Field Report

The Halloween Files

Posted 10/31/2026 · ← All field reports

Full disclosure: this is commentary and jokes. Facts come from the linked reports, so click through and judge for yourself. The party kits linked here are our own products.

It's Halloween, which means the costumes are fake, the candy is real and the news cycle has decided to dress up as a conspiracy corkboard. This week we've got a state government putting cryptids on license plates, a beach island in old Air Force files, a tech billionaire eyeing your RAM and an election-week scare story about the Supreme Court. Grab a pillowcase. We're trick-or-treating for receipts.

Exhibit A: West Virginia makes Mothman street legal

Starting Monday, Nov. 2, West Virginia drivers can bolt nine cryptids to their bumpers. According to the West Virginia DMV's own announcement, the new plate stars the Flatwoods Monster ("Braxie"), with Mothman flying behind its shoulder and Bigfoot, Sheepsquatch, Batboy, Veggie Man, the Webster County Werewolf, Ogua and the Grafton Monster filling out the woods. West Virginia Explorer puts the price at $61.50 for one year.

Let's appreciate what just happened. A government agency, the one place in America famous for demanding three forms of ID, has officially recognized Veggie Man. Somewhere a believer is framing the press release, and somewhere a skeptic is asking whether Bigfoot had to take a number like everybody else. The DMV says he was "seen holding the new license plate" at a Bigfoot festival. We'd like the photo entered into evidence, please.

Exhibit B: Catalina Island, now with saucers

The Pentagon's seventh batch of UFO records under its PURSUE release program (you can browse them on the Department of War's UAP page) includes four old reports from Catalina Island, the tourist spot off Southern California. The Los Angeles Times and KTLA walk through them: Boy Scouts in 1952 reporting a silver object "faster than a conventional jet," a purplish-white object in 1953 and a bright orange one in 1955.

Here's the fun part for skeptics and believers alike. KTLA notes a local astronomer said Jupiter "provided a possible explanation" for the 1953 sighting. So either a planet photobombed Los Angeles, or Jupiter is the most successful cover story in government history. Read the actual files and pick your side. That's the whole point of releasing them, and it beats letting a podcast host read them to you in a spooky voice.

Exhibit C: The Great RAM Heist

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went on the Cheeky Pint podcast and said, per The Verge and Tom's Hardware, that "it's quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used five percent of the time."

In fairness, he was talking about running AI models at home during a memory shortage, not sending agents to repossess your gaming rig. But you cannot say that sentence on Halloween weekend and expect the internet not to picture a man in a trench coat going door to door asking for memory sticks instead of candy. Our official advice: keep your RAM. Hand out the fun-size Snickers instead.

Exhibit D: The Supreme Court boogeyman

With the midterms on Tuesday, Elon Musk posted that a Democratic sweep would mean expanding the Supreme Court and a "permanent one-party state," and former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reshared it with "This is what's at stake. Vote," according to The Independent and The Daily Beast.

Equal-opportunity roast time. One side took a "what if" and dressed it up as the end of democracy. The other side's media headlines called it "bonkers," while the same Independent article notes that some prominent Democrats really have floated growing the court to 13 justices. So it's not a secret plot if people say it on TV, and it's not crazy talk if people say it on TV either. Both camps are doing the same thing: turning a policy debate into a haunted house so you'll walk through it screaming and donate on the way out.

The pattern on the corkboard

Connect the dots and Halloween's theme is clear. The government is cheerfully selling monster plates and releasing UFO files, while the scariest costumes this week were the political ones. When everything is framed as a fright, the skeptic move is to check the label, read the file and ask who profits from your screaming.

Want more of this? The Weird News page refreshes every morning with the strangest headlines from every corner of the internet, each one labeled so you can dig in yourself. Throwing a Mothman-worthy bash? The Junior Cryptid Scout Birthday Kit sends little agents on a monster hunt, and the full Conspiraparty Party Kit (code LEAKED20) covers the grown-up game night. Then join the Shadow Party Committee below for a free Agent ID Badge.

More field reports: This Week in Tinfoil and cryptid birthday party ideas.