Halloween on my street

[John]

We didn't do a lot of decorating this year (not that we ever go overboard) and gave out full-sized Nestle Crunch bars. We didn't get that many trick or treaters either, probably less then 100 kids total. The problem is that we live near the end of a dead-end street and so we're at the mercy of the other houses. If enough of them turn off their lights, then the kids don't want to bother walking all the way down to the end for just a couple of houses. The last stragglers came around 7:30pm.

 The best part of this Halloween was seeing what some of the other houses did. Most had just a few generic decorations, but one house up the street had an entire cemetary out in front. I'm talking about 15-20 tombstones of various sizes and shapes, and not just little ones either, it could have passed for a real graveyard (albeit a small one). They even had a hand coming up out of the ground.

The house across the street had cobwebs over all the bushes and a smoke machine in the front yard. The next house down on the other side always puts up a lot of colored lights and typical decorations, plus they usually play some Halloween themed music such as Monster Mash, Purple People Eater etc. This year, they had what seemed like the entire soundtrack to the movie Halloween playing. The best part though was what one of the kids who lived there did; he dressed up as Michael Myers, complete with jumpsuit, boots and mask. He spent the night lurking around the side of the house or behind the bushes not moving much. When some of the kids went to that house, he'd come out and follow them when they left. We didn't see too much of this because a pine tree in our front yard blocks our view of that house unless you go out to the sidewalk, but two incidents were noteworthy;

 A group of relatively small kids (8-10 years old) came to our house after going there. We heard some screams and when they came here, they were talking about the creepy guy who chased them and one little girl was bug-eyed, a strand of hair stuck across her open mouth and breathlessly mumbling to nobody in particular "I, I, ain't n-n-never... I ain't never going back to that house!"

Then there was an adult and two kids, a boy & girl about 12-13 or so who came here first and the kids were saying that they didn't want to go to the scary house. They only went as far as the driveway or so and the girl over there brought some candy out to them. As they were leaving, MM started slowly following them, stopping when they stopped etc. The girl was really creeped out and kept saying things like "Please stop. You're doing a really good job, but please stop. It's not funny anymore. Ok, that's enough, we get the point!" He only followed them for maybe 30 feet or so, but he made quite an impression. I was standing out on the walk watching and laughing my ass off. I think even their father(?) was chuckling a little. The guy did a perfect job as MM, never speaking, just standing still watching and then slowly following the kids. He even scared his own nephew who was maybe 2-4. When he and his mother came home, MM went out to greet them in front of our house or so and as they walked home, the nephew was walking way behind and every few steps or so, MM would stop and turn around to look at him at which point the kid would take a step back and start crying.

 Made me sorry we don't do more for Halloween. Next year I'd like to get a little more into the spirit. I wouldn't scare the little 2-4 year old kids though, just the slightly older ones. A couple ideas I had were getting a dummy or skeleton (Spencer Gifts had a 5 foot 3D plastic one for $16, marked down from $20) that could be dressed up and put in the yard, then rig up some fishing line so that with a pull, it would sit up. Or I thought maybe I could dress up like a scarecrow with every inch of my skin covered and sit on the front steps, making the kids think I was just a decoration, then quietly stand up as they leave and come up behind them. Of course with anything like this, you risk p**sing off the parents for scaring their kids.

 Anyone else do anything out of the ordinary this year? Sadly, the most I've ever done was to create 3, 6 foot ghosts out of white garbage bags, using balloons to give the heads and shoulders form. Due to the only suitable tree being cut down, I only got to hang them out one year, which I'm fairly disappointed about. If I do say so myself, I thought the effect of 3 life-sized ghosts swaying and fluttering in the breeze at night was fairly effective. I've been thinking of trying to use some kind of a free-standing pole to support them, but they look so much more effective hanging from a tree.

 Ok, I guess I got carried away a bit here, but I can't help it, I really like Halloween.

[Ash]

I made a few of those little ghosts using a small wadded up ball of paper and then put kleenex over top of it cause I was bored.  Remember making those when you were a kid?

[John]

>I made a few of those little ghosts using a small wadded up ball of paper and
>then put kleenex over top of it cause I was bored. Remember making those
>when you were a kid?

 No, but that's what gave me the idea. A few houses around here had little ghosts in the trees, maybe a foot tall and my grandmother (who lived downstairs at the time) mentioned that she was thinking of buying a couple of those to hang from the tree. Personally I though they looked like a hanky with a knot in the end. So I took three white plastic garbage bags, cut the bottoms off, taped them together to form a long tube, then tied it at the top and turned the entire thing inside out to hide the top-knot. I cut the bottom in a sawtooth pattern, then split the plastic vertically in several places from the bottom halfway up. Drew eyes, nose and mouth with a permanent black marker (which rubbed off a little on the plastic when folded up. Then I blew up two white balloons, tied the stems together, shoved them up inside the ghost and tied a piece of string around the bag between the balloons to form the head & shoulders. A loop of fishing line attached to the knot on the inside allows for easy hanging.

 It may not sound too impressive, but they're huge and being so light they flutter nicely in the breeze.

[AndyC]

We're pretty busy this year, so we didn't do much but we tried.

Growing up, all we ever got to do was put one jack-o-lantern in the window for decoration. This being the first year with my own house, I felt compelled to make some kind of an effort. We carved three pumkins for the front porch - a cute, funny one, a gross Igor type and a scary demon face that ended up looking more like a tiger. We went to the dollar store and picked up some orange lights for the windows, and some cobwebs and plastic spiders for the bushes. We also went to the craft store and got these little wooden paintable skeletons that we decorated in different styles and hung. We had a dirty, decomposed skeleton, an orange skeleton with a pumkin head, a green alien one and a psychelic hippy one. This sounds like a lot, but it really wasn't planned out or carefully executed.

I think the nicest touch was the TV projector in the living room, showing the Blob, the Wasp Woman and Attack of the Giant Leeches.

Funny, all the kids (even the teenagers who don't dress up) seemed to go through pretty early. We got a lot of kids, but hardly anybody after 8 o'clock. Of course, it was raining a bit, and pretty cold, so I was surprised so many went out at all. I guess if you put the effort into the costume, you want to use it. I'd have braved the elements at that age too.

[Susan]

I did the usual decorating tho less this year since i was tired from work. (i got a few kids asking where the smoke was.."dry ice") The problerm is there was hardly ANY kids out on halloween. A cold front came through (i'm in dallas) and made it colder than usual but i couldn't figure out the explanation since i know there's alot of kids in this area and last year was super busy. I figured some parents were too lazy and wanted to watch Survivor or something and just had the kids to go those mall trick or treating or school parties a day prior and call it a night. Now i'm stuck with all this candy..grrr