As of this writing on a lovely September afternoon, everyone who works at BPAL seems to have some kind of Halloween project going on in the background, whether related to costume creation, home decor, or brewing up frightful treats. And this doesn’t even count as “early” to most ‘Weenie wackos!

Our relatively recent tradition of previewing Halloween fragrances at Dragon Con has been incredibly useful in terms of getting us in the spooky spirit. And then we get to witness others’ enjoyment of it, which proves contagious. (If we’re lucky, this joy is the only infection we brought home from Atlanta this year. Get thee behind us, Con Crud!)

This year’s series is like a scrapbook stuffed with snippets from artists we love – illustrations from John Herndon, Becky Munich, and Drew Rausch are back in rotation – as well as our own personal experiences, tastes, humor, and horrors. Even this year’s literary component, a fragrant adaptation of the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, is connected to memories of the childhood discovery that words printed on a page can affect a person more brutally than anything they’d ever seen on a screen or in real life.

And of course, by now some of the perfumes in our Main Category of ‘Weenies have been in rotation for over twenty years. To the extent that little bottles of oily essence can function as scraps in a book, we share your pleasure in revisiting them, rereading the descriptions, and inhaling the contents, wondering how on earth this all happened.

May your season be filled with such fragrant remembrances, in whatever form those take. May our ghosts feel invited to visit and speak, and may their messages stand a chance of being heard before we’ve passed out of range, slipping back into winter’s relative peace and silence.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s atmosphere sprays are immersive, richly-scented room and linen mists designed to set a mood or evoke a vivid scene in your space as each one conjures a specific ambience, place, or story through fragrance. These evocative blends conjure entire moods and environments, from candlelit libraries and rain-soaked graveyards to sun-warmed apothecaries and windswept forests. A hush of incense can turn drywall into cathedral stone, a curl of hearthsmoke and pumpkin rind can draw Halloween into the brightest spring day. Damp earth, crushed leaves, sugared citrus, tomb dust, storm-washed air: each spray is a spell cast, an invocation of elsewhere.

Our atmosphere sprays are composed with the same artistry and depth as our perfume oils, designed to linger in the air, subtly reshaping the energy of a room. A single mist can soften the edges of the day, summon a myth, or open the door to somewhere else entirely.