If you really want to be frightened on Halloween, you really need to consider my parents.
Not because they would decorate for the holiday. We didn’t so much as carve a pumpkin in late October.
Not because they’ve passed to the next life, which they peacefully have. But if my mom was going to haunt someone, she would have already blown up a ouija board the day I left the house in an unironed skirt.
No, you’d want my parents on Halloween because for about a decade in mid-century suburban Philadelphia they pretty much defined The Amateur Haunted House for a generation of wannabe princesses and cowboys and ghosts.
One October night, while playing bridge with their best friends Randy and Irene, Mom and Dad got a few hands under their belts, along with a few belts, and they got to thinking about Halloween. They decided that they’d get a little creative, shall we say, about dishing out candy.
On The Night, kids were ushered into The Darkened Home by The Aging Homeowner. There sat a really old lady in a rocker, next to a table, lit by a candle. In her lap, she held The Bowl of Candy full of full-size Snickers. All the kids had to do was walk over to the old lady and take as much candy as they wanted out of the bowl.
No one took any. Kids fled, screaming.
No one thought much about it the next year, until Randy was bowling and was asked by his teammates if the ‘rents were going to do another "haunted house." He reported this at Bridge Night and, after several bourbon and sodas, Halloween At Our House was born. Over about 10 years, my parents and Randy and Irene put together routines like…
Mourning Lady. Kids were greeted by Aging Homeowner in Darkened Home and told there’d been a death in the family, but they still wanted to give out candy. Would they have a seat on the couch, right here, in front of the fireplace next to a coffin? Presently a Mourning Lady came down the stairs, softly weeping and settling by the coffin to grieve. She didn’t notice, but the kids on the couch sure noticed, that the coffin was opening and O MY GOD THE CORPSE IS GONNA KILL HER! and the whole thing ended when Aging Homeowner came tearing in with a cap pistol and shot the corpse. No one was thinking about candy as kids fled, screaming.
House of Wax. Kids were greeted by a museum docent, who led the kids through the dark downstairs of our home viewing "wax" figures like the Boston Strangler, King Tut’s slave and Lizzie Borden. No one noticed that, as the group was led around the house to the "exhibits," that the monsters were picking up and following the group. At the end of the tour, collecting some candy, one lone Casper The Friendly Ghost would look up to see Lizzie raising her bloody hatchet up over some unsuspecting kid’s head. King Tut’s slave and the Boston Strangler were looming behind her in the dark. Casper would scream. The candy bowl would fly, and kids fled screaming.
Halloween for me and my siblings meant that you were a crash test dummy for their rehearsals, helping them work on timing and blocking. When you got home from trick or treating you sorted your candy in a closet lest you disturb The Darkened Home. You’d have to sneak in between shows or you’d get pressed into service, stomping around in big boots through dry ice fog pretending to be an Aging Homeowner or screaming into a microphone so Mom could go have a cigarette in the basement.
Then we moved to Arizona and a nice, little (and I cannot stress this enough) very normal family bought our house.
I can only imagine what happened on Halloween night that year when the doorbell rang and they opened the front door, expecting to dish out some candy and pretend to admire the Barbie doll costumes, and were greeted by the shock of 500 trick or treaters who were expecting to, well, flee screaming.
Elizabeth Evans is a local mother, wife, daughter, sister, former stay-at-home mom, former work-outside-the-home mom, former work-at-home mom and a human resources consultant.
