Favorite Halloween Memory
I asked the Horror Bound team to share their favorite Halloween memories from throughout their childhoods and adulthood. Here’s their stories! Enjoy a cute nostalgic journey and let us know your favorite Halloween memory!
The year is 1999 and 10-year-old Chelsea is falling in love. The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser had been released months earlier. To say I was obsessed is an understatement. Not only did I have a huge crush on Rick O’Connell, I wanted to be Evelyn. I got my hands on every book about mummies I could find. I remember getting one from the Scholastic book fair that even showed step by step how to make one. I also remember showing a classmate and the girl being freaked out by my interest. I wasn’t going to turn her into a mummy!
A much older girl on my school bus had this Cleopatra inspired costume that someone had made for her. I really admired this girl and the fact that she was several grades older and talking to me was amazing. She saw how much I loved the costume and said I could borrow it for a family Halloween party.
I added the headdress and the markings on my arms to mimic Anck Su Namun. I felt beautiful! Or as beautiful as a 10-year-old can feel. The party was held in a big barn. Halloween decorations everywhere. There were costume contests and I won best costume!!! I think this night fueled my obsession to go all out for every Halloween since.
-Chelsea (Twitter, Goodreads, and Instagram.)
When I was 14, my best friend and I decided to dress up as Jay and Silent Bob for Halloween. She was Silent Bob and I was Jay. We’d seen the movies and I’d even memorized Jay’s rap from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back – swears, drug references, and all. My Mom took us to a thrift store to buy a trench coat for Lunchbox and we found the perfect one, and a hat to boot. We came back to my house to get ready and I helped draw facial hair onto her face for Bob, and the seriousness and meticulousness in her eyes as we perfected it was totally memorable, hilarious, and amazing. I sang Jay’s rap for my Mom and older sister and although she was annoyed at the drug stuff and swears, she still laughed. I was ready to sing the song for anyone who recognized our costumes.
So out we went to trick-or-treat, ready for the world! Except every door we went to had owners who would say, “Well who are you two supposed to be?” We were pretty bummed out by the lack of recognition, but kept trick-or-treating for a few hours anyway. We were getting ready to give up for the night, walking down a dark street with the wind picking up, the leaves around us, then someone in a car drove by slowly and yelled, “Hey! It’s Jay and Silent Bob!” We threw our arms up and screamed in unison, “YES!” It ended up being a fun night after all and just knowing someone recognized us, even from a moving vehicle, made it all worthwhile.
I think I have always loved Halloween (join the club, Dave; I know…). As a kid, I often stayed with my grandparents off and on. They had, hands down, THE BEST neighborhood for Trick’r’Treating (I will fight you on this). Almost every house participated in the festivities. And it wasn’t just the fact that they all gave out full sized candy bars either (except for the few popcorn balls or candied apples), but these people went all out with the decorations too. I mean of course we had the creepy dark house that everyone said not to go to. “Don’t go to old man Boyce’s place, he’ll sic the dogs on you.” But the vast majority of the folks had a blast with the holiday.
Two houses stood out. One had a fog machine and would pour smoke over their lawn which was decorated like a graveyard, complete with one large coffin. When unsuspecting ghosts, ghouls, and witches would go for the candy, Mr. D’Renzo would pop out and scare the hell out of us. Mr. Solt was the other one. Webs were painstakingly weaved around his porch and he had a HUGE spider hanging above the stairs to the candy. He would just sit in his rocking chair on the porch telling the kids to take what they wanted. As soon as they reached for the goods – he’d release the string he held and the Garantulantula (thanks Steve Guttenberg) would plummet toward the kiddos. Not sure how many houses we missed just watching other people freak out.
As far as costumes go, my favorite may have been the Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World a few years back, or Silent Bob. As a kid, I remember my mom and grandma busting their fingers to make a homemade Kermit the Frog costume. No pics of that one, but I do remember it being unbelievably hot and the mouth wouldn’t stay open for me to see. I do, however have pics of Count Dave-ula. Enjoy! Stay spooky kids.
-Dave (Twitter)
My favorite Halloween memory isn’t a singular moment, or from a particular year. Instead, it’s an amalgamation of many Halloweens from my youth. There was a stretch of time through the late ‘90s to mid ‘2000s where my Halloweens played out more or less the same way, and I lived for it.
First, we’d decorate the yard and we’d go all out. For my dad, my brother, and me it was our Christmas. Grave stones, ghosts, and witches littered the front lawn topped off with about twenty jack-o-lanterns we had carved as a family.
Then there was the main event. My parents would stay home to hand out candy, and I’d set out with my brother and our friends. We always followed the same route and hit every house in our tiny little town. There were always the sweet spots like our neighbor for cans of pop, and the farmhouse just outside of town for full-sized chocolate bars. The best was an old British couple down the street. They’d have a fire going, hot chocolate, candy, and hot dogs and marshmallows for us to cook. It was the de facto congregation spot for all the kids of the neighborhood and where we would meet if we became separated.
Once every house in town was plundered, we’d do our best Cher impression and go for a costume change. Time, weather, and energy permitting, we’d grab old masks from Halloweens past and double dip as many houses as we could before exhaustion took us. Then it was time to return home, our pillowcases full of loot. We’d collapse in the family room, put on some scary movies, and binge eat ‘til we fell asleep. It was like living in the first few chapters of a Stephen King novel, before the monster shows up. I had my very own Losers Club in our own little Derry. Those were some of best nights of my life and I’ll cherish those memories forever.
For my Halloween memory, I have two moments that really stick out for me. One is back when I was about seven or eight, I really wanted to go as Batman for Halloween. Well, my mom couldn’t afford a costume, so my Nana (RIP) made one for me. She bought a hoodie and sewed on the ears from the cowl, then they painted around my eyes to make it look like I was wearing a mask. She ironed on a Batman logo on the front of the costume and even sewed a cape to complete the look. It was awesome.
The second Halloween memory for me that really sticks out was the horror marathons my kid brother Marco (love you, little brother!) and I would watch every year. We had gotten too old (in our minds) to go trick-or-treating, so instead we got my mom to buy us a buttload of candy and chips and popcorn, and we’d spend the entire night watching YTV horror marathons. They had a kickass line-up of Goosebumps, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dracula (the YA series), Angel, and the ever popular in Canada…Are You Afraid of the Dark? They’d play this from early evening ‘til midnight. And it was the greatest time ever with my brother.
Halloween in Fairfield, New Jersey was no doubt comparable to the stereotypical imagery you’ve probably already likened to scenes depicted in the fictional Haddonfield, Illinois or one of our faves, Trick ‘r Treat: Children running crisscross in droves from one colonial style house to the next, the cool autumn breeze blowing blankets of orange and rust colored leaves around. Yeah, Halloween was kind of big deal for us in the old neighborhood.
There was this one house on the corner of Carlos Drive and Colt Street that would go all out every year. I’m talking the scary music playing from hidden speakers outside, the fog machine, decorations, the works! But that wasn't why the crowds would gather year after year around the mid century ranch home. No, it was the crazy owner who would dress up each season and scare the hell out of everyone that rang the doorbell. He’d hide in the bushes, jump out from behind a darkened front door, or sit still as stone on a chair out in front, in full scarecrow costume, then jump up at the last minute to frighten unaware trick or treaters. You’d hear the screams half way down the block as you approached.
He wasn’t even averse to building his own props just to add some authenticity. One year, he built a full size sarcophagus, dressed up as a mummy and popped out of that thing all night long. But this single year in particular, I must have been five or six years old, he went one step beyond and gave me the scare of my (what had been a very short) life up to that point. But it wasn’t anything he did directly to me, nope. This year in particular, that crazy bastard dressed up as Dracula, built a coffin that had wheels under it, and had the rest of his costumed family roll him back and forth in front of his home.
As my two brothers and I approached, my oldest brother, Rob, who by complete chance had also been dressed as Dracula that year, walked right up to the edge of the coffin. The lid cracked open and there was adult Drac beckoning to us. He reached his hand out to Rob’s and said, “Ah, you, my son, come join me inside this coffin and we’ll sleep together for eternity,” or something to that effect. Being all of five or six years old, I burst out in tears, believing this scary man was really going to steal my brother away from us. I remember screaming at him to leave my brother alone, grabbing at Rob’s sleeves in desperate agony to try and save him. I think everyone gathered had a good laugh. Fortunately for me, I can look back on it now and have a laugh myself.
But it kind of traumatized me for life. And every year after that one, I always continued to feel a little extra uneasy when we approached the house on the corner of Carlos and Colt each Halloween.
-Dan (twitter)
My favorite Halloween memory was this VHS tape my parents put together for me as a kid back in 1985. It starts out with a Disney special that first is an animated short of the biography of Washington Irving, and then followed by the classic Legend of Sleepy Hollow cartoon, narrated by Bing Crosby.
After that we get a commercial for the Disney adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the Disney Channel Halloween Special, which was made up of classic spooky scenes and cartoons. This you can find on YouTube today. I always watch the theme song at least every year to get me in spooky mode.
In between all of these is a CBS special commemorating Donald Duck’s 50th birthday, which, while not Halloween related means that 50 years from that point was 1935, of which now 50 years ago is 1970, which was only 10 years before I was born, and that’s pretty scary in and of itself.
And then lastly it’s the one-two punch of Its The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, and the debut of the Garfield Halloween Special, where Garfield and Odie go trick or treating and end up being terrorized by some pirate ghosts straight out of The Fog.
All complete with commercials, so this tape was a time capsule of that era of my childhood, and it’s been burned into my soul long after I had any VCR to play it on. And that’s really what Halloween is about, holding on to that fun, spooky side and enjoying life (and eating candy, candy candy candy *in my best Garfield voice*)
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