Somewhere along the way the Halloween holiday expanded to take over October, or at least anchor down the month while we celebrate the weeks-long festival of saints Pumpkin and Spice. And I’m fine with that. People dressing up in costumes and decorating their yards – what’s not to like?

I wanted to get in on the fun but I’m no good at costumes and my yard’s not really made for decorating. So instead I made a way that you can turn a Wikipedia category into a cemetery complete with headstones and spooky-ooky decorations. Check out Wikiween at https://researchbuzz.github.io/Wikiween/  .

Enter a Wikipedia category ( like Category:Executed_American_serial_killers or Category:American_money_launderers) and click the Wikitty-Boppity-Boo button. Wikiween looks at the first 50 pages in the category and checks each person to see if they’re alive or dead. If they’re dead, they get a little headstone in the WikiWeen cemetery.

There are 20 different possible headstones and another 20 possible decorations, so the graveyards will look a little different every time. But each headstone, no matter what it looks like, contains information about its subject if you hold your mouse over it:

There’s also a little Wikipedia page link underneath the headstone so you can go straight to the page.

Happy Halloween!