The Discussion: Halloween
Hello, all you interesting internet dwelling folks! It's time for a new discussion here on the show that talks about stuff on purpose, and since it's October the only truly worthy topic has to be Halloween. Not the long-running motion picture franchise, mind you. We're referring more broadly to the holiday itself. We love Halloween around here at Casa de TRAPS. It's our favorite holiday. The most wonderful time of the year. Some of our happiest and most cherished memories are wrapped up in the macabre finery of Halloween, and we wouldn't have it any other way.
We're planning on recording an episode soon that will go live on Halloween for your listening pleasure, and we want you to be an integral part of it! How, you may well be asking? By sharing your own cherished Halloween memories with us, of course! We invite you to leave a comment below telling us all about your own relationships with Halloween. Tell us why this beautifully spooky holiday matters to you. What are favorite aspects of the season? Do you love going to spook houses, watching scary movies, throwing costume parties, carving Jack-O-Lanterns, or maybe building new trick-or-treating memories with your own children?
Tell us all about it below, and your comments will be read aloud on our very special Halloween episode! And if you think your tales are too big to be contained by our comments section, please feel free to send us a spooky email, which we would greatly appreciate. We'll be accepting comments here until Friday, October 28th, so spill your guts!
And Happy Halloween!
Halloween is my favorite holiday. When I was a kid trick-or-treating was the coolest thing I could imagine. I got to dress up like a vampire and run around my neighborhood after dark, demanding free candy from strangers, and they would actually give me candy! How wild is that? I think I was a generic vampire four years in a row. I just loved vampires, and every time I found that cheap plastic cape at the supermarket I was excited because it meant Halloween was right around the corner. I'd cover my face in that crappy white makeup you could buy for less than a dollar and wear some cheap plastic fangs and as soon as I hit the sidewalk that evening, even though I was just a scrawny little kid I felt like Count Dracula himself. I have two nephews and I take them trick-or-treating every year. Last year the youngest one even dressed up as a vampire. Some of his accoutrements were a little more advanced than the stuff I could afford when I was a kid, but it really brought back some memories.
ReplyDeleteI love carving Jack O Lanterns. There's a local farm that has a big pumpkin patch every year and I head there halfway through October and pick up three or four nice-sized pumpkins to carve up. I always take a sick day on Halloween if it falls on a workday, so I get carving my pumpkins late in the morning, sitting on my front porch and listening to music that helps set the mood. Not necessarily "Halloween" music, although I have some records I keep in rotation, including Halloween Is Here from Lonesome Wyatt thanks to TRAPPO. Honestly, that's a straight-up classic and I love it. I find the music of Robert Johnson to be very appropriate. It usually takes me over an hour to carve my Jack-O-Lanterns because I never have a plan when I start. I just come up with the faces on the fly when I look at the shapes of the pumpkins and decide what might be the best fit.
ReplyDeleteIt's always a very enjoyable experience for me, and last year my girlfriend participated, which was a nice change. She'd never actually carved a Jack O Lantern before, and her family never really celebrated Halloween in general, so I've been introducing her to the wonders of the holiday and it's been a blast. We had a great time last year, and this year she came with me to the farm to pick her own pumpkin yesterday. She was running around the field looking for the perfect pumpkin for a half hour and it was adorable.
Jack O Lanterns, man. Happy Halloween, TRAPS. May your Jack-O-Lanterns blaze long into the festive Halloween night.
I worked at a local haunt for several seasons called “Terror Island”, which was confusing to me because there was no island. A big wooden footbridge crossed a large creek to a parcel of land owned by an old man who struck oil on his property in the 1950s and he leased it to a group of people who made “Terror Island” each Halloween for maybe twenty years. I guess the bridge made people feel like maybe they were crossing over to an island.
ReplyDeleteI was in charge of my own staging area, and I usually chose a mad scientist’s experiment gone awry kind of thing for my gag, which always went over well. Me and a couple friends would hang out and smoke weed and screw around when we weren’t jumping out of the dark, flailing our arms and screaming incoherently at paying customers. It was a lot of fun.
I’d still be working “Terror Island” if the head organizer hadn’t died. He had a heart attack on his birthday back in 2018. Big Ed. Tall as a fucking oak tree. Nicest guy I ever met. I didn’t care all that much about Halloween until I started working for Big Ed. It’s my favorite holiday these days. I still try to go to a local haunt each year, because I know the gig, and I know a lot of the people who put them together around town. It’s almost like a carny thing, I think. We’re kind of a family.
Happy Halloween, Big Ed.
Dressing up was always my favorite part of Halloween. I could be anything I wanted to be for one night a year and people wouldn't judge me or call me a weirdo. I felt like I actually fit in when I was trick-or-treating with my friends, dressed like a witch or a banshee (I got really into Celtic folklore in fifth grade). When I was a teenager I started going to midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show around Halloween and that was like finding a secret world where I felt like I was among people who truly understood me. Columbia was almost my favorite character and I loved the way Little Nell sang, so when I finally had the opportunity to act in a production of the original musical of course I was playing Columbia. This year I'm attending a screening on Devil's Night and I was chosen to portray Dr. Frank N Furter in the shadow cast, which is a first for me and incredibly exciting.
ReplyDeleteI also can't let a Halloween season go by without watching 1932's The Mummy. It's one of my favorite movies ever made, with a truly hypnotic atmosphere and fantastic performances from Boris Karloff and Zita Johann. I fell in love with Karloff's Imhotep when I was a kid and that's never really changed. His origin in the film is genuinely horrific and he has always been the rare monster I've always wanted to see victorious in the end. Imhotep deserved better. And Zita Johann looks spectacular with some beautiful, risqué fashions considering the time period. The Mummy's definitely my favorite of the Universal Horror movies, a true classic from the golden age of cinema, and I can't celebrate Halloween without it.
Happy Halloween, TRAPS!
When I was a teen, I got big into the DIY haunted house scene. I transformed my family's two-car garage into a little spook house for the neighborhood kids to enjoy while they went trick or treating on Halloween since I had become too old to respectfully trick or treat myself. At the end of the tiny spooky labyrinth my older sister would wait as the Bride of Frankenstein with her hair all teased out and her arms wrapped in crepe paper we bought from the local drug store, holding a big dish filled with candy. When the kids got close, she just stood there like a statue and when they got a handful of candy, she let out a bloodcurdling scream them sent those rugrats running for the exit. As soon as they got outside, they laughed and told each other they weren't really scared, and some of them even lined up to walk through again.
ReplyDeleteMy little haunt became a pretty big deal around the neighborhood until I left for college, and when I would come home to visit during fall break I would sometimes get heckled by some of the kids in the neighborhood for stopping the tradition. I didn't think anybody really cared until I heard some of these kids and saw the genuine disappointment in their faces when they told me how much they enjoyed my haunted garage. I realized that in some very small way I actually made a difference for these kids. I made their Halloween a little more special.
I moved into a townhome four years ago, and my neighbors are pretty cool, so when I asked them if they would be interested in pooling our resources and making a joint neighborhood haunt three years ago they agreed. We put on as big a show as we can reasonably afford each year, and I see how much the kids who live around here appreciate our efforts. It's one of the best feelings I've ever experienced. My sister's visiting this Halloween, and I've already gotten her to agree to be my Bride of Frankenstein one more time. Everything old is new again.
Long Live Halloween.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is a great movie for this time of year because it's got both the big holidays covered. You've got the great Halloween atmosphere in the first half, and the second half is a macabre Christmas that a morbid kid can really get behind. And the animation is fantastic. And the story's great. It's the first love story I watched as a kid that I could actually enjoy. I watch it every October, and every December. It's two great holiday movies in one! You can't beat that bargain!
ReplyDeleteI grew up in a Cabrini-Green high rise and we would trick-or-treat in our building, but we knew which apartments and even which floors to stay away from because we didn't want to get fucked up over knocking on the wrong door. Some of the dealers in the hood were real nice, handing out full size Snickers bars and Kit Kats, and we would usually accept that stuff even though we knew they were just trying to get us to trust them so we would end up playing lookout on the street when they were dealing. A few of my friends fell into that and one of them even got killed while playing hooky. I know a lot of people have a certain idea when they think of the projects at Cabrini-Green, but unless they lived there they have no idea.
ReplyDeleteHalloween was still fun, at least most of the time. We caught more flak from the cops than anybody else those nights because they were always just looking for any excuse to hassle anybody they could find in our neighborhood. We were all criminals to those assholes. Our family never had a lot of money but my mom would still always buy some tootsie rolls or dum dums and hand them out on Halloween. When my brothers and I got home we would always watch whatever scary movie we could find on TV. The first time I saw "Halloween 2" it was the late night movie one Halloween night. That TV version was so scary to me I couldn't shut up about it to all my friends. I never saw it again until I bought that special edition blu-ray of "Halloween 2" a few years ago on clearance at a Best Buy. I couldn't believe the TV cut was on that set, and I watched it as soon as I got home and I was a 6 year old boy again, freaking out and ready to hide under a blanket. What a surreal experience that was. One of my favorite memories was watching that movie with my brothers while I ate Jiffy Pop and my mom kept answering the door to hand out candy to older kids. I miss my mom.
I got out of that neighborhood and live in an actual house in St. Paul these days, but I still make Jiffy Pop and watch a scary movie each Halloween because of her. I also hand out candy, even late at night when the older kids make it through, although I can afford better stuff than dum dums and tootsie rolls. This year my daughter's old enough to go trick-or-treating for the first time. She's gonna be Skye from Paw Patrol, and she's more excited about Halloween this year than Christmas. My wife was gonna take our daughter out, but the child insisted on daddy taking her trick-or-treating, so now I get to be Marshall the firedog since I refuse to dress up as a cop, even a pretend dog cop. Happy Halloween.
I've got to do 2 things around the end of October, otherwise it's not Halloween. I have to read "The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow" outside on a cloudy, chilly day (hopefully under a tree with a slight breeze), and I have to watch "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". All that's non-negotiable. If that doesn't happen, it ain't Halloween. I'm 35 years old and I still watch a children's cartoon by myself each October. I don't even have the excuse of being able to watch it with nieces or nephews. I have a few of those, but they live in Hamilton and I live in Vancouver, so we don't hang out a lot. They seem like okay little people, but we're not that close. I live with my girlfriend but she doesn't always feel like sitting with me when I watch that sweet summer child Linus spend all night in a pumpkin patch waiting for a fictional demi-god to show up and give him a bunch of candy and toys. I get that.
ReplyDeleteI mean I have to sit and watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show with her every year, but that's fine. I keep telling her we can go see it at a rep theater with a bunch of other fans, and we can even dress up, but she just wants to watch it at home, drinking margaritas and eating candy corn in her comfy slippers. We're both pretty introverted, but I think actually going out and taking part in a raucous Rocky Horror screening once before we die would be good for both of us. I'm still trying to convince her to go this year, but I doubt it'll work. Some people like to go driving around at night around Christmas and looking at al the decorated houses, but we do that for Halloween. It's a lot of fun. On Halloween, we just take a long walk in the early evening and take in the ambience, checking out all the decorations as trick-or-treaters zoom by. We might stop for coffee if we're in the mood. Then we go home and drink some hard cider and watch The Ghoul Log on Shudder while we wait for kids to ring our doorbell.
That's a pretty wonderful Halloween as far as I'm concerned.
A perfect Halloween for me is setting up my old TV on the front porch in the late afternoon and playing 1967's Mad Monster Party on a loop with my hidden DVD player while I dress up like a scarecrow and sit on the bench by the door, pretending to be an inanimate object with a big bowl of candy sitting next to me. It's an old trick that a lot of people do, but I always enjoy it, and the kids seem to enjoy it too. Most of the kids know I'm not really just a scarecrow, so they're already laughing when they reach my porch, just waiting for me to start flailing my arms around and wailing like a "spooky" ghost. Half of the time I'm just watching Mad Monster Party on the porch anyway. Still wearing my costume, mind you. Sometimes some kids and their parents will watch part of the movie with me. It's just a neighborhood thing. We're all friendly and we know each other well enough.
ReplyDeleteI always leave my Jack O Lanterns lit when I go inside for the night, however. That's always been important to me. After all, it's one of the rules. Never blow out your Jack O Lantern before Halloween is over. Take my advice, TRAPS, and you'll have a very happy Halloween.
And maybe watch Mad Monster Party while you're at it.
I worshipped at the altar of Tom Savini growing up. His Grande Illusions books were my bible. They taught me so much about prosthetic make-up effects, and I memorized each instruction and diagram. I still have my original copies, and they're literally held together with duct tape, the old spines completely gone, I referenced them so often in my youth. I learned how to do plaster head casts, how to make masks and fake teeth, how to create realistic wounds and so much more from these books.
ReplyDeleteI put my skills to use making a bunch of super 8mm horror movies with my friends from the neighborhood, and, not to brag, but I created the coolest and most disgusting Halloween costumes, not only for myself, but for my younger sister when I "aged out" of trick or treating. She was the most amazing zombie when she was 12, absolutely revolting with part of her skull chipped away exposing her slimy brains to the world. I took her out that year and gimmicked bite wounds on my arms that she could tear away with her mouth when we wanted to freak out passers-by, and we sent one little cowboy screaming into the night, his concerned mother running after him. Maybe that's not very nice, but you have to admit that's one hell of a complement to a nascent special effects guru. And that kid had one hell of a story to tell to his friends the next day, and maybe his therapist years later. Halloween is just the absolute best.
I never really pursued my "craft" professionally, but I do occasionally provide make-up and blood effects for local stage productions (I just finished some particularly elaborate blood gimmicks for a Sweeney Todd show that I'm pretty proud of) and I even create the odd mask or wound for some of the nearby spook houses whenever they ask. It's a lot of fun, and it always makes me feel like a kid again, studying my well worn copy of Grande Illusions and getting ready to make something guaranteed to give my poor parents nightmares.
Happy Halloween!
I still watch that Charlie Brown Halloween special every year. I can't help it. The show is comfort food for me, just a relaxing and fun diversion that's the source for so many happy memories. It's not really spooky and there are no supernatural threats, but its depiction of Halloween feels authentic. These are just kids trying to have a fun Halloween, and it doesn't always work out they way they plan. Charlie Brown gets nothing but rocks when he goes trick-or-treating. Linus doesn't get to see The Great Pumpkin. Sally misses out on all the fun because she spends all night hanging out in a pumpkin patch with the dumb boy she likes. Even Snoopy (as the WWI flying ace) gets shot down behind enemy lines and has to find his way back home, if only in his imagination. The small triumphs and tragedies these kids face in this 25 minute special feel real and universal, like these things have happened to us, even if they didn't really happen to us.
ReplyDeleteIt's a brilliant piece of Americana, since Halloween is a uniquely American holiday. It's something we made, and It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown perfectly captures the essence of a child's Halloween, the good and the bad. The animation is endearing because it's not perfectly fluid like the big budget Disney movies of the day. The pitch perfect, iconic score by Vince Garaldi has become the de facto soundtrack for the holiday. The vocal performances are a bunch of hyperbolic children and for them Halloween is the most important thing EVER and you believe all of it because they believe all of it. Every single time I watch this show I vainly hope that maybe the Great Pumpkin will actually show up this time around, and in the end, when Linus's big sister Lucy comes around to bring her exhausted and cold brother home and put him to bed, I get a little misty-eyed. There's a real kind of magic captured here in this show, and there's a reason kids that watch it today, 56 years later, can still relate to these characters and their world. It's brilliant, an absolute masterpiece.
The first time I took my son trick-or-treating was last year. We came home and he was buzzing with excitement with his big plastic pumpkin filled with candy. Then I sat him down and we watched It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown together. He was transfixed, just taking it all in and laughing his butt off. After it was over, he grabbed a piece of candy and looked at me. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me he wanted Charlie Brown to have this piece and he handed it to me, because I guess he figured since I was an adult I'd know how to get it to him. I didn't have the heart to tell my four year-old son that I didn't know Charlie Brown's address, so I just took it and tucked it away in a drawer. I found that piece of candy, a little Tootsie Roll, yesterday while cleaning out that drawer, and that memory came flooding back and I just stood there in my kitchen for a few minutes with a big smile on my face. My son wouldn't remember, but I can remember for him.
And I'll keep the candy, just in case a little boy dressed like a ghost with too many holes in his sheet comes by on Halloween.