SCARY PEOPLE WITH FUN JOBS

EIGHT SCARY PEOPLE AND THE NOT-SO-SCARY JOBS THEY USED TO HAVE:

Halloween's around the corner. But the people who've made it scary over the years haven't always been scary. Here are eight of the scariest people around . . . and the NOT-SO-SCARY jobs they USED to have . . .

#1.) ROB ZOMBIE. Before he started WHITE ZOMBIE and turned into a horror movie director . . . he was a production assistant on "Pee-Wee's Playhouse".

#2.) BRAM STOKER. "Dracula" is the most famous thing he ever wrote, but Bram Stoker actually started out as a theater critic for the Dublin Evening Mail. And he also wrote a THRILLING book about the duties of lowly court clerks in Ireland.

#3.) ED WOOD. He's famous for the cheap horror movies he made in the 1950s. And JOHNNY DEPP played him in 1994. But before his movie career, Wood served in the military . . . then took a job as the bearded lady in a traveling freak show.

#4.) WES CRAVEN. Before "Scream" in 1996, he wrote and directed "The Last House On The Left" in 1972 and "The Hills Have Eyes" in 1977. But before all that, Wes Craven was a humanities professor at Clarkson University in upstate New York.

He actually wrote "A Nightmare On Elm Street" while he was teaching there. And yes, there IS an Elm Street just a few blocks from campus.

#5.) STEPHEN KING. He couldn't find work after college and had to take a job at an industrial Laundromat. Then in 1971 he landed a gig teaching English at a public high school in Maine. And in 1973, he sold his first book . . . "Carrie".

#6.) ALFRED HITCHCOCK. He directed classic thrillers like "The Birds", "Psycho", "North By Northwest", and "Rear Window". But in his 20s, Hitchcock designed advertisements for a cable company.

#7.) R.L. STINE. The "Goosebumps" author used to write joke books for kids under the pen name of "Jovial Bob Stine." And he was also the co-creator of the Nickelodeon show "Eureeka's Castle".

#8.) GEORGE ROMERO. Before he hit it big in 1968 with "Night Of The Living Dead", Romero made commercials and industrial films in Pittsburgh. And he produced segments for "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood".

One segment, called "Mr. Rogers Gets A Tonsillectomy," allegedly inspired Romero to enter the horror movie business. (MentalFloss.com)