It’d be an honor to be buried in this cemetery. I’d want it both ways and request that half of me be buried in a plot and the other half incinerated in the crematorium… I’d prefer it if my ashes were to settle on the surrounding homes and cars.
Haunts like Mr. Macabre’s below were what it was all about when I was trick-or-treating. You’d see a display like this one and see the amount of work that went into it, and the vastness of the operation, and you’d be scared to even go up for candy (at least that’s how I was as a kid). You’d see multiple creatures roaming the grounds (those were always extra unnerving to me [and I think I always assumed they were evil teens waiting to steal my candy {or worse}]). I came from a house where anyone past the age of 15 never wore a costume in any shape or form. But here were adults manning a Haunt and using real fire, and running a crematorium no less – with a smoking chimney.
When you went up there and got your candy, you felt really proud of yourself. And you definitely felt safer once you reached the sidewalk. This’ll be hard to articulate, but it almost felt like those times where you’re lost and suddenly see a landmark or a street name that you recognize, and all is well again. Haunters create this entire mini world where an ordinary suburban home becomes something peculiar and out-of-place, and unsafe. Your logic and experience tells you it’s just Halloween, but your senses are whispering something else entirely.
Here’s to those folks who didn’t just hand out candy on a pumpkin-less porch. Here’s to those folks who blared Alice Cooper or a sound effects cassette. Who sometimes used a real casket from God-knows-where. Who followed you around dressed as an ugly rubber-faced Witch. Who made Halloween something better than Christmas.
