Your Halloween as a Child

[Greg Chrise]

I grew up in the 60's and Halloween was celebrated with the fancy boxed very thin plastic masks of super heroes, cartoon characters or strange animal faces and very thin cloth representations of costumes. A celebration of goods and paper products mass produced from Tiawan?

There was only one Halloween party in my life in a basement bobbing for apples with colored crepe paper of orange and black and maybe a scary story? It wasn't really a well thought out child hood gathering and I don't even remember who those people were. They may have moved after that?

The schools only mentioned harvest time and pumpkins, corn, the indians and pilgims and maybe half a second of what devils night and Halloween used to be in history with people anually being given charity at door steps that some how became expressed as going from door to door for candy, apples and getting to see all the weird neighbors you otherwise never see or meet.

How was Halloween celebrated in your childhood that perhaps led to being involved in haunts and haunting in later life.

[Haunting Copy]

Greg, excellent topic!

For me, as a young kid, Halloween was on par with Christmas - then later surpassing Christmas once I hit my teens.

Halloween in my world was almost like that movie Hocus Pocus. If
you've not seen it, you should, for no other reason than to get that
warm, fuzzy nostalgic feeling for Halloween night.

Our school had us dress up in our costumes, parade around to each
others' classes, throw parties, tell stories, play games, and just the whole nine
yards. School work? I don't think so!

Then, before the actual day of Halloween, the SCHOOL would host a
haunted house! I will *never* forget it. Peeled grapes, wet spaghetti,
dark hallways, all those things that young ones should experience.

And that was just the school part.

Then came Halloween itself.

One of my most memorable experiences was that of what was, to me,
a GIANT Frankenstein's monster. This man and his wife were handing
out candy dressed up as "Frankenstein" and "Frankenstein's bride."
She had the streaked, teased-out hair and everything.

I knew in my mind that it was just a man in a mask, but it didn't matter. He scared the bejeezus out of me! Now, I wish I could hug them.

And you know what's *really* weird? I think it may have been one of
Distortions' masks!! (It turns out that their family and my family had
moved to Greeley at about the same time, and the timing of that very
special Halloween coincided with Distortions' mask-making period.)

Ahh, the memories . . .

So ever since those wonderful days, I have always wanted to help
create memories like that for other people - even though I don't have
a haunted house.

In haunting love,
Sarah

[TheCareTaker]

for me it was time with friends thinking how to scare other kids. when i was twelve i got to help build a march of dimes haunted house in covina ca that was in 1981 i think and because i did such a good job witht helping i got to act in it. i thought that was the coolest thing. other than tha tit was always trying to put together a garge haunt which we never could cause we would spend the nights int he garage and end up tearing everything down missing with each other.
was never much of one for the whole trick or treating thing. i loved to dress up and just walk around and hide and BOO scare peps.

enjoy

[Greg Chrise]

I guess it might be intresting to add what state or area you were in. How it was celebrated might certainly be why things were different as would be what decade it was.

Mine was in Western Pennsylvania, in the 60's Im guessing Sara's experience was in Colorado? In the late 70s to early 80s?

[SpFXChic]

Wow, definitely an excellent topic, Greg! This brings up serious nostalgic feelings. It’s so hard to put into words! Since you asked Greg, this was late 70's, early 80's.

The atmosphere really sticks out…cool, crisp evenings. The smell of fireplaces burning sweet wood. Leaves blowing around. And in my part of Colorado, more often than not, the first snow. (It was really great, if you left out that last part!)

Our schools let us dress up as whatever we wanted! It didn’t matter if it was scary or if it was a Disney character. You could wear masks! And bring the plastic weapons that went with your costumes! We’d have costume contests and trick-or-treating in each classroom. Art class was my favorite in the fall. We always worked on something for Halloween. It was never “Fall Harvest” or the “Fall Festival”. It was Halloween! (Still is in my opinion.) I was interested in FX makeup at an early age and this time of year was my time to shine. I would do all of my friends’ makeups for them. (Thank goodness I’ve gotten better since back then.) Opening up a new pot of makeup still brings me back to that time!

We would all get together and build a haunted house in a friend’s basement each year so that everyone could go through it at her Halloween party. I still look back at that fondly, even though if I’d seen it now, I’d probably laugh at myself. But it was just the way we spent time together and how creative we were with what we had. And we were so proud of ourselves! Sometimes we’d scare ourselves before even finishing and have to run up the stairs!

Halloween night generally led to the dreaded first snow. And man, if your parents hadn’t bought your costume 3 sizes too big so you could fit a parka and snow pants underneath, you’d better plan on trick-or-treating as Elmer Fudd during hunting season (which I did…twice.) Sometimes our little fingers were frozen around the handles of our candy bags. I remember once that there were only 4 of us out trick-or-treating in the snow on our street. We made it to about 5 houses and called it a night. But we weren’t going to let snow ruin our Halloween fun.

I still get those feelings on Halloween. The warm fuzzies. I lost touch a long time ago with my childhood haunt buddy. And sure, my current haunt family is different – hey we get new members every year, and sometimes a few move away, but there’s still something that is special and unique about us. I wouldn’t trade that. I like adding new haunt-family memories, warmer seasons, and thankfully, less-laughable haunts to my life, too.

Alright, that was an awful lot of words for it not being so easy to put into words, eh?

[TheCareTaker]

you are realy spot on, i do remember in scholl it was al about the harvst thing and costumes i always loved to dress up and go to scholl in costume, the scholl dance and such. my kids now cant even wear anything realy scary no masks and no weapons. although i understand it is disapointing to say the least.

I always loved the guys who woul decorate but man have we come a long way since then. decorations where always home made and well i guess we were just a little more impresionalble back then as compared to now.

the talk was always about haunted houses and friends parties which never came to light. times were tuff for my neighbor hood though so cant blam it on anything other than lack of funds.

in class we could draw haunted houses using collored pencils which were a comodity hard to come buy and one year when i was in 6th grade we made a chicken wire and paper mache king tut cofin it was so realy like that the teacher saved it and took it to the fare the next year and we even though i was in junior high now won. that was realy cool.

the big thing was scary movies we would all sleep over at a dif house each weekend during October and watch scarry movies. loved it. wow witch craft and devils waht a time.