’re just as good all by themselves.

Snickers weren’t a candy bar I enjoyed as a kid, but now I like them a lot. I think it helps that once they started making the ice cream bars, I couldn’t get enough of them.

Heath is another candy bar that wasn’t on my childhood radar. As an adult, whenever I’m craving Christmas crack but feeling too lazy to make it, I’ll just head to the store and grab a bar or two.

Nestlé Crunch is perfection in a little blue wrapper. How anyone doesn’t thoroughly enjoy that snap when you break a bar in half—or get all giddy inside when that crisped rice hits your tongue—is beyond me. It’s just that fun to eat.

We finish this list with a childhood classic: the Dum Dums. I mentioned in a list I did about my favorite Halloween candy in fifth grade that the root beer Dum Dums were my favorite—and they still are—but I’m also a sucker for butterscotch. So if you happen to get any root beer or butterscotch–flavored Dum Dums this year, I’ll gladly take them off your hands.

Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

 

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

When Quinn and her father move to a tiny town with a weird clown for a mascot, they're looking for a fresh start. But ever since the town's only factory shut down, Kettle Springs has been cracked in half.

Most of the town believes that the kids are to blame. After all, the juniors and seniors at Kettle Springs High are the ones who threw the party where Arthur Hill's daughter died. They're the ones who set the abandoned factory on fire and who spend all their time posting pranks on YouTube. They have no respect and no idea what it means to work hard.

For the kids, it's the other way around And now Kettle Springs is caught in a constant battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It's a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until one homicidal clown with a porkpie hat and a red nose decides to end it for good.

Because if your opponents all die, you win the debate by default.

I’ve only been to Albuquerque, New Mexico once in my life—and that was more than enough. I don’t remember the exact year, but it was sometime around seventh or eighth grade, back when my family was traveling with a carnival. I hated that stop from the moment we pulled in. Within a day, my left eye had swollen shut, and I was forced to wear an eye patch. Spoiler alert: it’s not nearly as fun as pirates make it look.

The third night we were there, after the midway had shut down, my younger brother and I got hungry and decided to walk three blocks to what I think was a Whataburger. We were passing what looked like a car lot when a dog rushed the fence. We bolted across the street—and that’s when I saw what was in the window of the building we’d just reached. I immediately turned around and ran right back across. I’d rather take my chances with a guard dog than face a creepy-ass mechanical clown moving in a store window in the middle of the night.

I don’t like clowns. I never have. They’re wrong in a way that gets under your skin. There’s something about those painted faces—those fixed smiles—that hides whatever’s really underneath. Look at John Wayne Gacy. That’s reason enough. I hate them so much that a friend once bought me a shirt that said, Can’t sleep. Clowns will eat me. They thought it was funny. I thought it was prophetic. 

Once, at a Hometown Buffet, a clown came in to make balloon animals. I left mid-meal, plate still full. I wasn’t about to sit there while that greasepainted demon floated toward my table. Clowns are my boogeyman.

Now, I do better when the clowns are fictional—on a page or a screen. Since they’re not physically in my space, I can manage. In a perverse way, I even enjoy testing the limits of what I can handle when it comes to dealing with them. Naturally, since I don’t have to look at them, I prefer reading about those murderous fiends from hell. Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare is chock-full of them.

I won’t go into too many details because I don’t want to spoil the blood-soaked fun, but I will say this: the body count is massive—at least 33 people die, many by crossbow. The book is bloody without being gory, something I’m eternally thankful for. I love horror, but I’ve never been a fan of gore for gore’s sake. The humor is dark (which is probably why I loved it so much), and the queer representation is surprisingly good—without falling into the “bury your gays” trope that annoys the hell out of me.

It’s a lot of fun for a teen slasher novel. The author clearly loves the genre and plays with its tropes in a way that feels fresh instead of tired. I had an absolute blast reading it, and while the movie version was enjoyable, I—unsurprisingly—prefer the book. Now I just need to read the sequels.

And just in case you were wondering, the reason my eye swelled shut in Albuquerque was because of mountain cedar, which is everywhere there. I didn’t find that out until much later, when I had an allergy scratch test done where I now live—far from New Mexico. Apparently, the winds blow the pollen all the way here, which is why they test for it. That little test spot swelled to the size of a fifty-cent piece and stayed that way for a week. So yeah—Albuquerque will be a city I never visit again.

Favorite Fictional Character --- Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt

 

It’s not often that I change my mind about a character, but a book I finished last night has me seeing Brom Bones in a whole new light. Within twenty minutes of reading the last page, I found myself rewatching The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and I honestly think Ichabod got what he deserved. Brom did what he had to do to protect Katrina—and his own heart—from that gold-digging schoolmaster.

Now, I’ll admit, I haven’t actually read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving yet, but I plan to fix that soon. The book that sent me down this rabbit hole was Horseman by Christina Henry. I haven’t written my full review yet, but it’s coming—so keep an eye out.

If you’re not too familiar with Brom, he’s basically the local hero of Sleepy Hollow, this quiet little village that doesn’t get many outsiders. Then along comes Ichabod Crane—the awkward, lanky schoolmaster with a bottomless appetite—who somehow decides he’s going to win over Katrina Van Tassel, the local beauty and daughter of the richest farmer in town.

Naturally, that doesn’t sit well with Brom, who’s been in love with Katrina since they were kids. And while he knows Katrina is just using Ichabod to make him jealous, he decides to make sure Ichabod gets the message loud and clear. Maybe scaring a man half to death was a bit much—but honestly, I can’t say I blame him.

In Horseman, which takes place a few decades after his run-in with Ichabod, Brom is older, a grandfather now, but still completely in love with Katrina. His family is everything to him. He’s still got that same temper and swagger, but it’s mellowed with age. I don’t want to say too much yet—I’m saving that for the review—but I really hope you’ll check out Horseman and maybe, like me, find yourself looking at Brom Bones in a whole new way.

Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie

 

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Fade to Black is the newest ghost hunting reality TV show. Led by husband-and-wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin, it features a dedicated crew of ghost hunting experts. 

Episode 13 takes them to every ghost hunters holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This crumbling, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about bizarre experiments that took place their in the 1970s. It's undoubtedly haunted, and Matt hopes to use scientific techniques and high-tech gear to prove it.

But as the house begins to slowly reveal itself to the crew, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of. 

I’ve been in love with found footage horror ever since I first saw The Blair Witch Project back in 1999. Since then, I’ve watched everything from the movies that show the genre at its best—like Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, The Taking of Deborah Logan, and Hell House LLC—to the ones that make me roll my eyes, like Apollo 18 and Classroom 6. Truthfully, even when they’re bad, I almost always have so much fun watching them.

So when I first heard about Episode Thirteen, I was a tad bit skeptical. How could a movie genre I love so much possibly translate to the page? But here’s the funny thing—it’s the book’s flaws that made me love it even more. Those rough edges, that slightly chaotic structure… they gave the story the same immersive, jittery energy that makes found footage films so addictive.

If you’ve seen even a few of the more popular found footage movies, you already know the formula: a group of people make terrible choices, the camera keeps rolling, and eventually someone finds their footage because—well, no one made it out alive. And yes, the book follows that tradition in terms of the body count. But unlike a lot of movies in the genre, I didn’t find everyone annoying. In fact, I grew really fond of Matt and Jake. By the end, they’d joined the short list of horror characters who genuinely broke my heart—right up there with the narrator from Security by Gina Wohlsdorf.

The story unfolds through journal entries, emails, text messages, video transcripts, and interviews, which perfectly captures that chaotic found footage rhythm. One moment it’s frantic and terrifying; the next, it slows to a crawl, letting the dread seep in. It was those journal entries that really got me, though—they made Matt and Jake feel so real that I couldn’t help rooting for them, even knowing it wouldn’t end well.

By the time I reached the final pages, I was completely wrecked. Episode Thirteen nails everything I love about the genre: the tension, the intimacy, the creeping feeling that I shouldn’t be reading what I’m reading.

If you’re a horror fan, especially one who loves the found footage style with all its chaos and nerve-shredding suspense, this is one book you absolutely need to read.

Ten of the Sexiest Screen Vampires, Volume 7

 

Halloween has, over the years, crept past Christmas to claim the title of my favorite holiday. There’s just something magical about October: the nights grow cooler (even if the days are still too darn warm), the leaves shift into fiery shades, and my already horror-loving heart gets to revel in all things spooky. Because of that, I’ve decided to resurrect some of my old Halloween traditions here on the blog. And what better place to start than with the return of my annual list of sexy vampires? If you missed my earlier posts rising from the crypt, you can revisit the lists from 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Without further ado, I give you ten damn sexy vampires who’d love nothing more than to sink their teeth into you.

The Men

Vlad Dracula as played by Luke Evans in Dracula Untold (2014). Not going to lie, Luke Evans is just about the hottest man on the planet, and I would let his version of Dracula do just about anything to me. 

Louis de Pointe du Lac as played by Jacob Anderson in AMC's Interview with the Vampire. He's broody, emotional, and from all accounts a hell of a kisser. Brad Pitt's version as already appeared on these lists, but I think this version runs laps around him. 

Remmick as played by Jack O'Connell in Sinners (2025). Between his Irish accent and singing like a dream, Remmick is a catch. He's looking for a family, and he might just decide you'd fit right in. 

Edward Dalton as played by Ethan Hawke in Daybreakers (2009). Smart and sexy is always a winning combination. 

Raphael Santiago as played by David Castro in the TV show Shadowhunters. A religious family man to his core, Raphael loves with a conviction few others posses. It helps that he's hot too. 

The Women

The Girl as played by Sheila Vand in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014). An avenging angel who won't tolerate men mistreating women, The Girl is both gorgeous and deadly. Side note, if you've never seen this movie, do so. 

Mary as played by Hailee Steinfeld in Sinners (2025). Mary is walking contradiction of emotions, both vindictive and loving, Mary is just wanting to be loved by a man who will stay. Isn't that what we all want? 

Darla as played by Julie Benz from the TV shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Darla has the soul of a demon, but loves hard despite it. And she's smoking hot.

Lucy Weston as played by Frances Dade in Dracula (1931). As kind as she was beautiful, Lucy caught the eye of Count Dracula, and she was never the same again. 

Marya Zaleska as played by Gloria Holden in Dracula's Daughter (1936). Regal in manner Countess Zaleska commands attention, and she gets it. 

The Sing Out, Louise! Tournament Has A Winner!

 We chose a winner of the Sing Out, Louise! Tournament over on the Facebook page.

The winner is... Mary Poppins (1964)

Favorite Fictional Character --- Sam

 

If I posted pictures of all the Sams in my room right now, you’d probably think I have a screw loose—maybe even two. On my bed, there’s a fleece blanket at the foot of it and a pillow shaped like his head mixed in with the rest of my pillows. On my headboard sits a sidestepper that plays music and laughter from the movie. In a cubby of my TV stand, I’ve got a lunchbox and four Funko Pops. Hanging over my curtains is a rather large wall banner. I also have a pair of slippers, two pairs of socks, and about six plastic water cups. In other words: I’m obsessed. Spirit Halloween is basically my favorite store this time of year.

I should probably stop assuming you know who I’m talking about and fill you in on the greatest modern-day horror character: Sam.

Sam is the central figure in Trick ’r Treat (2007), a Halloween-themed horror comedy built around four interconnected stories, all of which feature him in some way.

On the surface, Sam looks like an ordinary kid dressed for trick-or-treating. But underneath that burlap mask is an adorable little demon who enforces the rules of Halloween—violently. The rules are simple:

• Always wear a costume.
• Always hand out treats.
• Never extinguish a jack-o’-lantern before midnight.
• Always respect the dead.
• Never take down decorations before November 1st.
• Never harm the innocent.

Follow those, and you’ll survive the night. Break them, and Sam will make sure you don’t live to see Thanksgiving.

Sam is one of those characters I can’t help but love, even if he’s maybe one I shouldn’t. Sure, he’s technically evil—but he’s also just following his own moral compass, protecting the greatest holiday in existence. So I’m willing to make some allowances. It doesn’t hurt that he’s absolutely adorable, quite possibly the cutest horror character ever created.

 

It's currently on HBO Max and for rent on Apple TV and Prime Video. 

I also wanted to thank Michelle of The True Book Addict for redoing my Favorite Fictional Character post images for both Halloween and Christmas, I absolutely love the new ones. I'm actually thinking about asking her to redo the weekly image as well.