In past years, I've gotten a little carried away and that has led to some uncomfortable situations. The one that comes to mind is my first attempt at the haunted porch. I built a black widow spider that was three feet in diameter with eyes lit by glowsticks. I suspended it from our second story above the porch with fishing line and a little pully.
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| Not My Porch, But Still Spooky |
The idea was that the spider would lower down after the unsuspecting trick-or-treaters had come up to the front door. They take their candy and turn around and, boo, there's a spider with glowing eyes hovering there at their eye level between them and the street.
Okay, admittedly, I was so enthusiastic about the engineering aspect of this that I hadn't thought about the impact it would have on little kids. Though it was nearly ten years ago, I can still picture the two little girls, maybe third-graders or so, that were at the front porch and completely lost it when they turned around to see the spider hovering there behind them. Candy flew as they ditched their plastic pumkins and just stood their screaming.
It didn't take long for the girls' father to come running up to gather the girls up and give me his opinion of my spider surprise. His opinion was along the lines of: (language edited for blog) "Golly, jeepers, why on Earth would you lower a spider down in front of two elementary students?" He was right, of course. It was a dumb thing for me to do. I was so excited that I could do it that I hadn't thought about whether or not I should do it.
In following years, I toned it down a bit. There was the 4-foot ghost that ran down a wire line from the top of the street light across the street to the second story of my house. Glowsticks were again involved and it just sort of non-threateningly whisped through the air above the heads of tricker treaters. This worked great until about an hour after dark, when the wire broke and the ghost plunged into the tricker treaters below. Thankfully, they were older at that hour so it didn't turn out to be Spider: Part Deux. They actually wanted to me to set it up and kill the ghost again, but sadly the ghost had given his all on his first plunge to the concrete.
Another attempt that faired a little better was "Area 51." This consisted of an 8-foot in diameter flying saucer that had "crashed" on our front lawn. It was wood-framed and wrapped an a whole lot of Costco aluminum foil. Since it didn't move or sneak up on people, it seemed to be better received than previous years. As long as the aliens stayed inside of the flying saucer, all was well.
Why do I do these things around Halloween? Well, it comes from my childhood. Halloween was always more about our porch than going trick-or-treating. My dad and I had a routine. We'd set up a speaker in a bush by the front porch and add some scary lighting. My dad would be in my room, which overlooked the porch, with a microphone. While scary "haunted house sounds" (remember that cassette you'd buy at the supermarket?) would play in the background, my dad would use his scary guy voice and make random comments over the fake screams and organ music playing.
When trick-or-treaters would approach, my dad would yell, "Monster, Monster" and I would come running out of another bush costumed as a monster with ripped clothes and a freaky rubber mask. I'd run around, kids would scream, and then I'd pull candy out of my pockets and give it to the kids. Either kids were more sturdy then or I just wasn't very convincing as a monster, because we never had a single parent complain. We were actually kind of a draw.
This year, I've toned it down. The bushes outside of our porch have the obligatory fake spider webs and we have a rubber head on a stake where I've helpfully added a "We're Open" sign to the stake. That's about as scary as we plan to be this year.
Here's hoping your Halloween is free of hovering spiders, plunging ghosts, crashed flying saucers and carried away people like me in general.
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