Today I saw my first falling leaves of the season. Sure, they’ve been falling for the past couple of weeks. I’ve noticed the accumulation in the corners of my yard. But this morning they caught my attention as they pirouetted down in a golden flurry from my neighbor’s tree, dancing on the cool Autumn breeze, and that familiar thrill of anticipation began to stir inside me. Halloween is almost here!
I was fortunate to grow up during the golden age of Halloween. It was the heyday of Hammer horror films and American International Pictures. Dark Shadows aired on our television screen every afternoon. My mother’s bookshelves were filled with Gothic romance novels by authors like Marilyn Ross (a pseudonym for author Dan Ross), Dorothy MacCardle and Florence Hurd. On the weekends, we had weekly movie matinees of the Universal Studios monsters. We watched The Munsters and The Addams Family and Bewitched every week on TV. And we read EC Comics narrated by Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie and Tales from the Crypt. In short, we were steeped in the macabre. We were glutted on depictions of ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches and goblins of every sort year round.
Granted, there were sometimes slight drawbacks to that immersion. I, for one, was a morbid child who staked my Barbies and buried them in my grandmother’s garden. But then my oddities can be saved for another post at another time.
My point is: Halloween was our favorite holiday. How could it not be?
In those days, Trick or Treat was more than just an excuse to binge on free candy. It was an event - a grand adventure - that we prepared for and meticulously planned for weeks in advance. Most of our costumes were homemade and pieced together with items we found around the house or salvaged from thrift stores. We supplemented these treasures with our mother’s makeup and costume jewelry and cheap plastic fangs from the TG&Y.
We carved scary Jack-o-lanterns, reveling in being up to our elbows in the sticky goo of
pumpkin guts. We decorated our houses and front yards with rubber bats and spooky spider webs and fake tombstones and witches on broomsticks and ghoulish dummy corpses hanging from our trees.
When Halloween night finally arrived, we were filled with a rush of fear and excitement. We
waited impatiently for sunset and then, grabbing our cheap, plastic pumpkin buckets, we
descended upon our neighborhood like undead marauders to plunder and pillage whatever tasty treats were to be had. Those were the days when it was still safe to accept popcorn balls, caramel apples, and Rice Krispies treats from your neighbors without worrying about hauling your bounty to be x-rayed at the hospital before eating them. As a matter of fact, half of the goodies we received were consumed along the way as fuel for our journey.
But it was never just about the treats. It was the experience of it all. You were outside after
dark, in the cold October air, trekking door to door among costumed “strangers” who hid behind masks and elaborate makeup. The familiar neighborhood of our daylight hours was transformed into a spooky, alien landscape. Candles flickered from darkened windows. Eerie music drifted from opened doorways. Creepy cackles filled the air. Our imaginations ran wild. Was that really Johnny who sat behind me at school or a ghost returned from the land of the dead? Was that the neighbor’s dog howling or a werewolf on the prowl? There, flying in the sky, was that a vampire bat or just a nighthawk searching for moths? Man, Mrs. Applegate looks really convincing in that witch’s get-up. Is that a real cauldron she’s stirring? Is she secretly a real witch?
Still, the best part of Halloween for me was getting to check out everyone else's costume
creations and parading my own with great pride. I’m not talking about cute little cowboys and shiny super heroes, mind you. In my day, you weren’t just an princess. You were the ghost of a dead princess risen from the grave to haunt the living on All Hallow’s Eve, while the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest.
Eventually, we would return home exhausted and high on sugar, with our senses and nerves on overload. We checked under our beds and inside our closets before crawling reluctantly into bed to relive in our dreams all the sights and sounds and spooky thrills we had experienced. And, even though a part of me knew it was only a myth, I stared out my window at the moon until I fell asleep, watching for a witch to fly past it on her broom.
But that was the mystery and magic of the holiday.
All things seemed possible on those long ago Halloween nights. And sometimes, when I’m lucky, that feeling and sense of possibility still visits me.
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