Tag: Halloween

It’s hard to believe that it’s now been six years of Scare the Children at our new house; at this point we’re creating mental scars for an entirely new generation of trick-or-treaters.

Like last year, for this year’s event I again took on the role of the “dummy” with the candy cauldron, sitting totally still in the doorway until the kids worked up the nerve to take candy, at which point I got to move a bit and scare the bejesus out of them. I started out the night holding an iPod hooked up to a speaker that allowed me to emit a terrifying “scream” when the kids reached for candy, but at some point during the evening I must have hit a wrong button, and instead of playing a scream the iPod began playing a soothing guitar ballad – being unable to see well through my mask, and thus unable to easily fix the issue, thus ended my “screaming” for the night.

Even without the canned screaming, it was still an excellent time. Among many memorable moments, early in the evening a little girl let out a terrified shriek that I was concerned might lead neighbors to call the police, and later in the evening a group of teens took five minutes trying to determine if I was real or not (“I touched the hand, and it feels kind of human-y”) before finally concluding they had been freaked out by a dummy, at which point I moved and caused two of the girls to run away while a third literally toppled over in fright – here’s the video (skip ahead to the 30 second mark); it was a good night.

As always the entire event was a group effort, with Jocelyn resuming her role in the coffin, Ozzie doing his sixth stint as the scary clown in the alley, and Audrey, Gina and Nancy roaming the yard as haunters. Newcomer Drew was in the tree with a microphone and voice processor, Denise joined us for her inaugural Halloween and experienced the joy of being shut inside the coffin whenever Jocelyn needed a break, and Steve flew in from Boston for his second year of child scaring.

When I first met Audrey it was literally a matter of minutes before she started telling me about Scare the Children, her annual Halloween haunted house. The 2005 event was the only one I’ve ever participated in, although there was a long and proud tradition that went on for many years before it that had to be put on hiatus when we moved to a townhouse. Now that we own our own house, warnings were sent to the neighbors, streetlights were blacked out, and a small army of volunteers descended to help build platforms in trees, rig up fog machines, and otherwise convert our sweet abode into a scene from an Edgar Allan Poe story.

My main role in the setup was in helping Audrey procure a casket – yes, somehow I’m in a relationship with a girl who owns a casket. Audrey found one on Craigslist, the backstory checked out enough that we were confident the seller hadn’t procured it with a shovel and some late-night trespassing, and I found myself in the unusual position of loading a metal coffin into the back of the Subaru. Audrey was happy because she now has a centerpiece for her Halloween craziness, and I now feel confident that she won’t be able to argue should I ever decide I want a lifesize Han Solo in carbonite for my room.

Audrey’s preparation and hard work paid off on Halloween night, with about a hundred young visitors in varying states of terror. My role in the extravaganza was to stand near our front door, which we had enclosed in black fabric, while wearing all black. No one could see me, so I’d wait until they got candy and then growl at them as they turned around; kids screamed and parents yelled some things that may not have been appropriate for children’s ears. Other highlights included Nancy in the coffin, Shelly in a tree, Pete with chains and strobes on the side of the house, and Stephanie as a witch sitting in the corner of the yard while controlling a snake on a string that jumped out at people. The following day our eighty-plus year old Japanese neighbor, who has always been very quiet and seemed somewhat suspicious of the oddballs next door, came over and noted “Good job. I like that snake.”

Crazy busy lately. Anyhow, Halloween’s Scare the Children party started slow but was off the charts fun by the time it ended. I’d guess that about one in twelve kids were too scared to come up the driveway, and most of those that did make it up the driveway were totally freaked out. Pete, who is 6′ 7″, was our star, standing behind the driveway gate wearing a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde mask. We put a strobe on him so that it made it really tough to tell what was coming out of the dark, and he carried chains that he slammed into the gate with such force that it scared everyone, including those of us who already knew he was there. Shelley was harnassed onto the roof dressed as a gargoyle and spent the night running around shrieking at people. Gina’s costume was creepy but not particularly scary, and she just stood by the door with a lantern scaring kids more because of what they imagined she might do rather than anything she actually was doing. For comedic relief Paul roamed the yard in a zombie outfit talking to kids in a cookie monster voice, while I simply crouched behind the coffin with an ax and jumped out at people from time to time.

There were a lot of highlights to the evening, but two stood out. The first was when a car drove up to our driveway, dropped a kid off, and then waited five minutes while he built up enough courage to walk up the driveway. Just as he got to the top of the driveway Pete ran at the gate with the chains, and the kid’s feet barely touched the ground as he took off down the driveway and did a flying leap back into the car. The second was when I took a turn at the door giving out candy. A kid dressed as Darth Vader ran the gauntlet and made it to the door, but he was a bit slow going back down the walk so I snuck up behind him and screeched. He literally shot about a foot and a half into the air, executed a mid-air 180 spin, and then brought his toy lightsaber down full force on my head before running away. Totally classic.

Work mostly finished up for me on Friday, and Sunday we went to the house of one of Audrey’s recording studio customers to drop off a ton of equipment. It would probably be rude to mention names, but I was a fan prior to meeting the guy and was a much bigger one after meeting him. The house was way cooler than I expected, the guy was super-nice, but he also surprised me by being almost as much of a dork as I am. Nearly immediately after we arrived he told us “we’re demolishing the pool, but you need to see this first”. He then ran like a kid behind the current pool, flipped a few dials, and came out to laugh with us at the attrociously tacky pool statues that were gushing water. This was followed by him retrieving a two-foot tall garden gnome from his car which shortly thereafter became the first decoration in his multi-million dollar Spanish home. While moving equipment in he insisted on helping out, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous about someone hurting themselves as I was while carrying a giant keyboard up a flight of stairs – it’s not everyday where a slight slip could cause twenty-thousand angry ticketholders to hunt you down for being the cause of their idol having to miss a show. The whole visit probably only lasted a bit more than an hour, but it was a really good time.