#12 of 31 Days of Halloween: The Great Pumpkin

One of the family traditions we established as soon as my husband and I married was yearly watching of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." It's a cartoon we both remember fondly from our childhoods, one of those things we both watched on network TV with our parents as a marker of the season.

At first, we tried to do the same: watching for when it aired and making a point of being in front of the TV on that day, but with modern options for streaming and disk and such, we quickly came to the conclusion that we'd rather schedule our watching when it was convenient and pleasant for us. (The twenty-first century has its share of problems, but I'll take freedom from network scheduling for entertainment as a total win).

It's a quiet cartoon. Sweet and innocent in a lot of ways. We get to see Lucy be a good big sister even though she thinks her little brother is a fool. We get to see Snoopy indulging his imagination in adventures. That whole idea of the "most sincere" pumpkin patch gets me right in the feels. I still hope that the sheer power of Linus's faith bring The Great Pumpkin into existence. I love that he built his own mythology that fit his world view of what kind of behavior should be rewarded.

Good job,  Linus. We need more sincerity in this world.

#11 of 31 Days of Halloween: My Family's Haunted Trail

My family--the larger, more extended one, especially my mother's side--doesn't do much for holidays. We get together. We eat. If there are gifts to be exchanged, we do so, money allowing.

But Halloween is an exception. Starting when I was in high school or maybe early college, we started having a Haunted Trail each year in the woods my grandfather bought back in the day. How elaborate it is depends on the time and energy my uncles and cousins have one any given year, but it's always worth seeing. I have some very creative family and friends of family.

I enjoy professional haunted houses and trails, too, but the one my family does is special, of course. Some highlights of past Haunted Trails:

• Hell: There's generally a table where someone is playing poker in hell. Who it is varies according to what's going on in the world at the time. I still remember the Saddam Hussein one. Elvis is a frequent guest, too, probably more because we're fond of Elvis than that we think he belongs in Hell
• Gilly Monster: one year, one of my uncles made a gilly monster costume by sewing leaves and
  
  forest debris onto a poncho. He laid on the ground with this camouflage pulled over him and was invisible until he moved and grabbed my ankle. I'm not sure my heart ever came back down out of my throat. 
• Scarecrow Forest: I have one famously skinny uncle, Traditionally, he's hidden among a line of stuffed scarecrows. No matter how hard I try, I can never figure out which one he is until he moves. Yikes!
• Bright Side: One year, "crucifixes" were built along one ridge, with little ledges to stand on. This came about because of a family-wide love of Monty Python, and was the site of a famous singalong. 
• Zombie Pit: a trench covered with wood slats to look like graves. Costumed friends or family pop up creepy hands or sometimes even fully costumed zombies rise up. Always very spooky!

It's not every year anymore. But it's always worth it to me to make trip back home and get my pants scared off with friends and family. 

#10 of 31 Days of Halloween: Pumpkins

I'm not quite so Basic a white girl as to be a connoisseur of all things pumpkin. My favorite latte of the moment is gingerbread, thank you very much. And I don't even like pumpkin pie, though I do like pumpkin bread from my local co-op.

But you know what I do love?

Actual pumpkins.

Jack-o-lanterns are fun, but I'm not that dextrous with a knife, so mostly I admire the handiwork of others in that regard. But I love pumpkins themselves.

I'm especially loving lately all the varieties I can buy. There are traditional orange ones in a variety of sizes (including adorable mini pumpkins, that are probably actually not pumpkins, but a squash of some kind), but there are also ghost white ones, gray ones, and wide flattish ones they're calling "fairy tale" pumpkins, presumably in homage to the one the fairy godmother transformed into a coach for Cinderella.

Pumpkins are the only produce I buy that I have no plans to make anything out of of. I buy them because they please me aesthetically. They feel so nice and solid in my hands. The perch there like mushrooms (which I also love unreasonably much). They smell of fall.

I had big plans this year to plant a pumpkin patch of my own, but didn't get off my butt in time (June is when I get lazy, right after school is out; and it's also when you're supposed to plant pumpkins if you want them in October). Maybe next year will be my year for my very own very sincere pumpkin patch.

#9 of 31 Days of Halloween: Pop-Up Halloween Stores

I hit my first pop-up Halloween store before it was even October this year. One took over the old Babies-R-Us near my daughter's orthodontist office and when we spotted it, we shared a gasp of delight. It almost made up for having her braces adjusted.

Mostly, I hate shopping. But shopping in a Halloween store is a totally different thing. Even when I can't buy anything, I get such delight from looking at the wares and imagining the possibilities.

The one near us is especially nice, selling both the cheapy costumes that are just a kind of plastic you tie on and things that are nicer, more like real clothing.

I bought my girl a Sally dress AND a Wednesday Addams dress because they were too too perfect.

We spent a long time in the props section, examining fake weapons and odd accoutrements and imagining who we might become if we were to put them on.

They'd even put together a little haunted house area out of their animatronic and motion-sensing wares. We took turns cuing them to growl and spin and glow at us and laughed in delight when they were able to startle us.

Yeah, I could spend my whole paycheck in a wonderland like that. Maybe it's a good thing they're only around a few weeks a year.

#8 of 31 Days of Halloween: Decor

You know how some people love to go shopping right after Christmas or on Black Friday, scoring great deals? Yeah. I'm not one of those people. In fact, I hate shopping.

Except for Halloween.

The day after Halloween I'm heading in to all the big box stores, looking for my deals on Halloween themed decor. That's how I got my cool tablecloth that has spooky words all over it like "Nevermore" and "Poison," how I acquired my Bride of Frankenstein serving platter and dessert plates, my sugar skull drinking glasses, and my glowing eyeball lights.

If I had the budget and time, you can bet my yard would look like something out of the Addam's Family intermixed with every other spooky thing I love.

This year, I'm coveting the motion sensitive animatronic figures from my local Halloween pop up store. I can't quite convince myself that it's okay to spend upwards of $100 on this kind of thing, but when it goes on sale afterwards? I'm there!

#7 of 31 Days of Halloween: Excitement

There are a few times of year where excitement vibrates in the air, maybe especially the air around children. A kinetic joy bubbles up and it's all we can do to move forward in the ordinary things we have to accomplish before our anticipation pays off and boom! It's Halloween.

The second October began, that half-crazy energy settled on the middle school where I teach. As the month goes on, it will build. Kids will make plans for costumes, parties, and pranks. They'll tell each other scary stories and wax poetic about the good old days when they weren't "too old" to Trick or Treat (some of them will still Trick or Treat this year, "too old" or not).

Sometimes adults catch it a little, at least some of us. The playfulness of it all is contagious. The "let's pretend" license that comes with a time of year where even adults often dress up as something scary, shiny, or just really different than whatever they usually are. 

The giddy energy exceeds even Christmas in some ways. Maybe it's because it's more of an everyone holiday (less tied to religious traditions), and celebrating is less reliant on how much money is in your bank account than the more avaricious commercial side of that December festival.

It's there in the air. Have you caught it yet?

#6 of 31 Days of Halloween: ghost stories

I've loved ghost stories most of my life. I like the scary ones, the comforting ones, the silly ones. One of the first times I scared myself silly with a book, it was a short story about a ghost child who wanted a friend so badly they nearly killed another child to make her a ghost, too.

I like the non-professional ones, too--the ones people tell when you're sitting together in the right setting and something inspires such confidences. When someone you know and respect as a rational being admits that they've seen something they can't explain that left them feeling unsettled…well that's the best kind of chills!

A few of my favorites (from books and stories):

Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp was given to me by my middle and high school librarian. It might be responsible for my loves of evil children and gazing balls.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I'm pretty sure that same librarian gave me this one, or maybe something else by Shirley Jackson. The quintessential haunted house story, a book that set the tone for all the future ones.

Beloved by Toni Morrison. Written from events that haunt a person even if nothing supernatural is involved. I cried more than once reading this one.

Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill. I read this one pretty recently and it made me a fan of Joe Hill's work. I loved the ghost and the vengeance plot as well as the living characters.

The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe. This is one of those stories where you're not sure if there's a ghost or not. The narrator could also be misinterpreting events, or seeing through an unreliable lens. Sometimes I like this kind of story better than the ones with real for-sure ghosts.

Got a favorite ghost story I should check out? LMK in the comments.