Here is an autobiographical short story/recollection about a Halloween 22 years ago. Whenever I feel nostalgic for Halloweens past, this is usually the first one that comes to mind. Thanks to Andrew for helping me remember some stuff. It's a little longer than the other posts, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Full Moon Trio Early October 1986, amidst the dense trees and misty hollows of Floyd Hill, barely west of Denver, Colorado. I was just back from Nashville, a trip most significant for my dad’s second wedding. However, any venture outside our quaint mountain existence and into a real city meant an opportunity to hunt and gather. So the trip to Nashville was also important because I managed to find, in a West End costume shop, some key elements for my werewolf Halloween costume. I scored a high quality prosthetic wolfman nose and a pair of pointy ears. My plan this Halloween was to transform into a terrifyingly realistic werewolf, so it wasn’t enough to draw a widow’s peak on my forehead, add some grease paint whiskers and a black nose. No, it had to be a few steps closer to Hollywood quality, because this was also the year of our legendary soundproof spook alley.
There were 6 McEuen kids, but Andrew and Jonathan were my closest cousins. They could easily have been my brothers since I spent so much time with them in my youth. In 1986, Andrew was 12 and Jonathan was 10, and I was right in the middle. Jonathan was an eager-to-please, bowl-cut sporting kid, full of jokes and smartass comments. Andrew, the quiet rebel of the bunch, fit the middle child prototype as much as I did. He sort of stayed in the background, didn’t aspire to be a performer like Jonathan, but rather a visual artist as did I. We also shared an enthusiasm for a variety of things, including creature features, Topps cards and (down the road) Minneapolis funk.
The McEuen house was just down a half-mile rocky path near the bottom of Floyd Hill. We used this path so frequently; it was like a well-worn ski trail. My siblings and I could probably dash down the hill in the middle of the night with our eyes closed. With our eyes open, it looked like zooming through the forests of Endor on our speeder bikes. Not so much, however, on the exhausting upward hike back home. The morning routine was this: hop, run and jump to the McEuens, show up and watch them finish their breakfasts and put their coats on, then casually hop, run or walk down the trail to the bus stop. From there, it was a long haul to King Murphy Elementary – dubbed the “school in the sky” due to its uniquely high altitude.
This was the first year Andrew and I didn’t attend the same school. He had moved on to secondary school to join my older brother and cousins. We were still close, at least for the time being. It was still early in the school year. During the previous year at King Murphy, Andrew and I wrote a movie/play together for several weeks’ worth of Reading and Writing credit (I’m still amazed we got away with it). While acting out a scene from our movie/play, Andrew accidentally punched me in the face. He felt pretty bad and cried, although it was a minor incident. Then in the fall of 1987, after I started attending secondary school, Andrew approached me in the hall, socked me in the nuts and laughed his ass off. Yes, things had changed between us in a matter of a couple years, but for the time being, in the fall of 1986, we were pals.
Jonathan and I still attended elementary school together. He was a year behind me, but due to the relatively small number of students at King Murphy, we shared many of the same classes. This year, Jonathan and I had plenty of time to think up the ultimate haunted house. We had tried it a few years earlier, in their unfinished concrete basement in Salt Lake City. That was a group effort that included their older brother Aaron and my older brother Jaime. The closest we ever got to completion on that spook alley was cutting out some cardboard bat wings and buying some fake plastic vampire bites. This year, it was up to me, Andrew and Jonathan to fulfill our vision of the haunted house. Jaime and Aaron had moved on to better things (band, music, girls) in high school.
The plan was to utilize the sound proof section of the McEuen basement. This was intended originally as a recording studio, due to my uncle being a musician, but was ultimately just a playroom for my cousins. A playroom with really fancy sound recording equipment and band memorabilia. So we had a big room full of insulation foam walls as our backdrop. Next, we needed to gather up our bundle of props and gags. Our resources were limited, but we knew we had plenty of dead leaves, twigs, and cardboard at our disposal. We also knew of the old cheap tricks: dry ice and water for fog, cassette tape of “spooky sounds”, bowl of spaghetti for guts, strobe-light, jumping out of a box or garbage can for an ultimate, piss-yer-pants scare. Given the limited space and list of gags, our spook alley was nearly laid out for us. We just needed to see it through this time.
Of course we needed an audience. There would be plenty of trick-r-treaters coming through Halloween night – plenty of kids from our school. They needed to know not to pass up the McEuen house this Halloween, because not only were they gonna get some candy, but they were gonna get a damn good scary experience for free. So we made up some hand-drawn flyers. We asked our friend Carrie into making copies for us with her parent’s fancy home Xerox machine. She agreed. Carrie was the closest thing to a love interest in Elementary School. She also lived on Floyd Hill. I used to leer admiringly at her house as we passed by on the long, twisted ride up the dirt road to our house. I was really hoping she would make an appearance at the soundproof spook alley, which would have been a great opportunity for me to impress her with my scare tactics. Eventually, most of our fellow students caught on and agreed to make an appearance. This just fueled our ambition to create an unforgettable experience for them.
Mid October. Orange and yellow leaves were covering the hills. For the 2 weeks leading up to Halloween, I was spending most of my afternoons at the McEuen house assembling the spook alley. Jonathan, Andrew and I rounded up enough twigs and leaves to scatter across the studio carpet. We made the dividing walls with sheets and blankets. The experience was broken into approximately 4 phases. First, the guests would walk into the spook alley from the outside, through the dense basement studio door. Then they would enter the graveyard of orange and brown carpeting and studio foam walls, but with leaves covering the floor, cardboard gravestones, spooky lighting, sound effects and fog. Through the dark control room window, they could see a ghost appearing and disappearing (using flashlight special effects). Around the corner was the big money scare - the “pop-em-out” moment. One of us hid in a trash can and jumped out right as the guest walked by. Imagine that. Following was some touch and feel guts/spaghetti, cobwebs and decorations draped over reel-to-reel tape recorders and microphone stands. Then, outside the studio exit was some candy waiting for them. That was it. Beyond that, I imagine they got a brief tour of the McEuen household on the way to the front door. Yes, it was a short, (but hopefully) scary experience.
Halloween fell on a Friday that year. I wore my werewolf costume to school, complete with fake hair spirit gummed to my face along with the nose and ears. I had some bottom-jaw fangs to add to it all. I was quite happy with the finished look. Jonathan struggled with his costume decision for days. I think he ended up dressing as a “ghoul”. At school, we made every effort to remind our friends of the spook alley. We had the sort of festive activities any elementary school would have on Halloween day. It was unusually chilly outside. Snow flurries drifted in the air throughout the day.
Jonathan and I met up with Andrew after school. By then, the flurries had turned to snow, and it was sticking. I called home to see if my mom and my siblings, Mark, Kathryn and Jaime, were planning on coming down the hill for trick-r-treating. She told me they were going to stay home because of the snow. But there was no way Halloween was going to be cancelled for my cousins and me. Too much work went into this spook alley to give it up. As it got closer to evening, we got into character and took our places. Andrew and Jonathan touched up with white cake make-up. Jonathan was the ghost in the control booth, Andrew was the all-purpose ghoul, and I was still in werewolf mode hiding in the trashcan. Aunt Kae was ready to hand out candy at the exit.
It was a blizzard outside, but a handful of unidentified younger kids managed to make it to the house. They walked through, shrieked at the right moments and within minutes collected their candy and left. Then we waited. A few others showed up, walked through, and went on their way. An hour or two had hours passed. It was becoming painfully obvious that no one else would show up. The number of total guests were in the single digits. We cursed the snow, then moped, then decided to defy Mother Nature. We weren’t going to let the damned blizzard ruin our Halloween.
Jonathan and Andrew wanted to change their outfits before we trekked into the snow for a night of trick-r-treating. They talked me into “sharing” my werewolf costume. I had some extra hair and make-up. I also parted with my pointy ears. Out of the costume rationing came three half-werewolf, half-vampire sort of monsters in moon boots. If you had combined the three of us, you would have had a complete costume. We went out into the dark, but the glow from the snow illuminated the road. Into the vacant Halloween night we journeyed – the snow swept sideways like a star field screensaver. We walked inside the deep tire tracks to avoid stepping in the snow. The keepers of the candy seemed surprised to see us, the lone trick-r-treaters. All the more treats for us. For an hour or two we were out filling up our bags and plastic pumpkins. We arrived at a dark house at the end of a twisted driveway. A single, thirty-something woman came to the door. She greeted us with a smile, then complimented us on our shared costumes. To our surprise, she gave us what seemed the Golden Ticket of candy: the FULL SIZE Hershey chocolate bar. Our determination had paid off - we could finally call it a night.
Back at the house, we shook off the snow and changed into our cozies. The candy poured out into three piles to sort and trade. It had been a long day, and we were exhausted. The hills and trees outside the windows were flocked white. We rolled up into blankets and planted ourselves on the couch. Flicking through the limited TV channels, we came upon an edited-for broadcast horror movie of some kind. Through the rabbit-ears static we could see Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, and a guy wearing a bleached Capt. Kirk mask. It was…Halloween…part II.
THE END
