When I was a child, I was terrified of ghosts.
So horrified was I by their mere idea, that I made a point of reading each and every single ghost story that I could lay my hands on, from the occasional short story in my elder brother’s Eagle, to A Christmas Carol, to (ooh-ee-ooh) The Monkey’s Paw, retreating to bed after each reading to lie wide-eyed and rigid with fear, the blankets pulled scrupulously to my chin that no spectral hand might shake my shoulder, the curtains tugged close across the window that no supernatural apparition might peer in, jumping in terror at each creak of our old house, each hiss of our overworked radiator system, each (oh, no) rustling of the close-pulled curtain in the (oh, nooooooo!) nighttime breeze. I was petrified. I adored it.
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Given this predilection, the night of Hallowe’en was for me a combination of Christmas Day, the Superbowl, and the Beatles on the rooftop, all rolled into one. It was the night when the damp winds of October gave way to the bleak chill of November; the night when ghosts walked the earth, when the graves opened and the dead in all their decomposing flesh crawled out, the night when one such (I can only now suppose a particularly bored one, with nowhere more interesting to be) would surely feel the compulsion to drag its gruesome way to the Donnelly family’s toy-strewn, sausages-and-chips-fragrant house in North London specifically in order to show itself to the thoroughly unremarkable little girl who lived there, either groaning and rattling the chains with which Dickens, who must surely know about such matters, had confidently informed me ghosts came accessorized, or possibly, worse, horrifically still and silent, staring at me with eyes of ice. The level of terror was divine.
It was something of a shock, therefore, to encounter some years later Southern California’s version of Hallowe’en. Instead of dead leaves swirling in circles through sodden air, we had mild blue skies, oranges growing in front yards, and lissome palm trees casting slender shadows in the mellowing sun. Instead of the chill whisper of dread creeping like ghostly fingers on the damply foreboding wind, we had … well, we had decorations. Festive decorations. Enthusiastic decorations. Happy decorations.
Ghosts and ghouls danced merrily together on manicured lawns; skeletons relaxed on patios or waved cheerful greetings from front porches; grinning green-skinned witches appeared delighted to be strung by their necks from cactus branches; and children played raucously in bone-strewn lawns decorated with tombstones etched with their own names. At first, the dour Northern European inside of me was appalled by such frivolity. This was Hallowe’en?
Truth to tell, I quickly learned to accept it. It did not require an archaeological dig of introspection for me to identify a preference for sunny skies over dark evenings; and I am happy to report that in my adult years I have discovered other ways to be thrilled than scaring myself halfway out of my wits. And, whether you happen to reside among the living or among the dead, you would have to have a heart of granite not to have it melt at least a little bit at the trick or treaters.
In a time when we are constantly told that the magic of childhood is all but dead, that the internet is driving our junior citizens to lose their sense of wonder, that they know too much about things they shouldn’t and not enough about finding joy in simple pleasures, trick or treat is an occasion of pure, untrammeled enchantment. Streams of kids will flock to the front door, some bounding excitedly, some clinging bashfully to their mothers’ hands, dressed as witches, fairies, flamenco dancers, spacemen, pop singers, dinosaurs, sandwiches, house plants, kitchen appliances … the only limit is that of youthful inventiveness, which, it quickly becomes apparent, is more or less no limit at all.
The costumes range from the exquisite to the grotesque, from the meticulously planned to the hastily slapped together; ghosts of all descriptions shout “Boo!” and stand grinning in delight as you reel back in pretend fear; princesses flounce through in dresses whose sequins would make a Kardashian weep with envy; last year, one little boy had simply painted an old woman’s face onto a sheet of cardboard and fastened it around his head with a length of elastic, and so convincingly did he hobble to the door with one hand clutching his aching hip that he had me on the point of whipping out a chair for the frail old dear to take a rest on. It is pure fantasy – and the purest of delight.
Mr. Los Angeles loved trick or treating when he was a child. Eschewing superhero costumes on the grounds that they were “icky,” and barred from paying realistic tribute to his personal hero Wyatt Earp by the stern edict of Mr. Los Angeles Senior that even toy guns “were not toys,” he gravitated more to the look of the sober 1960s superspy, his apotheosis being the year he donned a shirt and tie and parlayed his 9-year-old’s stick-straight, Norwegian white-blond hair into what he even now describes proudly as “the ultimate Illya Kuryakin.” Thrush agents were particularly shifty that year.
Receiving trick or treaters as a young adult, he would don a dramatic cloak, dim his house lights, and open the door with a rich Bela Lugosi-esque chortle, until one child, on seeing him, first let loose a word his mother had had no idea he had known, and immediately, realizing the trouble he had landed himself in, reflexively let loose a different word his mother had really had no idea he had known, before physically clamping both hands over his mouth to prevent further self-incrimination and fleeing the scene; following which, even Mr. Los Angeles acknowledged that the fun had gotten as good as it was going to get and retired on the high to regular candy-distributing – enlivened by the occasional sinister cackle along the way – from then on.
Mr. Los Angeles considers himself an expert on Hallowe’en candy. The point, he firmly maintains, is quantity over quality, and he returns from the supermarket delightedly laden with bag upon bag of waxy miniature chocolate bars, luridly colored lollipops, and a particularly repellent foodstuff called candy corn, an orange-colored wedge resembling to my European eye nothing so much as an earplug, than which I can imagine few objects less attractive to consume, but each to their own. He tends these treasures carefully, distributing them through a series of pumpkin-shaped buckets with the delicate precision of a Victorian spinster arranging a bowl of pot pourri, and hands them out with aplomb when the trick or treaters arrive.
For all the talk of the greed of the modern child, the tricksters who knock on our door are generally reticent to the point of self-denial. “Are you sure you don’t want another?” we will ask a fierce pirate captain or haughty Cruella De Vil, who will turn beseeching eyes to their parent for permission before shyly accepting. Siblings will even share with each other unbidden, which in these troubled times I find a pleasingly hopeful portent for our future. We could do far worse, I feel, in the coming generations than to be governed by a Cat in the Hat who is willing to share her candy.
After the last doorbell has rung, the last Jedi has swung his light saber, and the last giggling witch has bared her nails, Mr. Los Angeles and I take a bowl of the small mountain of candy that still remains and sit together in the quiet, passing pieces of the less repulsive chocolates, and chuckling over the evening. Our heads are filled with outlandish costumes and childish laughter, and there is the merest hint of a seasonal snap in the air; soon it will be Thanksgiving, and after that, Christmas. Parties will be thrown, gifts will be exchanged, and far too much food enthusiastically consumed; the joyous, endless, ridiculous American holiday season has officially begun.
And, just sometimes, after the chocolate wrappers have been discarded and the pulsating piles of Fruit Chews stowed somewhere discreetly far from polite gaze, when the moon has risen high in the sky, and all the trick or treaters are safely home and tucked quietly into their beds, when the mist creeps in from the ocean and the winds begin to blow around the edges of the house, I find myself thinking of the evil monkey’s paw from that absurdly cheesy tale of my childhood, and, just sometimes, and just for a second or two, I might just find myself listening, shivering just a little, and wondering if I will hear the sound of the dead young man patiently knocking on the door …