I do, however, give the little ones a scare free walk up the driveway.  I just can’t bring myself to scare the little lions, hippos, tigers that walk warily into my domain of death clutching their parents hand, saying they don’t want to go further.  As a haunter, that’s what I want to hear, but I won’t scare them out of pure malice.  When they leave their parents and head up to the door, and they are a good 20 feet away staring at my ghost in the window, THAT’S when I let the parents have it!  I jump towards them, scythe waving, eyes flashing red and screaming a ghastly yell!  They jump.  They scream! Oh yes they do!  Some parents even remembered me from last year and would not come up the driveway.  R.E.S.P.E.C.T.  I like it.  They do however, send their kids up all the while reassuring them “it’ll be OK, he’s not real”.  Then they get out the camera and wait for the pounce. Parents after my own heart!

I didn’t add much to the display this year as I focused more on atmospheric effects.  I bought a blue flood light and some orange lights I wrapped up in the cornstalks.  I also picked up a few more tombstones for the graveyard and got my fog machine working.  A nice little addition was this little ghoul that would fly from the house to a tree in my front yard.  He was sound activated and made noise as he flew.  So when I scared people, they screamed and set off the ghoul, which made them jump again!  Then my neighbor would pop out of the graveyard an give them another scare! Three good scares at one house. Nice.

We had all kinds of people taking video and pictures.  Lots of compliments on the decorations and the scares.  Especially my spider victim prop, whose hand moved when you got close.  Next year, I will have to set up a camera with night vision to capture some of the scares. The trick or treating lasted close to 9 pm, with me eventually grabbing a bowl of candy and walking the streets, giving out the last of our candy.  I would estimate we had well over 100 kids, maybe even 120.  It was a good year which just makes me even more eager for next year! Planning has started already. Oh what to do, what to do!

After the decorations were put away, I headed in for a little horror movie fest and ended up watching The Grudge, Halloween (the original) and Halloween 2 all back to back.  It’s my little Halloween tradition after a successful night of haunting and scaring other people: time to scare myself!

What a great Halloween!  I didn’t see the great pumpkin flying around this year, maybe next time!

Here are some pics of the evening:

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2. Halloween: Costumes of the Past!
3. Sam’s Halloween 09 Preview