1995 Halloween:

Hallowe'en was just too much fun this year! My friends and I decided to have some fun with the little devils that came around. One of my business partners is 37, has a 10 year old son, and owns an actual house. (Woa! Imagine that.)

The cast:

Behan Webster; Andrew Beere; Richard, Gina, & Jonathan Cook; and, of course, Brian White (me)

The layout:

We started off with a stuffed dummy hanging in front of the garage by a noose around his neck. It was obviously fake. As they came around the corner to the door, however, things got more interesting. Behan had a skeleton costume with a glow-in-the-dark "Jason" hockey mask on. There was also a red/white spinning light (like you'd see on a police car), a Jacob's ladder, and several pumpkins with nice evil grins. The real eye-catcher, though, was the other hung body suspended directly in front of the porch where the candy was located. This one was much more realistic with a good monster mask, gorilla hands, 5 arrows sticking out of its chest, and a noose around its neck. A couple of the smaller kids wouldn't even come to the door without their parents!

The absolute best, though, was the faces of the older kids when they approached only to have the creature growl and lunge at them from its perch! You see, it really was a real person. Andrew did it for about 30 mins at first, but got sick from the pressure of the harness by which he was suspended. I took his place after that for the next hour. I avoided getting sick by standing on a ladder when there were no kids around.

Stories:

There were several events over the course of the night that are worth mentioning.

• Shortly after Andrew started, these two fairly small kids came by. We had agreed to just stay still for the small ones because we really didn't want to traumatize them for the rest of their lives... if they survived the heart attack. Anyway, this one girl is being cocky about the whole thing and decides to show her non-fear by shaking the monsters hand. Andrew squeezed her hand, growled, and tried to pull her to him. She must have jumped back 4 feet! She stood there shaking saying, "I though it was fake! I thought it was fake!".

• While I was up there, another little boy came by. I was planning to just stay still, but the mother came up to the door with her. (Of course, the path to the door meant walking right next to me.) As the _mother_ walked by, I reached out and brushed my gorilla hand against her ear. What lungs she had! She was talking to Behan and Andrew about it, but they had gotten the idea to grab a remote control from the house and try to convince people that I was just a machine. This woman believed it! I was amazed how many of the parents believed that story when their children didn't.

• These three older girls came around the corner and stopped dead at the sight of me. It was difficult not to shake with laughter, but I did my best. Together, they screwed up their courage and came up to the door, suspecting nothing. With a pretty good roar, I reached out and touched the shoulders of both the first and last in line, with the poor girl in the middle looking me straight in the mask. I wish I had a camera in that suit! They were also later convinced by my friends that I was just a robot.

• We ordered pizza and were going to wait for the delivery man, but I didn't think I could stand another 45 minutes in the harness, so we called in a night.

All in all, it was very satisfying. Of course, next time they will be expecting that so we'll have to do something different.

Anybody want to bring their kids to our neighborhood next year?

Acknowledgements:

This original text was written by Brian White. The pictures were taken by Gina Cook, and this web page was put together by Behan Webster.

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