Halloween isn't the same

originally posted by: Nyiah

Wait a minute. Where's DB? And the chili pot? God dammit!

Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. . . . .

Halloween is my favorite holiday. It's the only day of the year I can put on a costume, act like a ten year old, and no one really cares.

I usually make my own costumes. It is part of the fun for me. My wife used to hate Halloween, but even she dresses up every year. My son, who is almost 15, still dresses up for Halloween.

Tomorrow night my family and I will be walking the neighborhood, seeing everyone's costumes. I love seeing everyone's creativity with costumes.

There is one house a couple streets away from ours that goes all out for decorating for Halloween. I love it!

Of course, the down side for me is that I only get my Halloween if my wife gets to decorate for Christmas starting November 1st.

Here's some examples...

a reply to: JAGStorm

We would wait behind the groundskeepers shed for the little kids to show up and they always did. Much fun was had watching them run off screaming.

I'll never cop to the toilet papering of houses and smashing of pumpkins; no way, uh uh, not me.

a reply to: Blaine91555

Absolutely, it was such a great time! I remember the school Halloween events, too. I always felt weird being able to walk around freely in the halls without getting in trouble. The lady my cousin married works one room over and was born one day after me and we'll get on an email kick where we go back and forth about how much we enjoy the season of Halloween. The cool, crisp night air, gray clouds taking up the entire sky until nightfall, the burning leaves in ditches smelling up the air, etc... You're 100% right that it all changed. I always ranked it right up there with Christmas as well.

An arctic front moves in tomorrow so the forecast is calling for rain and 30° weather. We might actually get to use the fireplace for once.

The story about your friend running into an open grave and the visual of him looking up at you, though, it's absolutely priceless! I have some funny stories but none about Halloween, and especially none about running into an open grave. The horror ON HALLOWEEN, was perfect timing...

a reply to: JAGStorm
My middle son wanted to be a cowboy. So we got him a hat, and a cap gun to go with it. He has always been hesitant to go into one of the very popular haunted house gigs I like to frequent with the older ones. I told him just shoot whoever scares you with your cap gun to keep them away. He thought that was cool and is going to try the haunted house this year. Funny enough my daughter, youngest son are amused not scared and walk in no problems with their eldest sibling.

Its done well, but when you get to the backyard people are just chilling and having drinks and laughing. I miss the days you speak of though, I do remember them fondly.

a reply to: LSU2018

The cool, crisp night air, gray clouds taking up the entire sky until nightfall, the burning leaves in ditches smelling up the air, etc... You're 100% right that it all changed.

There really was something about it, that exact night.. Maybe it was because we felt so free being out that late, dressed up, totally sugar buzzed out on candy. I remember loving the smell of the air. The cold, (it was always cold, but never too cold) the wood fireplaces, everything. Yes even the leaves someone mentioned. There is something about swooshing, and stepping and hearing that unique sound of fallen leaves underfoot.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: JAGStorm
I forgot to mention the houses with the creepy single guys that our parents warned us to stay away from

I'm very creepy, but I'm not single.

It doesn't count if they aren't breathing or locked in the basement. But they make better listeners that way so it's not all bad.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: LSU2018
Is that you, Russ McKamey?

The man is a visionary.

About as much as John Wayne Gacy...

originally posted by: LSU2018
About as much as John Wayne Gacy...

He has yet to achieve the maestro's level.

originally posted by: DictionaryOfExcuses
a reply to: JAGStorm

The wife was just telling me that churches in the area do something they are calling "Trunk or treat", where a bunch of kids go trick or treating from car to car in a parking lot. I mean wh

.

So the priest are training little kids to go and get candy from a complete stranger in a car. I wonder where I have heard this story before?

a reply to:


tbt

JAGStorm

Might not be too interesting but I would like to tell you how it was in Germany back in the day. First of all we didn't have Halloween at all. It was an American thing.
In order to get sweets we have/had Mathen Baehren [based on Martin Luther] at the end of October. BAsically it was very similar but we didn't dress up for that. We would go out in groups and knock on people's doors to get sweets. However we had to sing for it the Mathen Baeren song which basically tells them not to leave us standing for to long and to give us apples and Berries [haha]. Of course any apples would be refused or given to our parents.
We used normally plastic bags or pretty bags [if you wanted to] but the outcome was a hell of a lot of sweets.

For dressing up we would have had to wait until Febuary where we celebrate Fasching, which is a HUGE thing in Gemrany, with televised parades and singing and schunkeln [moving left and right at a large table hooking elbows with your neighbour].

Nowadays we also have Halloween but only for the last few years. I wonder if this 'all in one' [dress up and sweets] will eventually kill our own traditions

Also I hate Halloween as a Goth and only today I had to dress down as everyone would probably look at me and think my lifestyle is some sort of costume. So blonde wig and flowery dress has to be worn until a safe time after this holiday when I can go full black and Satanic again

a reply to: JAGStorm

All I can say is that all good things must come to an end, and for that matter, the same is true for the bad. I never had the home made treat experience on Halloween, but when I was a child, everyone hit the streets to show off their costumes and collect as much candy as they could carry.

Now, I can count the number of trick-or-treaters in my neighborhood on my hands. Last year, I had like six trick-or-treaters, and a drunk man on a bicycle.

America's culture is disintegrating because we no longer have a clear sense of what's important. When you have culture for the sake of the image, it dissipates like a trend. Its not about social interaction anymore.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Just like everything else, Halloween on demand is happening. it seems people cannot wait for a tv show to come on at a scheduled time and day anymore....they get it when they want it.

We used to make costumes when we were kids or just go to vinnies and get old clothes so we could dress up like bums with a little dirt on our face. I guess since there are so many street people these days it is not socially acceptable to dress up like one of them. I wonder if they are out on Halloween with an old pillowcase?

I saw the expensive costumes really happening with my daughters kids, my daughter was spending sixty to a hundred bucks for each of her four kids to go out and get ten bucks of candy. On top of that, they went to wealthy neighborhoods trick or treating, they were not satisfied with the neighborhood of us regular people. They aren't that smart, regular people who worked hard for a living usually gave out more and better candy, but they believed that they were doing better hitting the subdivisions ten miles from here. I guess they are disconnected from society here. The people in those subdivisions are strapped with high house payments or are tightwad business owners, probably slipping in a business card in the kids basket with a little sucker.

I used to love going to the old people's houses when I was a kid, huge popcorn balls all carmaled up or homemade huge cookies or sometimes a quarter which you could use to buy a sixteen ounce bottle of coke at seven cents, three candy bars at five cents, and still some big licorish from the candy store. I remember pulling licorice out of the big jars, they also had candy cigarettes those days, a five pack was two cents. Oh yeah, a pack of ten chocolate cigarettes was only a nickle too.

I loved the local candy store, they had lots of candy in them. Do you remember the wax bottles of pop, they were some kind of syrup in a wax bottle. The bottle actually absorbed the flavor of the syrup, chewing the wax like gum or sucking it till it collapsed was common.

Damn, candy sure makes lasting memories.

Halloween in a college town while working as a security guard at the hospital, not as fun as a kid. But there was a few highlights.

A guy dressed as cow is escorting a slutty farmer’s daughter and comes across another slutty farmer’s daughter walking the other way. They stop and talk a bit and suddenly the cow becomes more animated talking with his arms while both girls are now beside one another pointing in what looks like strong accusations. The girls turn and head towards uptown. The cow stands there alone for a minute looking around. Eventually sulks back the other way away from uptown, dragging his feet and head lowered looking quite dejected. Didn’t hear a word but the visual was hilarious because you knew what happened.

Another year a kid was driving around in a car blaring the theme to The Godfather, dressed like a 1930’s mobster doing drivebys. This from a student that ran up to me and a township cop talking out front. Car comes roaring up and we block it and get him to pull over on foot. The officer is on the driver’s side and I am on the passenger side. Guy explains it is a BB gun that is empty and goes for it on the floorboard. At first glance it looked for all the world like a Glock 17. Two things saved that kid. 1. I was in the direct line of fire. 2. I stayed in the line of fire long enough to positively ID the “gun” still on the floorboard on the officer’s third flinch for his sidearm. That was not fun. But it was scary.

And one spooky one. Since the time change could happen on Halloween back then and I generally worked both Halloween and set all the clocks for the time change, it happened one year that it was the same day. There was a call from ICU that there was someone in the old 2N area. 2N was the old patient rooms before the remodel. And there many ghost stories about 2N, one I had seen before with the call lights in a certain room that was vacant in the past. So I am doing the check to find the intruder. Nothing naturally, until I pass one old patient room that was made into a training room and I hear a sound which sounded like a very proficient typist going to town on a computer keyboard. I look inside and no one is there. I step back out and still hear it. So I walk back in and turn on the lights. Still no one there but the second hand on the clock, one of the original patient room clocks is spinning like a top. I take the clock down to confirm that it is indeed one of the old clocks and was not a self adjusting atomic clock.

Figuring it was just the battery or the clock itself dying I hung it back and shrugged my shoulders. Went to talk with the ICU nurses to let them know I checked and nothing was to be seen but the “haunted clock” but neither wanted to see it because they were half scared of the ghost stories anyway than to add a haunted clock on Halloween. So off I went to make standard rounds and set different clocks as well as try to give a little Halloween thrill for someone. A couple hours later I stop by the room and the clock was working normally, only it was synchronized exactly to my pocket watch. The only timepiece that was ever used when I went around setting the clocks for the time change twice a year. The watch itself was checked against the Naval Observatory Clock regularly.

originally posted by: underwerks

originally posted by: CriticalStinker

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
a reply to: JAGStorm

Plus it's so much more difficult to tamper with the candy and treats, it totally takes the joy out if it for me.

How safe is too safe? With stories and images like the below, there is no such thing as too safe.

Jesus. What kind of monster would give a kid taffy.

Probably a dentist!..sick bastard

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: LSU2018

dudeeeeeeeeeee, seriously...............

That is the costume I had!!

Lmao! I probably had to wear it 3 Halloweens in a row until I outgrew it. I don't even know how it could get washed. I sent that photo to my mom and asked if she remembered when I got it and she said it was when we lived in Shreveport so that would have been between 1979 and 1985 but since I remember it and I was born in 1979, it had to have been 1983 or 1984 when I was 4 or 5. I can still remember how loud that plastic was when I walked around in it and that plastic mask seemed to amplify the noises.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: azbowhunter


We used to sing

"Trick or Treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat,
if you don't, I don't care, I'll pull down your underwear"

Now there are too many sickos, they'll love the feet part and will pull their underwear down themselves! sick world now.

Unreal. You know, I've ALWAYS thought it said "I'll pull down MY underwear" because who the hell wants to see your underwear? At least that's how I looked at it. Wow. Well, obviously some kid tricked me when they sung it and I've looked a fool for decades.

a reply to: BomSquad

What is it with that? My wife tried to put the Christmas tree up before Halloween but I wouldn't let her so now she wants to put it up this weekend. I'm like, come on babe, we're hosting the family Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year. Who wants to see our Christmas tree at Thanksgiving? Her answer was short and sweet, "I do, so who cares?"

Fair enough.

Leave it to today's sicko's to ruin a great kids holiday.
Most of the people that came to my door last year, were young adults with zero personality and sick face paint.
I just left the bowl of candy outside the door after an hour of that crap and turned out the lights.
The next person that came took everything.