My trick or treating days are over: to some extent. I won’t be capering around the neighborhood with my pillowcase full of nerd ropes and midnight milky ways. The treat for me these days is just to be out, stomping around the block, admiring how well my neighbor’s houses play dress us for the spooky day.
For two weeks I’ve been watching ranchers convert their modest yards into ghoulish graveyards, nooses drop spontaneously from oaks, gardens become what appears to me like Ezekiels Valley of the Bones, and driveways — plain Jane driveways, transform into horrific Saw-esque screamfest torture chambers.
The number of skeletons I’ve seen lately outnumber the neighbors I’ve seen. I’ve seen skeletons in trees, skeletons atop hedges, skeletons thrown willy nilly on rooftops. I don’t remember such a munificence of bones from my glory days, but lo — here they are.
This year we’re doing Halloween in the suburbs, and may I say up front — I’ve forgotten how well the suburbs do Halloween; it’s quite a serious affair. Other seasons are much more mellow and straightforward. Sure, people toss up lights and wreaths for Christmas — but on Halloween people get devious. There’s a level of artistry involved in realizing the suburban grotesque.
The yard becomes a stage, a theatre of terrors. Here you may dangle your half dead any way you like, and erect gutter pipe tarantulas that span the yard and drape cobweb from end to end.
But you must be thoughtful if you’re going to earn your share of screams.
On a walk the other day I saw a man engrossed in the act of reviving his 10 foot tall inflatable yard ghoul. Prepping it for the big day. He had wrenched it from the bowels of his garage and was cajoling this gargantuan ghost in his driveway. It was a fussy thing. It had some kind of obscure control box attached to it, and he was having a hard time synchronizing the ghoul’s movement with the (very loud) haunted organ music soundtrack that boomed across the block. As an aside, why do all these spooky soundtracks have narrators that sound like drunk Dickens characters?
I’ve lived in a city before. Halloween in a city is a glitzy, boozy affair compared to Halloween in the suburbs. All the kids hop in Ubers and descend on the second hand shops and garment warehouses to toss together some sort of themed costume for their themed party. The unspoken rule for Halloween in the city is you must be clever. Please, do not bore everyone with your passé witch costume.
Suburban Halloweens are less clever, but they’re genuinely spookier. The reason for this is harder to pin down in words, but you can feel it, even if you can not name it right away. The suburbs have an atmosphere, a sleepiness that lends them this haunting air. On any chill autumn evening, when the yellow moon lurks behind the black edge of the woods like a staring eye, and swirls of dead leaves dance like restless spirits on the skirts of the road, you will find this sleepy hollow quality I allude to. There are houses here in suburbia that by nightfall put on a dark mask and give you the heebie jeebies; dim lit dwellings that make you wonder if they’re creepy because its Halloween or creepy just because.
And then there are your neighbors. The heros and heroines of this festive day. Yearlong you pass these fine people like ships in the night, exchanging pleasantries and nods — and suddenly you wake one day and find a gang of demon-reapers standing in their yard. It gives me chills and makes me giddy all the same. There’s a lot of spectacle on Halloween, but the most delectable spectacle is the people.
Lastly — to the trick or treaters, to the face-painted, sugar-high princesses, pirates, and Pokémon — to the pillow case vagabonds and the helicopter moms waiting by the mailbox; to the dads with flashlights, to the kid who doesn’t like his costume, and the kid who’s a year too old to be out there, but is out there anyway…
Have a happy haunt! Prance around the bonfire – glow in the dark – be a flying monkey – DOUBLE DIP – and whatever you do, stay away from that crusty curmudgeon on the corner who hands out apples and toothpaste. To him we say: Boo
show & tell 