My first Halloween on Cape Cod was truly frightening.
I was in my 20s and had just moved to the north side after always living in cities. This was almost 50 years ago when once Labor Day came, the Cape shut down like a cold clam.
I had moved into a 200-year-old house on a road of 200-year-old houses. Everything seemed old. And haunted. At night, it was so dark. I hadn’t yet met any neighbors, so when Halloween came, I had no idea if anyone even went trick or treating. I was pretty sure I was on my way to becoming a character in a Stephen King novel.
Nonetheless, I bought candy, turned on the porch light and waited nervously. Pretty soon, the doorbell rang and there was a short, sheet-clad ghost on my front stoop. “Great costume,” I said, turning to get the candy. Suddenly the ghost leapt at me yelling, “Boo.” I immediately took some defensive action until I realized it was my fiance who had driven down from Boston to surprise me.
What can I say? I married him anyway. And our Halloweens improved.
Actually, I love Halloween. What’s not to like about a holiday that seems a little dangerous – all that walking around at night – and allows you to be anyone you want? Also, you get candy.
And it turned out that my new neighbors were all about the holiday. I don’t remember in my youth anyone really decorating for Halloween beyond putting out a carved pumpkin. But now I was in the land of stuffed scarecrows on porches and witches hanging from tree branches and pumpkins everywhere. One neighbor answered the door in a gorilla suit. Another put a plastic pumpkin on her head, dressed as a porch scarecrow, sat still as a statue on her front steps and then startled kids as they came up to collect candy. I think it was the next year my son went out as Darth Vadar because it was the scariest thing he could think of, and he wanted to be able to face down any pumpkin people.
My northside neighborhood had the right Halloween ambiance with gabled houses and dark lanes, to say nothing of a cemetery and a ghost story or two. There were actually families with young kids living along our stretch of Route 6A and the sideroads. You could get a lot of candy within a one-mile radius.
I was always torn whether it was better to stay home and hand out treats and get to see all the clever costumes, or be the parent trailing along on trick-or-treating and get to peek in the neighbors' houses. Sometimes adults dressed up, too. My husband once went out as Julia Child, carrying a huge wooden spoon. It was great until his lipstick soaked into his whiskers and he practically scrubbed his face off trying to remove it.
One year, three of us moms were the trick–or-treat chaperones, with at least six or seven kids in tow. It was a bitterly cold night – isn’t Halloween always the first bitterly cold night? The first house where we stopped the neighbor dropped candy in the kids’ bags and then took pity on us shivering on the doorstep. “You gals look so cold, how about a little trick-or-treat nip?” he said, handing us all a shot of brandy. Well, as the night went on, he was not the only homeowner to offer a warming adult beverage. By the time we got home, we were glowing like jack-o-lanterns.
Halloween is one of those bits of local life that tourists rarely see but that binds us year-rounders. In my brain, it’s the opening of the holiday season, a time when we turn our focus from tourists and bridge traffic to moments with family, friends and neighbors. Halloween asks little of us beyond using our imaginations – and buying candy. Whatever you do or become this year, embrace it. Because life is hard. Sometimes it helps to go in costume.
