It’s that time of year when frightening creatures appear around the house and ghastly moans and groans emanate from every room. For most people, it’s all part of preparing for Halloween. For me, it’s my London-born husband complaining as I bedeck the house with spooky decor.
“Why do you do that?” he queried while I set down the skeletons and tombstones in the front yard. “It only encourages them!” he moaned, referring to the expected hoard of trick-or-treaters. It’s not that the Brit dislikes children. He adores them, especially our grandson, Mini-Brit. No, it’s having to share his cache of Kit Kat bars with them that has him terrified.
The Brit does not understand Halloween because, as a child in London, the scariest things walking around were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The Brit’s lack of enthusiasm for the annual fright-fest surprises me, too, because this man will watch any and every horror movie ever made, from classic Hammer or Corman fare to the worst, goriest B-grade blood-fests—and even C and D-minus terror trash! Worse, he encourages Mini-Brit in this activity.
Typical weekends in our living room—after the soccer games are over, of course—will find my beloved duo shouting out responses to on-screen impalements, decapitations, dismemberments, and executions. “Ooh, he really got the point!” quips the Brit. “He was just trying to get a head,” responds Mini-Brit. “Perhaps he needed a hand,” the Brit quickly parlays. “This movie’s so bad, it’s killing me,” muses Mini-Brit. And on and on and on.
Don’t get me wrong. I love a good fright film (emphasis on good). I’ll never forget watching a little-known film in 1978 with my then boyfriend, Thomas. Halloween was showing at the artsy Sombrero theater in Phoenix, Ariz. By the end of the film, Thomas and I were wrapped around each other, and I don’t mean PDA! Michael Myers scared the bah-jeebies out of us.
But it didn’t end there. As we left the theater, a knife-wielding Michael Myers stepped out from the behind the screen, and ever so slowly walked up the center aisle toward the audience. Even the men squealed like little girls as we quickly made for the exits, when Thomas shouted over my shoulder, “Oh, for God’s sake, calm down, it’s just some college kid in a costume!” To which I yelled back at him, “Then why are you pushing me?”
Perhaps I love Halloween so much because I do love a good scare. And I love a good scare because I come from a scary family. We’ve been scaring each other for years! I remember reaching into my closet for a change of clothes after school only to have Mom’s hand come clawing out at me. I recall my then 5-year-old brother hiding under Mom’s turned-down bedding, and hearing her shrieks as he tickled her toes when she slid into bed. As children, my siblings and I would hide behind doors and jump out at each other, then fall over laughing at how the other looked while squeaking like a mouse on crack.
Several years ago, I bought Mom a Halloween welcome mat that, when stepped on, made the sound of a woman screaming bloody murder. But first I wanted to test it, so I carefully placed it under her bedspread. I then invited her to come lay down for a foot massage. To this day, I have never seen anyone levitate and fly across a room so quickly, especially a woman of her age!
Once she stopped swearing at me, she began to laugh and told me my aunt was coming to visit the next day. She then cackled wickedly as she gleefully placed the screaming mat under the bathroom rug. I later heard it was a real spine tinkler!
Of course, it was payback for a prank my aunt had played on Mom when they were teens—one Mom never forgot! My grandparents owned a dairy farm in Spokane, Wash. Mom’s bedroom was the only one on the first floor of their large farmhouse. She was tired of sharing a room with her two younger sisters and had begged for her own room, but my grandfather didn’t like the idea of her being isolated in the house at night. He finally gave in, Mom got her own room, and this naturally put her two little sisters’ noses out of joint.
One evening she and her older brother had been out past curfew and needed to sneak back into the house. My uncle had to rise and shine to milk the cows. He crept in first, then gave Mom the all-clear. She tip-toed into her room and proceeded to undress, unaware that her youngest sister was waiting behind her door, wearing my grandmother’s winter fur coat. Mom’s screams woke my grandparents, her other siblings, the farm dogs and cows, half the state, and several dead people in Idaho.
I love passing on this tradition of a good scare and have shared squeals of fright and laughter with my husband and grandson. I have tucked Mini-Brit’s large Curious George, wearing a pirate mask, into the Brit’s side of the bed, and left rubber rats and spiders in strategic locations for the boys to find.
Then one night I realized that the villagers’ pitchfork and torch had been passed when I wearily went to bed, turned back the covers, and found Curious George in the pirate mask. “Very funny!” I called to my husband. “Boo” yelled George as he sat bolt upright. Both Brits howled with laughter as I did a shrieking pirouette across the room. Yes, my Mini-Brit has bested me, and I have been hung by my own petard!
Ariel Waterman is most scared of being out of chocolate and at her scariest when she is out of chocolate. Send Reese’s Cups, Snickers, and Kit Kat bars for the Brit via her editor, Ryan Miller, at rmiller@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 20-27, 2011.