1997 Halloween:

It's November again and that means that Halloween has come and gone again! And, once again, we've take some time and tried to scare the living bejeebies out of all the little treasures that ventured on to our street.

The cast:

Behan Webster; Andrew Beere; Takashi Toyooka, Richard, Gina, & Jonathan Cook; Jennifer Bock; Malcolm Latorre; Steve Keppel-Jones & girlfriend Karen (sorry, no last name :-); Andy Johns; Tracy Field; Snoopy Harper; and, of course, Brian White (me)

The layout: (I'd call it a plan, but it really wasn't.)

As you can tell, the design this year was much simpler, not that the kids seemed to mind much. The actual implementation, though, was more complex than previously. We had solid walls (instead of plastic sheets), timed sound effects, and an actual plan as to what would happen to the kids who dared enter our domain.

1 - Crowd Control:

We had better crowd control out front this year too. Two witches kept the peace and made sure people got into a line. Of course they also encouraged people to "feed the monster!"

2 - Open Coffin:

This was one of the best props over all. It was a coffin built of wood and made to look like it was coming out of the ground in a partially upright position. The leftover snow covered the rest making the effect seem quite real. Andrew took up position here in what was probably the best costume of the night: chain mail vest, monster mask, and a real sword by his side. He looked very much like a lifelike fake. He'd sit quietly in the partially open coffin until someone ventured too close and then he'd throw open the door and reach for them.

3 - Fog Station:

Improving on our fog techniques each year, this time we had three electric heaters trying to keep water warm enough for the dry ice to be effective. It worked better than previous years, but 2600 combined Watts was still insufficient. Behan manned this in dark coveralls and a "Jason" hockey mask. As each group of two would pass through the garage, he would stick his head out the door and demand "two more victims!"

4 - Science Station:

As always, we had our table of neato things. The Jacob's ladder was there along with several skulls, bubbling blood, and an assortment of slimy and slithery creatures (all fake, unfortunately).

5 - Caged Monster:

As the little angels moved along the upper hallway, our monster (Snoopy) would rage against his cage and try to get at them. Since the darkness made it difficult to see the cage before he acted, he managed to surprise almost everyone. It was a good thing the walls were solid because at least a half-dozen kids backed up into the wall hard enough at this point to have fallen over if it had been just a plastic sheet.

6 - Pumpkin:

Another of Gina's masterpieces, this pumpkin had an excellent carving of a bat in it. It attracted quite a lot of attention, much to my satisfaction because...

7 - Axe Man:

Hiding in a cardboard box, Brian (me) would wait until the kiddies came close enough. Often, they became curious about the pumpkin which made it even easier! Wearing my "Jason" glow-in-the-dark hockey mask, I throw open the door, growl, and swing the monster axe Andrew had made for me. The poor souls then tended to move rather quickly into the next stage.

8 - Roadkill:

As soon as they entered the door, they would see the chalk outline of a man. This image was soon lost, however, as a bright light of a motorcycle would shine into their eyes. A loud motorcycle effect would play right next to them. Many kids jumped pretty good at this alone.

9 - Scare Tactics:

When the sound effect finished, the light would go out to be replaced by a spinning red light overhead. The scary forms of a ghouls, a vampire, and Batman(!) would then move from behind their screens and attack. The brightly lit exit sign was their only escape.

Stories:

Unfortunately, I was not able to move around as much this year to see all that was going on, so some of the stories are second hand.

• Every year, we come to the same conclusion: Older girl frighten the best. My first good laugh of the evening came fairly early on. Two early-teens girls were cautiously walking along the top hallway, one of whom kept commenting how "This is soooo unscary." In fact, she was about half-way done repeating it for the third time when Snoopy growled at them something fierce. The sentence rapidly became a scream and they foolishly backed towards me. I threw open my door, growled, and swung my axe. They turned around just in time to see a glowing mask and a very large weapon heading their way. With an even louder scream, they almost ran into the next room, only to be scared again. Quite satisfying, if I do say so myself. Later on in the night, there was another set of older girls that came through and screamed so loud that they scared Andy!

• There was a young boy who, trying to be brave got about half way down the first hallway before being too scared to continue. Behan walked with him as an aide, but after being scared by Snoopy, the boy didn't want to venture into the final room. He told Behan to go first and he'd follow. However, as soon as Behan started into the room, I opened the door and started to swing my axe. The boy was past Behan in an instant and "enjoyed" the wonderful things he encountered there. Upon leaving, though, he insisted that "it really wasn't that scary."

• Out front, there were times when we had quite a line of kids waiting to go through. Quite often, many of them just assumed that the coffin and the monster inside it was just a simple prop. We were encouraging them to "feed the monster". Andrew would wait until they got right up close and then lunge... stripping the candy from their hands. He had a pretty good stash by the end of the night. There was also one girl standing in line who, every time she would look at him, he'd make some small movement. Though curious, she was not brave enough to investigate.

• Parents arrived on Friday evening with their two children, one of whom was in a wheelchair. The father was going to stay outside with the little boy until I told him he could take his son through. He was grateful for the opportunity, and when they came out at the end, the smile on the boys' face made my evening!

Until next year...

Acknowledgements:

This original text was written by Brian White with one of the stories from Jennifer Bock. The pictures were taken by Gina Cook, and this web page was put together by Behan Webster.

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