Halloween Memory-Pam of Labyrinth Creations

I hope that you have had the time to catch up with Pam of Labyrinth Creations blog for some fun Halloween goodness! Pam is a very talented sculptor and artist, too. Visit Labyrinth Creations website here. She has some great artwork in her gallery to drool over. I was very excited that she agreed to share this Halloween memory with us:

Fortunately, I was a child when there weren't so many "bad guys" around. On Halloween night, we kids were out for hours with no adult chaperoning. We went trick or treating in the dark with a pillowcase and we meant business-these were the days of real, macho trick or treating. We were cool, we were brave, we were bad, or so we thought.

One Halloween night, we went to a house down the street. We knew the woman who lived there...we saw her all the time...a really nice lady. This particular Halloween night, however, the house was dark...not inviting at all. And yet, there was a luminescent glow of blue and green around the door...a few jack o' lanterns lighted, some corn stalks propped up. So, she must be home, right? Seemed as though we could hear some eerie noises or music behind the door. What the hell, we'll knock on the door. Nothing's gonna happen...we know her, we're all in a group. (You must remember that this is before people did much in the way of home haunts; before there were big time haunted houses to visit-yeah, long, long ago...)

So, we did it...we knocked...the door slowly opened...all was dark except for a huge witch's cauldron down the hall hanging over a raging fire (or so it seems in my memory). And there SHE was, lurking there, an honest to goodness, wicked witch of the west and it wasn't the lady who lived there, no way, man, no costume could make her look like that!!! Didn't sound like her at all...this was a freakin' witch's voice! She was beckoning to us, telling us to come closer in a cackling, breaking voice, telling us to come in...come and get our candy...

Well, guess what? All us bad ass trick or treaters looked at each other and had visions of apples with razor blades and parents' admonitions about strangers dancing in our heads and "don't go into houses if you don't know the people" and so on. We bolted..our terror genuine, our excitement beyond compare. After we had safely exited the house, well, this was great...we were gonna' talk about THIS for awhile. And we did. It was just SO COOL.

So, when I had my own children (in fact, my first child was only crawling), I set up my very first-albeit very poor excuse for it- "spookhouse." I stapled black plastic in the garage and hung plastic skeletons and let air out of my husband's scuba diving tank when kids got close to the candy bowl. I just couldn't wait to see kids experience those same terrifying FUN feelings that I remembered having. I wanted to recreate that magic. Couldn't wait to dress my baby up and take him trick or treating--never mind he couldn't even eat the bloody candy yet. (Hell, I could eat it for him...)

Which brings me to the realization that deep inside, when it comes to Halloween, none of us ever really wants to grow up. I mean, c'mon,...why are all of us Halloween bloggers and members of Halloween forums, and garagers of evil, and tuners in of Hauntcast and such like-well, why do we do it?

Is it simply because we enjoy building and creating props every waking moment or spending our last dime on collecting things Halloween? I think not. Rather, it is because we want to recapture the magic that we felt as children...we want to see the little trick or treaters of today all round-eyed and in awe of what might actually exist...what might actually be possible...what nightmares and monsters might actually be real. We want to go back and recreate that awesome fear, trepidation and excitement we remember feeling. Because as kids, when Halloween night was over, when we arrived home with all that loot, damn, it was a job well done! We bloody well earned that candy! Never really knowing who or what lurked on the other side of that door we were knocking on, but we did it anyway.

We were brave, we were bad ass, man, we were Trick 'r Treaters...we WERE Halloween...and a good many of us, still are.