October is just around the
corner.
When I was a kid, that
meant excitement was in the air.
It meant it was almost time to decorate the front porch with pumpkins
and the back room with antique (or at least very old) cardboard cut-outs of skeletons and black cats,
goblins and werewolves. We’d
tape them to the windows and, from the inside, they displayed a glossy array of
spooky merriment, colorful scenes and detailed faces. But from outside, the windows cast eerie silhouettes,
faceless, vague. Indistinct features
creating a distinct uneasiness.
Almost-October also meant
it was time to start heading out to the back lot at dusk to stare at the
old ghost shed and watch for things. Because October was the time of year
when things happened out there, and once in a while, they happened in late
September too.
It was during October that
the ghost of Old Bill Edwards used to stir. I guess he was
restless. Maybe his spirit was troubled. Or maybe once a year, he just liked to
stretch his old bones and move around a little bit. Whatever the reason, it was always in the weeks before
Halloween when we would see things.
Dark shapes in the back lot.
Gray smoke rising from the trees.
Once I even saw a fire ball shoot out of the chimney of the ghost shed,
Old Bill Edwards’ former home, a chimney that was no longer connected to any
stove or fire place. We heard
things too—moans and creaks. Being
kids, we were terrified, but we were also excited. We wanted to see more!
So we tiptoed as close to the shed as we dared and threw rocks at it,
trying to get Old Bill Edwards to come out.
One time, a rock flew back
at US.
Many of my friends
believed me about the ghost and it became a great slumber party game. Sneak out to the back lot in the dark,
dare each other to throw a rock, see who was brave enough to get the closest. Other parents probably thought my
family was pretty weird, but I didn’t know that at the time. Taunting the ghost may have been a
once-in-a-lifetime experience for those other little girls, but it was just
another Friday night at the Kinder house for me.
Some kids didn’t
believe. They noticed the fact
that my dad always seemed to be absent when the sightings took place. Running an errand maybe or at least back
at the house. He was never with us
when we saw anything. They said it
was all him, and he was just trying to scare us. But I knew better.
My dad would NEVER throw a rock at me, I told them, not that close to my
face. He scolded US when we did
that! And the fire ball? That wooden shed was so old and filled
with so much paper and cardboard, if it ever caught fire there’d be no stopping
it. My dad would never risk
something so dangerous. I shook my
head and knew I was right.
Besides, it was always in
October, when my dad was working on the annual Halloween party, that his hammer
would start disappearing. He’d be
working near the well, hammering some stakes into the ground for tombstones,
set his hammer down for a minute, then go to pick it up again and it would be
gone. A search of the property
would find it on the back porch or lying in the middle of the back lot or,
once, inside the ghost shed. My
dad said it was so aggravating each time it happened. Of course, I understood.
Even in the daylight, the
ghost shed was scary. Even in the
daylight in JULY. It was cluttered
and musty and eyes peered out from every wall, some painted on and others
forming themselves out of knotholes or shadows. There were mystery bottles lining the shelves and the floor
was rotted in places, threatening to catch your foot and hold you if you tried
to leave in a hurry. To make
matters worse, this is where my dad stored the Halloween decorations during the
year.
And these weren’t your
typical Halloween decorations.
These were the ones used for the annual haunted house, the Kinder
tradition that’s been going on for… come to think of it… 50 years now.
 |
| Inside the ghost shed today-- it's had some renovations since my childhood, but it's still creepy. |
Giant Styrofoam crates
held homemade dummies folded in half, their eyes staring up blankly, their
white-gloved hands reaching out over the sides. Cardboard boxes contained various “parts”, heads mostly, an
arm here and there, maybe a foot.
Somewhere there would be a bag of old rubber masks—a smell like no
other, I can tell you—that had to be peeled apart and aired out, their scraggly
hair combed for spiders. Then of
course there was the cast-iron cauldron in the corner, and the tombstones. (More about those later.)
As an adult, the start of
October still brings the same sense of excitement for me. While I don’t have the thrill of a
haunted shed nearby, I do have the joyful task of spookifying my house and yard
for trick-or-treaters, and therein lies my purpose.
Behold…
Carie’s Halloween Decorating Advice: 5 Tips for a Proper
Haunting
1. Celebrities
Not Welcome.
You know the phrase fear of the unknown? Let it be your
mantra when decorating.
I never understood how
people could think that those plastic store-bought Freddy Krueger or Michael
Myers masks were so creepy. Easily
recognizable horror movie characters are not scary. If you want a kid to hesitate before knocking on your door on
Halloween night, don’t sit Freddy Krueger in your porch swing. He knows
it’s not Freddy Krueger. Instead,
stuff an old pair of overalls with newspaper, put some black boots and white
gloves on it. Hang a nondescript
skull or pumpkin mask on its head, draw eyeballs on the cloth behind the cutouts
for the eyes, and – just for good measure – stick a real ax in its hand.
You’re thinking, That won’t look realistic. Will it? And now you’re having the same conversation with
yourself that the poor trick-or-treater will be having on Halloween night. Realistic or not, it is at least unknown. If you’re just trying to show your neighbors that you know
there’s a holiday coming up, decorate however you want. But if your goal is to SCARE people,
then you have to get creative. If
any part of your victim’s brain will be thinking, Oh yeah, that’s the guy from that movie, or even worse, Oh yeah, I saw that thing at Target, then you have lost the battle before it’s
even begun.
2. Name-Drop.
While masks and dummies
should be nondescript and unfamiliar, the place to get very, VERY specific is
with your tombstones. The
cemetary that my dad always creates for the parties is full of homemade wooden
gravestones propped up by bricks or stakes, the messages hand-painted and
extremely… personal. By that, I
mean that every family member and every party guest has a tombstone in the back
yard, each with an original and detailed inscription. Mine says, “Here lies Carie. She tried to outrun the goblin.” At the bottom, scrawled in
a different hand, it says, “I got her!
YUM YUM!” My aunt’s was
always my favorite. “Leona—taken
on this road by the thing. She
left behind a loving family, one arm, and her head.” I loved the grave markers, and my dad’s creativity, until
the year he included one for my cat.
“Here lies Spots—Stupid little cats should not ride brooms. He fell far, landed hard, buried deep.” NOT funny, Dad.
Anyway, I highly suggest
you get specific with your tombstones too. Know the names of the neighborhood kids? Invent fun ways of killing them off and
fill up your cemetery. Think their
parents won’t find that amusing?
Then make up names.
Anything is better than the plain old R.I.P. However, those cheap store-bought R.I.P. markers can be a good
starting point. All you have to do
is flip them around to the blank side and get a white paint pen or some shoe
polish and create your own message.
Easy and effective.
3.
Keep It Simple.
The simpler the better, in
my opinion. Those elaborate
displays of mechanical hands and ear-piercing screams and flashing lights are
good for a startle, but not a real scare. It’s too much, too quickly. It will cause a brief heart attack,
sure, but before long the former victim will be laughing and activating it
again just so they can prove how fake it is. That’s not fear.
The scariest decoration we ever had, the one that sticks best in my
memory, was just an old, white, button-up shirt on a wire hanger with a white
plastic skull on top, wearing a simple black witch hat. It didn’t do anything, but it was terrifying.
First, it had that unknown
quality. What was it? A skeleton? Or a witch? Or
what? It had no name, no easy
identification. We like things to
have names. Second, when hung from
a bush or tree branch, this… thing… was light enough to sway eerily in the
breeze, turning this way and that, nodding and spinning at will. Its free movement, especially at night
when the whiteness of it almost glowed, increased its creepiness. Plus, sometimes one arm of the shirt
would get snagged on a leaf or twig and suddenly the lifeless shape seemed to
be jauntily leaning on an elbow or waving at passers by. And third, as I said before, it didn’t do anything. And these days, sometimes that’s the scariest thing of
all. Kids are expecting the big
display. Everything these days
blinks and speaks and reaches and grabs.
So that’s what they’re waiting for. And if you think about it, the anticipation of the scare is
usually worse than the scare itself.
This skull-witch-creature looked
like it might do something. And that was enough.
(Got masks you aren't using this year? Decorate with them!
Nail them to a tree or stick them on a dummy.)
[Sidenote: The first time that I stayed home on
Halloween night in my own house and handed out candy to trick-or-treaters
instead of going to a party, I bought a large ceramic bowl with a large ceramic
hand in the center of it to hold all the mini Twix-es and Snickers I
bought. This was the year AFTER
the plastic candy bowls with the plastic hands that moved became popular. My hand didn’t move. But the kids were terrified of it. It took them SO long to get their candy
and many of them spilled pieces when they jerked back with lightning
speed. I spent the whole night
consoling, reassuring, saying, I promise,
it doesn’t move. But these kids had been trained well and
they didn’t believe me. One little
girl—she was maybe five years old, so small I had to kneel down in front of her
with the bowl—would NOT stick her hand in. I told her, It’s ok
honey, the hand doesn’t move.
She looked me right in the eye and said, I think I saw it move.
Not cool. I shoved a Milky
Way in her bag and closed the door.]
4. Perfectionists
Be Gone!
Don’t organize everything
to death. (Those of you who know
me know that this is the rule it is most difficult for me to follow.) Evenly spaced bats and symmetrical
tombstones are not scary.
DISorganization is scary.
The unplanned, the haphazard, the unexpected—THAT’S scary. Scatter some bones randomly in the
yard. Hang most of your ghosts and
goblins, but take one or two and just jam them in a bush or toss them on the
roof and see where they land.
Maybe leave one dummy face down in a flower bed somewhere. At first, the neighbors will think you
just forgot it. Then they’ll start
to wonder. Eventually some
kid will dare another kid to kick it.
He will. DON’T MOVE
IT. At that point, you’ll finally
have the twisted, mangled, half-slumped, dirt-encrusted body that will lend
authenticity to the rest of your display.
5.
Beware of Scaring Yourself.
If you follow the tips
above when decorating this year, you will have a truly terrifying
house and/or yard. And that’s
great! But if (like me) you also
have the attention span of a goldfish, the first heart attack you inspire will
probably be your own. So, if you
are prone to bouts of paranoia or tend to drop things when startled, you might
want to stick some handy post-it notes around your house for a few days. For instance…
*
Note inside the front door—“There’s a clown on the porch.”
*
Note on the kitchen trash—“There’s a giant spider on the garbage bin.”
*
Note on the dog’s leash—“Do not trip over the severed head.”
(Safety first, after all.)
Then again, my problem isn’t
usually the random accidental scaring.
My problem is karma. Every
year, I try to scare my husband with something. A skeleton hanging in his bathroom, a fake tarantula on his
desk chair, etc. The first problem
is that I have no patience.
Instead of waiting until right before he gets home to set the trap, I
set it hours early, WAY too long for my poor little goldfish brain. The second problem is that I honestly
think part of my brain is working for the dark side. Because not only do I forget about my prank, but then I end
up doing something extremely uncharacteristic which puts me in the path of
horror. I think I’ll clean Mark’s
bathroom for him. Wouldn’t that be
a nice surpr… AAAAA! Time to watch
that internet video. Hmm… Mark’s
computer screen is bigger than mine… AAAAA! Oh well, at least then I know that it works.
Happy almost-October,
everyone!
And may you make at
least one trick-or-treater pee his pants this year.
When I was a kid, there
was a street in Plano where my family and I used to go watch fireworks on the
4th of July. It was a deserted
road next to a big empty field, which is now probably the site of a trendy
housing development or maybe a strip mall. But back then it was empty except for weeds and
wildflowers, giving us a perfect view of the stadium a couple hundred yards
away where the show took place.
Every year, we caravanned over in two or three cars (Dad’s Checker Cab
of course and maybe my aunt’s Toyota), arriving well before the sun went down in order to get a
good spot. The street was somewhat
out-of-the-way but was not unknown—others used it as well and by nightfall it
was always full of cars, people, and kids running around.
