The Pumpkin Patch
Cost: $22, if we’d actually been willing to pay for it.
I already wrote about this experience. You remember that post, right? It was pretty short, mostly because Bobby and I were too cheap to pay the price of admission and were relegated to buying some apple butter and going home.
The Corn Maze
Cost: $18 minus what we stole.
On a Sunday afternoon shortly before Halloween, my mother and I went to a cute Halloween corn maze/hay ride/autumn festival out in the country. The review in the local paper had made it sound like a lot of fun, with a variety of events and organic, home-cooked food. In actuality, the target age for the majority of the activities was five, which left little for my mother and I to do. The hayride involved two dirty bales of hay, one rickety tractor, and roughly fifteen people who could have more quickly completed the route if they’d walked. On their hands.
The corn maze was definitely more interesting, at least for the first thirty minutes. It was set on roughly five acres of corn and for the most part, the corn was high enough to prevent us from seeing over the walls. After ten minutes of hiking through endless cornstalks, my mother announced that excitement level of the maze would be vastly improved by the addition of scary inhabitants like men with chainsaws or rabid animals. Almost immediately after she finished that sentence, the corn stalks started rustling violently and, being the brilliantly quick-thinking women we are, we grabbed each other and stared in motionless terror at the corn. It was like one of those horror movies where the ditz in the skimpy nightgown stands rooted to the spot as the killer approaches. Except this time, the killer turned out to be a stray dog that burst out and raced harmlessly past us.
The corn maze ended early, probably because we lost interest after forty-five minutes and cut straight through the walls of corn until we were free. Then, because we didn’t feel like we’d gotten our admission’s worth of entertainment, we picked up several of the pumpkins that were clearly marked as being forty cents a pound and walked straight to the car and left.
The Pumpkin Carving
Cost: Priceless.
My parents, Bobby, and I sat down the Saturday before Halloween to carve our pumpkin. Mine came out decently well, although I accidentally sliced off my jack-o-lantern’s teeth and had to stick them back in with toothpicks. Bobby had a similar incident that he also repaired fairly well, but my mother? Let’s just say she isn’t destined for a career in surgery, unless she’s performing amputations. Somehow she started cutting out the wrong pieces from the pattern she had used, and by the end she had “fixed” the everything by hacking out almost the entire design, leaving a pumpkin with part of a face and a lot of gaping space.
The Cemetery Visit
Cost: One quarter tank of gas and one insulted spirit.
At 11pm on October 30th, Bobby and I set out to visit a cemetery in which we could welcome in the beginning of Halloween by searching for ghosts. The first two cemeteries we visited were less than ideal – too well lit, not enough old headstones, too close to a busy road or homes – but the third was a dark, expansive winner. After a quick stroll through the graveyard, I wanted to sit down and was advised to ask permission of the headstone’s owner. Mr. Riley didn’t seem to object when I mentioned sitting on his marker, so Bobby and I settled in to wait for the dead to come. They never did, lazy bastards.
However, Bobby broke the crypt-like silence at one point by passing gas onto Mr. Riley’s grave marker. I’m not sure what he was thinking – farting on a headstone seems like a quick ticket to acquiring your very own angry poltergeist – but he hastily apologized and we fled to the car.
The Ouija Board
Cost: Three candles, one pirated Halloween noises soundtrack, and the scorn of the silent undead.
After unsuccessfully trying to rouse the dead at several cemeteries, Bobby and I pulled out a Ouija board that same night, lit several candles, and tried to commune with the spirits at home. The hardest part was getting started; we both wanted to take it seriously so something wild could happen, but it was also very difficult to earnestly say aloud, “If there are any spirits in this house, please make your presence known.” After a rocky start and no response, we resorted to saying nasty things about how ghosts are stupid and fake in hopes of stirring an irritated reaction. Nothing. Not a peep, and the Ouija pointer didn’t move a millimeter. I’d say I’ve never felt as ridiculous as when I was staring intently at a glow-in-the-dark Hasbro Ouija board in hopes of hearing from a dead person, but then there was this next event.
The Trick or Treating
Cost: Dignity and self-respect.
I could explain in great detail how I ended up in my parents’ neighborhood dressed as a cow, with Bobby in tow dressed as something scary involving a sheet and a mask, but why bother? It was my twenty-third birthday and I went from door to door, soliciting candy shamelessly from the neighbors. Enough said. I thought the costume would fool people, but no. Every single neighbor recognized me immediately and then just laughed. Well, almost everyone. There was one ten year-old boy who just stared at us blankly, held out the candy bowl, and said disdainfully, “Take two.”
Mom, I also owe you an apology. When I expressed indignation about being recognized by one of your neighbors, I was informed that she was instantly tipped off because I look so much like you. I, never one to pass up an opportunity for a good joke, immediately asked, “What, is it the cow suit?”
The Haunted Forest
Cost: $40, which was $39.98 more than it was worth.
The scariest thing about Field of Screams, a “haunted forest” located forty miles from my house, was the way several of the actors’ breath reeked when they shrieked in our faces. The smells were stunningly rancid, and I’m still having nightmares about them to this day. In retrospect, the creators should have named the forest Field of People Who Would Be Well-Advised To Brush More Often.