Miasmatic Review

How my night went.

I’m a little disappointed in last night. First off I didn’t get the amount of trick or treaters that I thought I was going to get. Usually I get 200-300 kids, last night I got maybe 100-150. Trick or treating started at 5:30, but I didn’t get my first kid until almost 5:45. At first I thought it was because it was still light out and that a lot of people were waiting until it got dark, but no that wasn’t it. It did start picking up but it wasn’t until Ktreva returned with Clone that I realized why it was down by so much. Remember the flooding we had back in August, well a lot of the houses that were hit really bad are still condemned and abandoned. There were a lot of kids in that area.

Getting back to the daylight, how annoying. Half of my display doesn’t look scary in the daylight. In fact some of the scarier things you can’t see until it gets dark, like the free-floating ghost that is in the upstairs front window. Yet I still had a lot of people taking pictures of the house and me in the daylight. I lost count of how many kids I had my picture taken with or the kids had their picture taken with my display. You have to remember I dress up in a costume to hand out candy. Here I am:

I will admit that I do intentionally try to scare kids, but I have a rule. If they look like they are under the age of 10, I play nice. If there are kids under the age of 10 around, I play nice. If a kid under the age of ten gets scared, I will take my mask off just so they can see I’m not a real demon. I really do go out of my way not scare the younger kids, but sometimes bad things happen. There was on little boy, about two years old, that must have been in a panic before he got to my house. I could here him getting worked up as they approached. There were other kids there so I was handing out candy. My fog machine had been on and the wind had died down so there was thick fog bank on my obscuring my front porch from the sidewalk. As this kid in the stroller is pushed up to my steps a gust of wind clears the fog and he is looking directly at me. A shriek that only can be produced by a young child in fear for their life AND in pain was made. It was ear shattering! I ripped my mask off so fast I almost tore out my earrings. I said to the little boy, “See, it’s just a costume. Just like you are Spiderman, I’m a dark lord of the dead!” Sadly that actually seemed to calm him down a lot. Yet I still think he’s going to be in therapy until in his 50’s before he gets over this one.

I did get one legit scare last night. Two girls, about twelve, came walking up to the porch. At first they were hesitant and a little scared, but after they got their candy and were walking away I heard one say, “He’s not so scary.” So I jumped down the porch, ran up behind them and made a guttural scream. Both girls screamed and took off… in different directions. I don’t know if they ever found each other because I didn’t see either one of them the rest of the night. Maybe they went around the block to avoid my house.

What I don’t get was the extremes in reaction I received for the first time last night. Remember I said I had people wanting their kids to have their picture taken with me. Well I kid you not, one kid turns to me and says something like, “I want a pony, and a rocket ship, and a gun that shoots darts.” WTF?!?!?! What am I? Some kind of Satan Clause? Kids asking me for toys and stuff. That’s just not right!

Then on the other hand I had a lady who chastised me for scaring little kids. She arrived at a busy time when I had a lot of kids on my porch. The kids with here were probably 8-10 years old. A family with a young kid came up and the kid, of course, got scared. Thus as I stated I do, I took my mask off and gave the girl a piece of candy. After they left the Lady says to me, “You really should be ashamed of yourself for scaring little kids.” I replied, “It’s Halloween, I decorate and dress spooky. I don’t go out of my way to scare small children, but it does happen. That is why I took my mask off. This is for fun, if the parents want cute they’ll take the kids to see Santa or the Easter Bunny.” I mean c’mon. My house has a life-like skeleton hanging from a pole axe, zombies rising out of graves, a coffin with death hanging in it, ghosts, a giant spider eating severed limbs, rats, shrunken heads, severed heads, multiple skulls and me walking around. I think my decorations themselves speak as a warning that my house is PG-13 on the Scare-o-meter.

Eh, maybe she’s right and I shouldn’t do all of this…. Wait a second, I had one person complain and I had just about EVERY OTHER ADULT COMPLIMENT AND APPRECIATE WHAT I DID. I don’t know why, but her comment really got under my skin. I’m actually pretty annoyed by it. I don’t know why, but I am. Usually I let stuff like that roll of my back, but this time it’s still stinging a little.