Friday’s Food for Thought: Mapping Halloween

All Hallows’ Eve is upon us! Check out this roundup of fun mapping tools to help you make the most out of the Halloween weekend.

How Popular is Your Costume?

Google Trends created Frightgeist, a map where you can discover the most popular Halloween costumes in your city. From Batman in Washington, D.C., to Chucky in Juneau, Alaska, Frightgeist will help you determine how original your costume idea really is. Some of the most popular searches include superheroes and villains, Star Wars characters, and pirates.

Favorite Treats

Business Insider reports product reviews platform Influenster polled more than 40,000 users to find out the most popular candy in each U.S. state. According to the map, the candy with the most fans is Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, while candy corn is the favorite in Texas and Lifesavers take the top spot in California.

Trick-Or-Treating App

Target launched a website to help kids and their parents locate the best houses for trick-or-treating. Called Treatster, it’s the world’s first social network designed exclusively for trick-or-treating. Users can up-vote the houses with the best candy and even the best decorations.

Mapping Haunted Houses

Microsoft’s Bing got into the Halloween spirit by pinpointing some of the most haunted locations in the U.S, United Kingdom, and Canada with its “Spooky Map.” Some of these locations include the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, the Villisca Ax Murder House in Iowa, the Reign of Terror Haunted House in California, and many more.

A White Halloween?

Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist in Anchorage, Alaska, made a map illustrating the likelihood of snow on Halloween in the U.S., reports City Labs. Gathering decades of Halloween records from weather stations, Brettschneider’s map shows there is a less than five percent chance of Halloween snow for most of the country, with the Midwest being in the five to 10 percent range.

Photo Credit: Influenster