This Dark Souls Jailer Halloween costume will raise your spirits and drain your HP

There's been a severe lack of videogame spooks, thrills, and chills online, but creative costumer Winslow Dumaine (Weeperblast on Reddit) has us covered. This Halloween he's dressing up as the Jailer enemy from Dark Souls 3's Irithyll Dungeon area. Besides looking deeply unsettling with that blank mask and bizarre peace-sign brand, the Jailer will scare Dark Souls players by recalling their first encounter with this particularly creepy enemy. Not only is the Irithyll Dungeon damp and dark, but Jailers are patrolling all about and have the unnatural ability to temporarily lower the player's max health just from standing in their line of sight. And once they spot you, they'll scuffle your way and laugh. It's not cool. (It's cool.)

Dumaine put the costume together for around $80 using a robe, gloves, balaclava, paint, and no short amount of fabric. He's not just wearing it for a party or to grief unsuspecting Dark Souls players either. It's for a comedy show, which he's hosting and performing in.

My immediate reaction to seeing someone dressed like this on stage would be to duck beneath the chairs in front of me and make a new life there, but having sampled Dumaine's comedy, I'm sure I'd eventually emerge chuckling. It's heavy stuff, the "product of three years of refining pain and grief into stand up comedy," so if you decide to give it a listen, be warned. But if you do, close your eyes and picture the Jailer, waving around a lantern and cracking jokes about deep, abyssal sadness. That's my new headcanon, and I think the Jailer is a better, more sympathetic character for it.

James is stuck in an endless loop, playing the Dark Souls games on repeat until Elden Ring and Silksong set him free. He's a truffle pig for indie horror and weird FPS games too, seeking out games that actively hurt to play. Otherwise he's wandering Austin, identifying mushrooms and doodling grackles.