When we asked readers to tell us about their scariest Halloween costumes, we weren't really sure what to expect.

Now we know: Honolulu knows scary.

Headless, blood-dripping scary. Sweet, pale-skinned scary. Big, out-of-this-world-monster scary. There's just no end, it seems, to the imaginative lengths some people will go to put a little fright into the night that in recent years has become one of America's campiest holidays.

Take Marjorie and Everett Jacobsen, who last year surprised good friends and scared little children in Waikiki when they ventured out in their Halloween finery, she as a "skeleton bride," and he as a super geek (yes, they're scary, too).

"You could just see the kids backing away from us as we walked down Kalakaua Avenue," said Marjorie, who used lots of cheap grease paint, makeup and a wig to create the death-warmed-up look that can't be found in a store-bought mask.

"With a lot of planning and time, we always try to come up with something original," she said.

Ron Takamoto says he, too, devotes a lot of time to the scary outfits he helps create each year for his son JoJo, a 12-year-old student at Kaimuki Middle School. Takamoto spends up to an hour a day for almost two months working on the outlandish outfits, but it pays off: Last year he won prizes in eight costume contests around the island.

In past years, Takamoto has come up with a head-in-his-hands monster complete with its own coffin.

"This year, we're working on our Robo-Vac, a robotic monster that sucks up other people's heads with big vacuum cleaner arms," he said. While father Ron helps with the construction, JoJo is the creative brains behind the operation. "He likes thinking up the ideas and I just help make them a reality," he said.

Sometimes, even little darlings venture into the scary world. That was the case last year with Parker Ard, now 8, who got dressed as what her mother, Nicole, calls a "goth princess." While the purple and black gown and cape were purchased online, Parker's mother added white facial makeup and purple and black streaks in her hair.

This year, though, Parker is going to be a genie, with a cute gold-and-blue outfit and an Aladdin-like lamp. "She decided that she didn't want to be scary at all this year," Nicole Ard said.

For the rest of us, fright night lives on.

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.