DAY 1: CVS HALLOWEEN JUNK
What better way to officially kick things off than by visiting my local CVS and snapping photos of the random Halloween junk already on shelves and aisle end caps! Is it the same glorious, beautiful, bewilderingly overpriced junk from last year? Did any of it even leave shelves since last November? Who’s to say! Gimme that 11-inch LED Haunted House for $15 now!
I typically limit my CVS Halloween purchases to one or two non-candy items per year. Maybe some black-light napkins or one of those little solar-powered dioramas where a skeleton bobs its head back and forth when you put it in the sun. I’m just glad this stuff is already out there, reminding loyal CVS customers that the Halloween season is here (whether they like it or not), and that a glow-in-the-dark plastic pumpkin might go well with that Sunday-night DiGiorno pizza.
DAY 0: IT’S BAAAAACK
They said it couldn’t be done. They said it wouldn’t be done. The traffic from last year’s countdown said it shouldn’t be done. But I don’t give a shit, I’m doing it anyway…
WELCOME TO MILWAUKEE RECORD’S 66 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN, 2026 EDITION!
Yep, once again, against all better judgement, I’ll be crafting one short Halloween-related entry every day from now until October 31. It could be my thoughts on a spooky movie. It could be info on a spooky event coming to Milwaukee. It could just be a photo of some changing leaves because, let’s be honest, 66 days is kind of a haul. I’ll add each new entry to the top of this article, so you can go ahead and bookmark this page now. (I’ll wait.) Until I get to Day 22, after which I’ll start a new page (Part II). Oh, and then I’ll start another new page (Part III) when I get to Day 44. So, um, plan to bookmark those, too?
Let’s address the (ghostly) elephant in the room: Why? Why am I doing this? To be more precise, why am I doing this again? Yes, I did manage to pull off a complete 66-entry countdown last year, but that was only after two previous failed attempts. “Will I do this again next year? Probably not,” I said last year. So shouldn’t I…oh, wait. “Oh, who am I kidding, I totally will,” I also wrote last year. Damn. I don’t want to let my 2025 self down!
But seriously. I’m doing this not because of some deep-rooted obsession with Halloween (though there is a little of that), but because I truly love this time of year, and it tends to go by WAY too fast. By forcing myself to write one Halloween-y thing every day for 66 days, I find that the season slows down. The days seem longer. The weeks seem longer. The late-summer/early-fall vibes seem to vibe a little harder. It works for me. Hopefully, by following along, it works for you, too.
Okay, enough talk! Let the countdown begin! Here’s an ancient Bartz’s Party Store commercial!
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RELATED ARTICLES
• Milwaukee Record’s 66 Days of Halloween (2025, Part I)