Creature of Habit

I am programmed like Pavlov's dog. I hit my spot on stage like the great Lawrence Olivier. October roles around and my mind swings immediately into Halloween. Actually, I started thinking about Halloween in August but October just puts into hyperdrive in a big way.

My love affair with Halloween started in the early 70's when I was just a child. The combination of dressing up as something scary and putting up scary decorations struck a chord with me. Even then, by August I was drawing Jack O' Lanterns and skulls and plastering them all over the house. My mom thought I was weird…well, I guess I was…er…I am. Well, my mom and dad both encouraged me delving into my darker side. My mom got me a Dick Baker prosthetic makeup kit when I was in the 4^th grade. I learned how to make facial feature enhancements and so forth. I won the costume contest at school for Mr. Hyde with latex and hair all spirit gummed to my face. My father was teaching me the classic pranks of Halloween like soap on the windows, TP in the trees and eggs on the doors. He also taught me how to make tombstones out of cardboard boxes, build dummies and using string to simulate spider webs even before fake webs were created. Even by my family got involved into feeding my morbid side. One Christmas I received two model anatomically correct human skulls from an aunt and my parents. I still have one of them now.

Through the years I have tried to make trick or treating a big deal at my place with limited success for mainly two reasons. 1. Lacked the funds. 2. Was part of the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Being a cast member really tied up my Halloweens. However, that did not stop me building a Harvey the Reaper and Fred the reaper. Harvey was built when I was in high school out of wood scraps and my clothes. I mounted one of the model skulls on it and put a grim reaper cloak on it. Later after I was with Viki and working my first gig as a GM of a theatre, I built Fred the reaper. Same M.O., same skull. It was a sad day to destroy him. Still have the cloak, the sickle and of course, the skull. Things have changed however. In the last four years I have been able to start building up my haunt here at Duvall Manor. I started off with some tombstones, some theatrical lighting, an angel of death/reaper and a severed head. The next year I added more tombstones, a remote control severed torso zombie, a severed head on a no trespassing sign, a ground fogger and jerry-rigged flying crank ghost. Last year I rebuilt and improved the flying crank ghost, improved the lighting and added a few items in some windows. This year's newest additions is using some of the Christmas flood lights for better yet eerie lighting and I have a flying ghost that travels a 25' line over the yard back and forth. I wanted something that traversed the circumference of the yard but the lack of funding got in the way. By the way, each year I had eerie sound effects (NO MUSIC) to add to the atmosphere. The first year I was a grim reaper using prosthetic skull appliances on my face and the last two have been an 1800's under taker. This year will be the same.

As you can see, I don't do the "cute" Halloween. Halloween is about monsters, ghosts and various other scary bloody things. I have said it before and I will continue saying it for years to come, it is not Halloween unless I have children crying and pissing themselves. The plus side is if they brave the haunt, then they can get the good candy. We don't skimp on that cheapskate bullshit like Tootsie Rolls or Dum Dums.

Another thing that has been on my OCD things I do every year is watch horror movies. I have already watched POLTERGIEST and ALIEN recently and I am currently watching THE THING on Blu-Ray (stunning transfer BTW) as I type away on this. I will catch a plethora of horror flicks throughout the month before Halloween. I have already got my kids watching these some of these flicks too. I believe SLEEPY HOLLOW will be in order this week as well as ALIEN with my daughter.

I love Halloween so much and it is probably my all time favorite holiday. I even got married on Halloween 12 year ago. Ain't love grand?