Halloween on Carnation Ave.

Halloween comes and passes the same way for the last few years... there's some drinking, laughing, competition as to who looks the sexiest/scariest/most original, mad dashes to get to all the parties one wants to hit, and then the buzzed ride home in your ripped/stained/sweaty costume getup.

I miss Halloween, the real kind. The kind from when I was a kid.

My parents put on an amazing haunted house every year. We sent out flyers and got neighborhood kids to come and volunteer to set up the house and work during the night. My dad would get out all the garb (oversize spider in a mirrored box contraption, lifesize black coffin, "Maggie" the witch as my sister fondly named her, and various other things), we'd play Halloween songs and scary sound bites all day, and when night came, we had a line down the block full of people wanting to come in to check it out.

My mother was always the guide. She let in groups of 5 at a time, I'll never forget her assertive voice "FIVE at a time please!", and led them on a mini tour of our front room while we were in our appropriate stations and scared the kids all along the way. The finale was the wolf man in the closet (usually my dad or a cousin), who would come out a grab a kid.

It was so much fun. It was so unique. My dad made so much food, each year his notorious lasagna. My parents were pros at this Halloween gig; I don't know where it started from, how or when it started, and I don't really remember when exactly it stopped happening. The world got scarier, our environment less safe, it wasn't so kosher anymore to invite kids into your house on halloween and scare the living hell out of them, and my parents were getting older and not so into all the work it entailed. Somehow, sometime, it just stopped happening.

But those Halloweens were the best times of my life. My parents enriched my life so much growing up, and this amazing Halloween tradition was something that I'll never forget: the smells of the house, the sounds of the scary stories on tape, my mom's goofy screams (she still happily performs those for us sometimes though), the hustle and bustle of the house as hundreds of people piled in and through it.

One day, I hope to have a house of my own. And I hope to, in some way, bring this tradition back. I know the world has changed dramatically, inviting strangers into your home and freaking them out with a 10 ft witch thrust in their face and a fake hand on their shoulder is not something people recommend doing these days, but it's something I'd love to re-create in some way.

I know my mom and those screams will forever be at the ready.