Following Google’s tradition of decorating its homepage to celebrate major holidays, the Google Doodle today is a cute and spooky interactive animation of haunted houses. Well, not haunted houses in the traditional sense of a lone, crusty old mansion with a graveyard nearby, but rather a series of haunted entryways to homes in the city.
(And yes, it did kind of creep me out, given that New York was referred to as a “ghost town” during hurricane Sandy this week, but I digress.)
There are five doorways, each with a ghoul of some sort hidden inside, including a ghost, a mummy, an octopus (?), some googly eyes (get it?), and um…a sinister purple square with a big set of teeth, ready to chomp you. Also interactive: the spider, crow, skeleton, and black cat. Of course, the house with the lucky address “13” sits right in the middle. Moans and “oooooooo’s” and “meeeeeows” make up the doodle’s soundtrack, so turn your volume down if you’re checking this out surreptitiously from your cubicle at work.
After you’ve clicked all there is to click, Google redirects you to a search for “Happy Halloween!”