Scaring the children, one at a time…

I didn’t go all out like author Leslie Kelly and her family, but I do like to do something for Halloween. Long after my kids have grown up and started families of their own, I still like to provide some fun for the young ones in the neighborhood. In year’s past, I’d try to do up the yard in some sort of diorama, complete with spooky music, and the standard hanging zombie (no nooses!) and the flickering lit flames of fire made of flapping cloth –

My 2003 display

I really appreciate the people who put something in their yard, like this guy two streets down from me:

But you just don’t get the same effect unless you light the crap out of it when everyone comes by.

So, I’ve learned to use blacklights. I had three 14 in. long ones, but I’m down to two now (I think one of the kids reclaimed the one of them when they moved out — after all, blacklights aren’t just for Halloween!) and I’ve also learned not to place them too far away from what you want to be lit.

That means I’ve gotten smaller. The front door step seemed the place. I don’t have any pictures of it lit up, because I made up my face with black grease paint before it got dark, and it would have taken Alison too long to figure out how to manually focus my big camera to take a pic of everything lit up, but here it is in daylight:

The skull/spine I turned into a fountain, where the top of the skull was styrofoam peanuts, with drizzled tempera paint and the juice from those glow sticks. The brain self glow action was good, but the stream from the top of the skull was lost in the dark. The purple webbing glowed a blueish-white light, and there’s green glowing webbing under there, too.

I had black cream paint around my eye sockets and around my mouth, with outsized teeth and the rest of my face done with glow in the dark cream. You see, the glow in the dark stuff doesn’t do well, unless it’s hit with black light, which was perfect for me… I sat in a chair behind the skull fountain, and kept still until they got reeeeal close.

Opening my mouth wide apparently worked well for the best scare!

I saved having to give candy to several kids who ran away not to come back…

Why do I do it? Because that’s what I remember from when I was a kid. I won’t have my “Get Off My Lawn!” neighbor on one side or the “Halloween Is The Devil’s Day!” lady on the other side convince me to remove the fun from something that gets the kids to ask for candy from strangers… I’m like Hank Hill in that episode of “King Of The Hill” where Hank has to take back the neighborhood from those who would want to destroy Halloween. I’m doing it because someone has to.

Someone out there has to scare the children.