All of us here would like to wish you a very happy Halloween, arguably the most Outside-y holiday of the year. (When else do millions of people across the country go out for a nighttime jog in their coolest gear?)

For your enjoyment (and education), here is a roundup of some Halloween coverage from Outside and the rest of the net:

Outside’s Five Scariest Movies.

Outside writers tell you what scares them.

Yes, it’s okay to steal candy from your children.

How old is too old to trick-or-treat?

British group advocates for posthumous pardon of executed witches.

Fungus decimates bat colonies.

A slightly disturbing Halloween music video from Bruce Springsteen.

And finally, The Onion debates the age-old question, Have Americans Lost Sight of the True Meaning of Halloween?

In The Know: Has Halloween Become Overcommercialized?

The Amazon is burning, that much you know. In the process, a new type of conservationist has risen from the ash.

John Cain Carter, of Alianca de Terra, is a revolutionary green prototype. The Texas rancher moved down to the Brazilian Amazon and started a ranch. He was wowed by the large-scale burnoffs around his land, which occurred despite the fact the government has set up strict rules that say ranchers have to keep roughly three-quarters of their land forested in some areas. Law enforcement in the region is slow and corrupt, so the rules are often not enforced.

People reason that they can earn more money with more land to ranch and farm and so burn areas down, accepting the environmental costs of lost species and old growth. Many are poor and need the money. And with world food prices soaring, the clearing has increased more than 200 percent in some regions.

Enter Carter’s plan: to help ranchers that follow the rules get their goods to market for a higher price. Companies benefit too. They can say they buy meat from ranchers that follow the rules.

Outside’s Stephanie Pearson profiled Carter in our November issue, on newsstands now. For a glimpse of what he’s preaching, check out this clip from Letterman.

— Joe Spring

What have you been doing for the last 12 hours? While you were sleeping, Ryan Sandes and Dean Karnazes covered nearly 100 kilometers. In the desert. Or perhaps, as the photo indicates, on Mars.

Karno (left), now in second overall, and race leader Sandes shared the experience, arriving together in El Ris after just 12 hours, 21 minutes and 40 seconds. Other stragglers are yet to hit the final checkpoint. One stage to go, and then on to the Antarctic.

–Matthew Fishbane

(photo courtesy Chris Lusher/RacingThePlanet Limited)

Pirates off of the Cameroon coast took 10 foreign oil workers hostage, according to a report in The New York Times.

”We want to talk to the Cameroon government,” the pirate leader Edi Dari told the paper. ”If they think this is child’s play, we are going to kill them in
three days, one by one.”

Recent pirate attacks off Somalia and Nigeria have given more attention to lawlessness at sea. There are also pirates closer to home, as writer David Vann recently found out when traveling down to Mexico for Outside.

–Joe Spring