Category: Halloween

When I was little, my town didn’t have a haunted house to scare the kids on Halloween.
Instead, the Jaycees drove them all out to the old folks home, and the kids had to listen to all the sick and dying and lonely old people complain and scream in pain and shit themselves.
If the kids were lucky, a resident would throw up blood and die. That shit was seriously scary.
Now that I’m old, and I live in the old folks home, I look forward to Halloween.
Pay it forward.
But, seriously, I’d rather not vomit blood and die.

Usually, farmers in Oak County just grow one pumpkin for the largest pumpkin in the largest pumpkin contest, but for some reason, all of the farmers went crazy this year and used all of their fields to grow as many large pumpkins as they could.
They didn’t plant anything else.
No wheat. No corn. No soybeans.
Just pumpkins.
So, there was nothing to send to market or the grain elevators. The banks foreclosed on all the farms.
The worst thing is, those super-sized giant pumpkins are inedible. Totally disgusting.
We ended up smashing the windows of the bank with them.

It used to be that you could hang a shirt from a stick, put a hat on top, and scare off crows that way.
But these days, most crows aren’t scared by a traditional scarecrow.
So, farmers now fly drones around their fields to scare off the birds.
This works as long as the drones fly. Which isn’t very long, if you’re running on batteries.
While the drone charges, the birds feast.
But if you use ultra light-weight drones with solar panels, they’ll stay up all day long.
Then, all you have to worry about is running out of missiles.

It’s cute when the kids dress up as ghosts and vampires, and then wander around the neighborhood begging for candy with “Trick or Treat!”
It’s not cute when the hundreds of children of Syrian refugees that the government settled here throw rocks through windows and torch churches and cars with “Allahu Ackbar!”
It’s hard to call them children when they’ve got beards. Sure, nineteen is still technically a teenager, but we try them as adults.
The government provides lawyers and community advocates. In and out of the jail they go.
And back to burning and looting.
We sure got tricked.

It started with hanging sheets around the place.
Then, we added battery-powered fans to make them flutter a bit.
Okay, in the dark, with some smoke machines, they kinda looked like ghosts.
But they weren’t good enough.
We rigged up holographic projectors, and bounced their images off of plastic sheets.
And we went full HD with the animated visuals.
They totally scared the shit out of everyone.
And several of the nursing home residents died from heart attacks.
The rest called the state agency in to shut us down.
Yeah, we’re all out of work. But fuck it. We rocked.

So, you stole the witch’s spellbook?
Big deal.
Do you know the language she used?
The alphabet? Her handwriting?
It’s not just the words, but hand gestures and chemicals.
And those things in the jars.
Do you use the left eye of the newt or the right?
It’s not just a cookbook.
The spellbook is a living, breathing thing.
It’s a part of her.
And she can feel its loss. She will reach out to it.
She will find it. She will find us.
Unless we burn it. Tonight.
Right now.
Don’t breathe the smoke.
Don’t look into the flame.

Guiseppe the Organ Grinder used to play in the old train station every day.
He brought with him Pablo, his helper monkey, and dressed him in a little suit. Pablo would dance and work the crowd for tips.
When Guiseppe died, his ghost played the organ for the crowds.
Pablo still danced and worked the crowd, even after he, too, died.
Then the Germans bombed the old train station into oblivion.
We built a new train station, far from the old haunted one.
And it’s much nicer and cleaner.
Because, even when he was alive, Guiseppe couldn’t play for shit.

After every Halloween, my mother would pick out pieces of my candy and take them for herself.
“It’s the Mommy Tax,” she said.
The Mommy Tax never included crappy popcorn balls or sugar-free junk. It was always good stuff, like Snickers bars.
And not those crappy fun-size ones, either. Full-sized Snickers bars.
So, I carried two bags: Crappy stuff in one, good stuff in the other.
Then I’d hide the bag with the good stuff before coming inside.
Later, I’d sneak out to get the good bag.
Then I learned, she was checking for tampering.
Nobody ever poisons crappy candy.