Here are a few of our most popular Halloween-themed articles from the Strange but True! archives.
An Employer’s Worst Nightmare—A few years ago, we reported on a bookkeeper who was charged with stealing $6.9 million from her employer. The prosecutors presented a list of goods that the woman allegedly bought during a shopping spree with the stolen funds. A devoted Halloween enthusiast, she purchased various cinematic props to decorate her home for Halloween, including a 20-foot-tall, smoke-emitting dragon that sported hydraulically-powered wings and a booming dragon roar. Platt also purchased six talking trees like those in the Wizard of Oz, at a cost of $3,000 each, and a life-size ceramic statue of Al Capone (seated, smoking a cigar).
Colleagues Get Creative with Costumes—Does your organization celebrate Halloween? For employers that partake in the autumnal holiday, dressing up can show employees’ creativity and interests, but it can also show poor judgment. We found a few examples of creative costumes in the workplace, including “The Silent Server,” a waitress dressed as a mime.
Halloween Office Party Mocks Foreclosures, Homeless—Last year, a New York foreclosure law firm is in hot water after photographs of last year’s Halloween party made national headlines. What went wrong? Some of the employees’ costumes, as well as decorations, mocked the homeless.
Workplace Halloween Costume Caveats—Career Costumes Best—A website hosted by experts from the fashion industry cautions that you’d better be careful when selecting costumes to wear in the workplace lest you offend someone—or hurt your career by looking unprofessional. “Appropriate” is the keyword. Avoid anything “revealing, lewd, crude,” says the website, or “discriminatory … religious, or controversial.”