Wow, Tammy! That all sounds great - especially the caramel apples and hot chocolate. I guarantee the kids appreciate it and will remember it for a long time. And as for the mall thing, I assure you that it sucks in my mind I can't hardly stand being there any day much less for Halloween. The holy rollers I do not know about. The older ones seem indifferent towards it and many I know love the holiday. So it appears to be a generational thing. Perhaps they are born again christians with their screws loosened from the sixties. I don't know.

I really hate what halloween has become, it is my favorite holiday of all! I don't what it was like when you guys were kids but it sounds a lot better than what its made out to be now. Currently, at least from my perspective, halloween (or Samhain (pronounced Sow- een) as I like to call it) is made out to be a greeting card holiday. Everyone at my school thinks its "cool" to like halloween and tell people they are into ghosts and the supernatural, but it's really all just a hype so that people will like them. None of them really get into it, they are too 'cool' to dress up. My mom thinks i have some sort of morbid streak in me because I like to read ghost stories and dead things don't creep me out. This year i'm going as a fairy. My friends, who are like me and like halloween for what it really is, (probably not as much as me... ) and I are going to the rich neighborhoods to, also, get the big candy bars! Merry Samhain all!

Halloween was great when we old farts were kids. We had the keys to the city and trick-or-treated all evening. We literally filled pillowcases with candy.

I enjoy handing out candy to the kids that come around, now. While there are less of them out in the streets, the ones who come are still cute to see. So part of my tradition is to stay home now, so I can be the parent handing out the candy. (Always a bummer when people don't "play" and either are out on Halloween night or just don't answer the door.

We carve pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns. I pick a horror movie to watch while the trick-or-treaters come by. Pausing it all the time to answer the door is a bit of a bother, but watching the movied helps keep me in the spirit.

I also make sure I read some Edgar Allan Poe, Bradbury or Lovecraft around the season.

When I went trick or treating I didn't know what the hell "a Samhain" was. It wasn't anything religious as it is to you. I only wanted to get candy and be spooked. Now I do pretty much what Mr. Dark does. Usually the movie I end up watching is some ridiculous thing they put on the SciFi channel. I read a horror classic every year around this time. For instance a couple years ago I read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Last year I read The Turning of the Screw by Henry James. I'm reading Bram Stoker's Dracula now. God willing, I will be reading The Halloween Tree next week.

Mr. Dark, I'm not certain of the story by Lovecraft but it has to do with a coffinmaker who gets locked into his workshop and has to stack up the coffins to attempt to get out of a small window. Horrible things follow. The absolute best story of his that I have read. Excellent writing, much in the same vein as Poe. I tend to like his stories that do not belong to the Cthulu series.

[This message has been edited by Ought Not (edited 10-17-2003).]

Edwardsville, Illinois, the town I grew up in, has a wonderful Halloween parade every year. People come from miles around to watch it and there are hundreds of floats. Anyone can march and there are prizes. I will be marching in it this year, with my fellow employees and boss, for the first time in about 18 years. It's great fun.

Does anyone else listen to Orson's "War Of The Worlds" radio broadcast every Halloween eve? It's a great tradition as well.

The only time my town ever had a Halloween parade was when Main Street had just been newly paved. It was also only the second time it ever snowed on Halloween, ha!

Always a fan of the classics, I think I'm going to rewatch Nosferatu this year (the silent one, of course, by F.W. Murnau). Hopefully before Halloween, since there's way too much to do on Halloween itself. I want to get a few friends together, turn down the TV's sound, and bring out the musical instuments and just improv an original soundtrack as we watch it. Just to see what happens. I'll probably just lay out as many instruments as possible and everyone can just pick up different instruments whenever they feel like it and try to play along with the picture. Maybe I'll tape record the whole session, just in case it comes out really cool (or maybe just for memories).

[This message has been edited by groon (edited 10-20-2003).]

Groon,
I would Love to be a fly on the wall at your "Nosferatu" screening, it sounds really groovy. It's a great film. The original, silent "Phantom Of The Opera" with Lon Chaney Sr. would be good for such a session too. Have a blast.

I can heartedly recommend the German Horror Classics DVD set from Kino Video. Contains:
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, The Golem and Waxworks, all with behind the scenes extra footage and background info. And of course the restored version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis is just superb. This is the only one to acquire in my humble opinion.

WooHoo--the day is almost here! Okay, I do have a certain fondness for this holiday...

I was reading in the local paper, the times posted for trick-or-treating in various villages in the area. And I was dismayed to see how strictly this seems to be regulated--in most cases, between one and five o'clock in the afternoon, in many cases not even on the actual holiday! Gosh, how things have changed in just a few years--what fun is it to go out in costume in the middle of the day???

I hope you all will try to do a couple of jack-o-lanterns. Always one of my favourite bits of the day--if you wish to see, here is what I came up with last year: http://www.yourinter.net/flearn/halloweencomposite2002.jpg . Nothing original, but lots of fun to look at when all the electric lights are out, and the house is only lit with the glow of candles...

That's awful! Some mayor in an eastern state announced his town was closed to out-of-state trick-or-treaters, out-of-state cars would be ticketed on Halloween, and so on, but drew such protests as "the Grinch who stole Halloween" that he relented. A family in a nearby town thought a squash vine had run wild in their lilac tree until it broke out in pumpkins, creating a pumpkin tree! A beautiful sight featured in the paper, but I wonder how much they liked it today when the area was hit with 50-mph+ winds!

Those are some beautiful jack-o-lanterns, octobercountry! Most places try to stick the holiday on a weeknight to keep the kids from staying out and getting into too much trouble, which is crap. I don't remember ever going trick-or-treating on a weekend. I always had the next schoolday looming over me.

octobercountry, WHAT STATE DO YOU LIVE IN!?

Oughtnot, I seem to remember always having the day after halloween off. I guess that was one benefit of going to Catholic school!

Hmmm, what state do I live in? Mostly I live in the State of Denial, with occasional forays into the State of Embittered Resignation. Though I do also spend quite a bit of time in "The Land of Trees and Heroes, where the Tawny Owl is King..." (That's a fragment of a poem from a short story I like...)

When I'm not in any of those places, I make my home in Pennsylvania. Ha!

But seriously, I hope you all had a pleasant holiday. I didn't feel very inspired this year--been rather down, and not as into Halloween as usual. But I did manage to do a few simple Jack-o-lanterns: http://www.yourinter.net/flearn/2003Halloweencomposite.jpg The skeleton sitting on the throne was the only complicated one--unfortunately it didn't photograph well, so it doesn't look like much in the picture...

I capped off the evening by watching "Something Wicked," as I have often done on Halloween in years past. Boy, to think that film is twenty years old already... When I first saw it, I was young enough that I could still identify with the boys--and now all these years later I find myself identifying with Mr Halloway. It's really pretty sad....

Cool! Did you design them yourself or use one of those carving templates?