BOO!

Task 40, October 31 to November 6

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this was comes…” William Shakespeare

Ok, it’s Halloween. I sub-divide the whole Halloween experience into two troughs: ONE: out in the world trick–or-treating, which I subdivide into three experiences: a) those I had as a child, b) those I had as a teen and c) those I had as an adult with kids; and TWO: Halloween parties.

Let me start with number two: Halloween parties. I don’t have much of a beef with Halloween parties, because I can sort of control the situation, i.e. what I wear, how long I stay, and who I interact with.

But trick-or treating, in the dark? I’m shivering just thinking about it. Three Halloween stories:

One: My neighborhood when I was growing up was terrifying at night no matter the season, and was exceptionally gulp-inducing on Halloween. Why? To start with, there were no streetlights on Jefferson Road outside of Ashtabula, Ohio. It was pitch black at night. And you were on your own out there–parents didn’t go out trick-or-treating with kids in those days. So what you did was recruit your friends to go door to door with you, hoping that there was safety in numbers. (Side note: costumes, for boys, were limited to the following: cowboy, Indian, baseball player, football player, bum/hobo, and on short notice, ghost).

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So one Halloween, when I was maybe 9 or 10, me and Bernie, David, Ryan and Ron met in front of my house and started working our way north, toward Bunker Hill Road. There was a nip in the air, it was dead quiet and dark, and from my point of view, deathly dangerous. Ryan, one year older and more of a rascal than I, had brought a bar of soap for marking up the windows of a house if a) no one was home, or b) the homeowner failed to cough up any candy.

About twenty minutes into our journey we approached a two story, clapboard house set back from the street. There were no lights on the porch or coming from inside the house, and I was loathe to go near it as it looked like the exterior of the house behind the Bate’s Motel, but Bernie was a kid who would leave no door un-knocked in search of a Mars bar, or better yet–Snickers, and so we approached the door. Bernie knocked twice, then twice again. Silence. We turned to go, but not Ryan–he had the bar of soap in his hand and he used it to write “I RULE” on one window and “SUCKER” on the other. I grabbed Ryan by the shoulder and we collectively turned to leave–and there was a man, a grown man, standing between us and the sidewalk. The man raised up his arms, like an orangutan would raise up his arms before it attacks, and he bellowed “I’M A SUCKER, AM I?” and started towards us. Our screams could be heard in Cleveland, and we bolted in different directions. I didn’t stop running for nearly a mile, and then I hid behind a parked car for twenty minutes.

Two: I’m easily scared and if someone at a Halloween party jumps out of a closet, and I’m standing near the closet, I am going to spasm uncontrollably and probably wet myself. But, as frightened as I have been on occasion, I witnessed the all-time scare at a “seance” I went to in college on Halloween.

Eight of us were invited. The host, our “medium” was a wiseacre named Rollie who was a terrible student (he was put on ‘academic probation’ as a freshman and I don’t think he ever got off of it) and a cad, women-wise. Which is why he invited five women and two men (one of whom was me) to this seance.

We were led into a dark room and directed to chairs that circled a round table. In the middle of the table was a small bell, an ouija board, a mallet and a bible. The purpose of the seance, Rollie told us, was to communicate with Ed Gein, the serial killer, who was sort of unknown at the time (not now–Netflix has a new series about him). Rollie quietly, solemnly, recounted Ed Gein’s crimes, including the murder and dismembering of two women, and his disturbing habit of making furniture from his victim’s skin.

Anyhow, we all freaked out and after about a half hour, one of the girls–Linda–a tall freshman with blonde hair, said that she had to go to the bathroom.

Linda finds the bathroom but the light doesn’t work. But she had to pee, so she closed the door and carefully made her way to the toilet. She pulled down her jeans and sat down…and then Rollie’s roommate, Scott, dressed in black clothes with red paint covering his face, jumped out of the shower. Linda, pant-less, screamed the scream of a person who is about to die, then ran straight into the bathroom door, knocking herself out.

That ended the seance, and Rollie was nearly jailed. Linda broke her nose.

And finally, as an adult, I really hated Halloween because I wasn’t trick-or-treating, I wasn’t partying–no, I was just a dad escorting my kids from house to house, tasked with making sure that no one got abducted and no one ate more than two pounds of candy.

But I did see this: my neighbor, Darrin, two doors over, was one of those nuts who put Halloween stuff all over his yard: giant skeletons, grave stones, talking witches, ghosts that traveled from tree to tree–all accompanied by a loud soundtrack of moaning and screaming from hidden speakers.

Then, one year, he went for the coup de gras: he rented a fog machine. He put it in the foyer, just inside his front door. But it wasn’t some gentle fog machine…no…he got a fog machine that was meant for a Led Zeppelin concert. He turned it on and a thick haze of smoke bellowed out–it filled the house in seconds, set off the fire alarms, and filled the front yard with smoke. Someone called the fire department and it took two weeks–with the help of a haz-mat team–to clean up the house. I still laugh whenever I pass his house.

Task: Have fun tonight. Trick-or-Treat!