On Halloween Night

Source: Pottery Barn

On Halloween night there are witches in the air

Very scary ghosts and goblins everywhere

Bats and rats and vampires are a fright

And they all creep around on Halloween night

I wrote this poem when I was eight or nine years old and still remember it perfectly.

Halloween was always a fun experience at our house when I was a kid. My parents would pull down the designated ‘Halloween box’ from the top shelf of our storage room and inside would be an assortment of old costumes, decorations and maybe (if we were lucky) a left-over treat or two.

As much as I enjoyed designing and putting together my costume, decorating the house was the most exciting part for me. My sister and I would stick posters in the windows, hang cob webs around the house, change the front entrance light bulb to orange, and of course put our prized jack-o-lanterns on display. One year we even bought a ‘spooky’ sound track and played it on a tape recorder expertly hidden in our garage. It was so scary cool!

Now I live in an almost exclusively adult building and apart from the little girl who lives across the hall, I don’t get any trick or treaters. There’s no real need for elaborate decorating or jack-o-lanterns to place proudly on display. I have to admit, I look forward to the day that I can pull out a specially designated ‘Halloween box’ of my own and go to town.

But, for this year at least, Halloween will be fairly low key. Dinner at a friend’s house, handing out treats to the neighbourhood kids, and (if I’m lucky) maybe a left-over treat or two.

Happy Halloween Everyone.