Flaming logs. An entire pig broiled on a BBQ made of concrete bricks. A hundred or more locals in costumes. Buckets filled with candy. Illegal fireworks. Bonfires. Potato salad.

All are ingredients in an positvely splendid Halloween party. Indubitably, I dare say.

So I spent a portion of the weekend at an undisclosed location near Canyonville. Why undisclosed? Because the hosts probably wouldn't appreciate too many details appearing in a public forum. Still, try as I might, I'm completely incapable of resisting the temptation to place a photo like this on the internet:

Want a closer look? Click here.

I have no idea what the hosts call these things but I'm dubbing them "Jack o' Logs" (yeah, that sounds like a "Man Show" gag. Sorry.) There were four of them and they ranged in height from two to twelve feet.

They were created using rotting logs, a chainsaw and lots of gasoline. They spat sparks another ten feet in the air and roared for around five hours before, one by one, they collapsed. At one point, the guy maintaining the fires got a little too close to the flames and almost lit himself on fire. He didn't get hurt but did receive a good amount of applause for his efforts.

More photos of the event and further details can be found over on this Flickr page or by clicking on the photo above. There's probably a dozen anecdotes about the party I could toss out but I'm going to stick with this one:

Later in the evening, a group of us went on a field trip to an abandoned incinerator that was once part of a lumber operation. It's become a make-out/party spot for local teens and we had to travel, on foot, up a pitch-black road laden with ditches, deep puddles and tree branches to get to it. Does this sounds like the first ten minutes of a generic horror movie? Keep reading.

The inside was covered in graffiti and it looked like something out of one of those "Myst" PC games. I brought along a camera instead of a Proton Pack and someone else brought up the Blair Witch once we were inside. Also: we only had one flashlight to share among seven people. Despite all this, none of us wound up maimed, stabbed, hacked to death, beaten with a croquet mallet or tripped by a ghost. I did get hit in the face by a tree branch though.

So I went back through the photos this morning and was surprised by what turned up. If you enjoy getting freaked out by ghost photos, click here.

All I did was turn up the contrast on the shot. Could those be the spirits of bored lumberjacks? Is it just me or does that glob on the right look like a girl's face? And the glob on the left? I'd say it looks like a cross made out of bones but feel free to make your own assumptions.

Happy Halloween. Mwahahahahaha!