Don't Forget The Trick

by Benjamin Riggs

Halloween is a strange holiday. For many, holidays are reasons to get together and celebrate with families and chosen families. Different people may celebrate in different ways, but at their core, holidays are warm and familiar. They're a reliable, annual reminder to be with the people we care about and try and recapture the magic that was there when we were young. When we believed in some magical force that made these days special–-before we were world-weary adults. For most of these holidays, the traditions that anchor them remain the same, even as time passes and we grow older. So why is Halloween so different? As a child, I always looked forward to that wonderful night of trick-or-treating; of dressing up in some spooky or cool outfit and going door to door and getting as much candy as I could possibly fit into a sack. Nowadays, I celebrate it in an entirely different way: I throw a big Halloween party with all my friends while we wear silly or referential outfits and get really, really drunk. I have great memories from both, but it almost feels like two separate holidays–the only unifying features are the outfits and the prevailing spooky theme. And yet, for some reason, I long for the Halloween of my younger days.

Growing up on a dead end street in the middle of nowhere had its drawbacks. Sure, I had neighbors, but the only other person my age within walking distance was my older brother. And there certainly wasn’t a large enough community to warrant trick-or-treating. Lucky for me, this meant that I would tend to get multiple trick-or-treats each year–usually one with my grandma, sometimes one with my cousins, and sometimes one with my childhood best friend, David. As a result, I didn't really get the opportunity to ever trick-or-treat in familiar territory. Sure, I would often pass by the streets and recognize a house here and there, but none of the people whose doors I knocked on were truly my neighbors. I was a foreign agent--a stranger dressed in some strange outfit and placed into a strange world, on a mission to get as much candy as I could from the strangers around me.

Having up to three Halloweens each year meant that I had the potential to get triple the candy of your average trick-or-treater. Every year as October rolled around, I got so excited at the prospect of the gigantic potato sack of candy I was about to end up with, despite the fact that I've never had much of a sweet tooth. The act of trick-or-treating was a vehicle to me, and I was laser focused on reaching the destination of "more candy". Not too much thought was given from one house to the next--for the most part, it was simply a repetitive blur of houses and people as I recited my script: the joyful "Trick or treat!" followed by the compliments to my costume and a "Happy Halloween" response. I remember competing with my friends trying to see who would end up with the most goodies, and I remember swapping the candies like they were trading cards, trying to get as many of our favorites. And, of course, I remember barely even getting through half of the candy before it was eventually tossed aside and forgotten.

Eventually, David and I reached adolescence and decided--as many teenagers do--that trick-or-treating was beneath us. The pomp and flair of dressing up for Halloween and running around begging for candy had become tired and childish. So we decided to celebrate Halloween in a different way. The first of these years, we met at David’s house like we always had, and decided we were going to set up some scares in his front yard. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon raking leaves into two piles, too excited to even acknowledge that we were doing lawn work for his parents while they probably sat inside and snickered at their good fortune. Once we had a pile of leaves on either side of the walkway to David’s front door, we raided his closet for a couple of hoodies. We stuffed one hoodie with leaves and sat it on one pile, so that it was covered enough to look like it was sitting in the pile of leaves. We then placed David in the other hoodie in the other pile, carefully covering his face and hands with even more leaves until there was no evidence that he was inside the hoodie. And thus, we had our hoodie scarecrows.

David's step-dad (who was wonderfully game in his role) sat at the top of the stoop in front of their house, a bowl of candy in his hands. Throughout the night, as kids hesitantly approached the front door to get candy from him, David would occasionally pull some act to spook them–-turning his head slightly, grabbing their legs, occasionally getting up and following them to the front door. He was really great at it, and it usually got a good scream without crossing that line of being too mean. Looking back, it was a pretty obvious little trick, and we definitely had plenty of people who were eyeing the scarecrows with a wary look. But we had so much fun doing it that it started to revitalize our enjoyment of the holiday.

As a kid, I would have hated those hoodie scarecrows. I always was (and still am, really) easily frightened. While some people enjoy seeking out that feeling of fear through horror movies or haunted houses, I have always tended to avoid the feeling. But something about the fear felt a little more inviting while trick-or-treating. It was such a strange feeling just being allowed to walk around streets in the dark, when on a normal day I'd probably have to be inside at that hour. The world felt different on Halloween night when I was younger. Sure, I’d seen these streets and I'd passed by these houses, but my childhood brain couldn’t fathom that. It felt like I was dropped into some eerie alternate reality where everything was…spookier. As I moved from door to door collecting my sweet rewards, I hardly even recognized any of the houses that I drove by every day. I didn’t even consider that these strangers I was getting candy from were going to church with me on Sundays.

And of course, there was always that house: the spooky house. You know the one. That family that always went that extra mile on Halloween decorations: large animatronics and inflatables, fake spider webs, flashing lights, mist machines, eerie sounds, jack-o-lanterns lining the walkways, the works. As an adult, in the daylight, I might look at this house and giggle at the front lawn covered in hundreds of dollars of Spirit Halloween props. I'm sure my parents didn't give it much of a second thought as we made our next stop on our trick-or-treating journey. But as a child surrounded by the darkness of Halloween night, this was the ultimate test.

Maybe there was some part of teenage David and I that wanted to be like that house. We obviously didn’t have any money to get the fancy decorations, nor were we old enough to drive to the store to get any. So we made due with our scarecrows. As the years went on, the complexity of our setup increased. We made four leaf piles with four hoodie scarecrows. I stuffed one of the fake scarecrows across from David with an old walkie-talkie toy of his we had found and watched from the upstairs window, the other one in hand. From my vantage point, I could see the entire scene unfold. With a few words into the walkie-talkie, I could direct the kids’ attention toward the fake, while David worked his magic. We had it down to a system, being sure to never target the youngest of kids, while getting a little more “mean” with the older kids. We were so proud of ourselves, and from my memory we got plenty of approving chuckles from the adults that chaperoned their children. It was a point of pride to us that there were some children that were just too scared of the leaf hoodies to walk to the front door.

Younger me would probably have been in their shoes: standing at the edge of the sidewalk looking in on the spooky house as my parents tried to nudge me to bravery, I remember that everything felt so large. The driveway felt long and winding. The tree in the front yard loomed over, the leaves having already fallen. The outline of the house in the distance made it feel like a dark castle you might find in an episode of Scooby Doo. I could see the shadow of the animatronic figure that stood perfectly still in the mist, waiting for some sucker like me to approach. I’d sit there looking at that house and wonder where did it come from--as if it was placed here just for this specific day and would vanish as the sun rose.

Eventually, I took my first steps forward, being sure to keep an eye on that animatronic that always seemed to be watching me no matter which way it was facing. As I passed by it, it lurched forward with a laugh causing me to let out a startling yelp before it slowly returned back to its resting position. I started to scamper to the front door, ignoring the many jack-o-lanterns that were seemingly laughing at my fear, determined to get what I came for. It took a bit of time for me to muster the courage to ring the doorbell. Even though it may look like a home, my childish brain couldn't imagine that anybody would ever actually live there. I look back toward the street to where my parents would be, as if for one last goodbye before whatever is on the other side of the door snatched me. As I finally rang the doorbell, I heard the same ding-dong as any other house, but to me it felt louder and longer. The door creaked as it slowly opened, and a towering figure opened the door. Not a human, of course. How could any human live here? I shook and trembled as I muttered my script: “Trick or treat”. The figure gave a wide grin and a jovial “Happy halloween!” as it gave me the piece of candy I'd earned. Before the door even got a chance to shut, I was already sprinting back past the animatronic to safety. All of this for a Payday bar I’d never even eat.

As we get older, holidays tend to lose some of their innate magical effect on us. It’s not because they have changed, it’s because we have. We’ve gotten older. We’ve gotten more cynical. That spooky house on the street becomes that tacky front yard with the owners that like Halloween just a bit too much. Trick-or-treating becomes that annoying task you have to remember to buy candy for or the children will be upset. The truth is, that magic hasn’t gone anywhere, it just takes work. It takes time and care and effort and those are harder to come by as we age. We can brush it off and say that Halloween is just a holiday for children or for college students who want an excuse to party. But when I think of Halloween, I don’t think of the candy. I don’t think of the drunken parties. I think of my time hanging out with my friend, trying our best to be like the creepy house from our memories.