Your Favorite Halloween Memory

[LSN80]

A lot of the stuff we discuss here in the Symposium is pretty heavy stuff, so I figured I'd change it up here and do something fun. Undeniably, there are still some of us here who dress up for Halloween, as they've been lifelong traditions for most of us. Myself? Not so much. I didn't mind, I suppose, as the endgame for me was that I always got more candy than most trick-or-treaters, I would guess, as my parents let us go wild with it, and that stuff would still last me near a month. But the place I spent Halloween as a kid and adolescent? Church. As an alternative to the obviousrolleyesevils of Halloween, the church I grew up in held a gathering for kids ages 5-13. Games were played, hayrides were provided along with food, and videos were watched. At the end of the night, each kid was provided with the largest darn bag of candy you can imagine, but even so, the night sucked. I always imagined the real fun was in trick or treating and dressing up, things I heard my friends discuss in glorious detail the following day at school. It was only through having a creative mind that I was able to come up with my own scenario of trick-or-treating fun, but I imagine after time went by, they stopped buying my stories, simply because they never ran into me.

So my first real opportunity to enjoy Halloween took place when I went away to college, and it was by far and away my best. Not that I didn't have some pretty fun experiences in the years that followed, but there's nothing like your first time, right? Anyways, I had loaded up my class schedule so I only took classes Monday's, Wednesday's and Friday's, which enabled me to get a part-time job as a waiter for some spending money, and to put gas in my car. We were allowed to dress up for the night, with the only restrictions being for females, essentially, and the 'appropriateness' of what they wore. Ghostface from Scream was all the rage at the time, so as a nineteen year old kid who loved slasher flicks, it was a no-brainer of a choice. Well, the restaurant had no problem with it at first, until my manager pulled me into his office about two hours into my shift. Apparently, I had scared at least five different families, or rather, their young children with my choice of attire. He had written the first two or three off as uptight parents, but when it five, he had to do something. So I could keep the rest of the costume on, but I had to take off the mask. Still, I took great, somewhat pervere, pleasure in the fact that I had scared so many little kids.(I was 19, cut me some slack.)

The fun of the night didn't end there, however, as it was my first time getting drunk, and also my first time going trick-or-treating. About six of us, all college kids, had gotten off at the same time, and two of them were 21, so they bought enough alcohol to get the entire restaurant staff drunk. Two of them had an apartment there, so we went back there and hung out until about midnight, where one of us drunks came up with the wonderful idea to go trick or treating. At midnight. And drunk.

So we did, because we're all so incredibly rational when we're drunk, aren't we? This lasted about twenty minutes, as we got no further than six or seven houses, waking each of the families that lived there up. They weren't amused by our requests for candy or our obvious drunkenness, and several threatened to call the police. We weren't that out of it that the potential consequences didn't occur to us, so we high-tailed it back to my co-workers apartment, where we all passed out shortly after. Fortunately, it had been a Wednesday night, so I was able to sleep it off in-between puking, because as I said, it was the first time I had been drunk.

From church socials to scaring kids crapless, drunk trick or treating, and sleeping next to a girl I barely knew, it was quite the upswing for me, morality wise. I no longer drink and while my wife and I will pass out candy to kids who come to our door, it's no longer the spectacle that it once was. It started at nineteen, and I celebrated the 'monstrous' holiday with vigor through college and all the way through graduate school, pretty much until I met my wife. She'll still dress up, but I don't see the fun if we're just staying in and passing out treats, or going to a tame party.

Thankfully, not all the fun has been taken out of it for me. Unlike my former restaurant, I have no 'appropriate outfit' restriction for my wife. Much to my enjoyment, she takes a break from her typical conservative dress to acquiesce, and seems quite comfortable in doing so.

Which kinda makes me wonder how she used to dress for Halloween when she was younger.

Alright, guys and gals, what is your favorite Halloween memory? Favorite costume?

Any plans for this year that you'ld care to share?

Have fun with this. I know I did.

 

[Dagger Dias]

I grew up in the middle of nowhere so I never really got to trick or treat much. I'd come dressed up as video game characters on the years Halloween was on a school day. During my childhood I had dressed up as Cecil from FF4, Link, Mario, Ness from Earthbound, and Ryu from Street Fighter. Once I became a teen I had an annual tradition of wearing my orange shirt that read "This IS my costume" each year. Up until college. In 2009 I attended the local Halloween carnival as John Cena. I buzzed my hair, wore jean shorts, his WWE shirt from that time, and brought my WWE Championship replica. One of my classmates had come as a referee so she would ref random matches I had with people for some silly title retentions.

As for this year, no major plans at the moment. Probably just going to get caught up on our tv shows with the Mrs while eating lots of candy. I had bought a large bag last week to surprise her with. We decorated our door and porch with Halloween stuff like bats, ghosts, pumpkins, and spiders. That was fun. Tomorrow is a work day though so I have no party plans in mind and am not going to be out late. Just candy and relaxation. I always enjoyed that part of Halloween more than the parties or dressing up anyhow.

 

[HBsam31]

I am glad this came up because I was just remembering this time today. When my friends and I were 14 we decided to give up the trick or treating and go raiding. Not sure what everyone else may have called it, but it is the act of throwing corn, eggs, toilet papering and all that stuff. We didn't usually use eggs because we didn't want to get in any real trouble, but this year we did. I lived in a small town where everyone knew everyone, and our first destination was our principal/football coaches house. We took the cover off of his pool and filled it with toilet paper and threw some corn at the windows and ran. Our next stop was our local pizza shop where we hung out all the time. On the way there we got a few more house, and topped over and scattered some garbage through people's yards. So we get to the pizza shop and they have this big glass window that we wanted to cover in eggs. What we didn't know was that the principal and his adult son had gathered some people and were waiting inside. As soon as we struck about 7 guys were running after us. They chased us around for about 30 minutes before we realized they weren't going to give up. We then took to the woods, and the finally stopped. We knew how to get a couple streets up through the woods, and we thought we would make a break for my one friend's house. We did that and watched out the window to see if everything was clear. Well it wasn't long before we saw different groups of the guys walking up and down the street yelling for us. I actually think they had figured out where we went. They were yelling that when they got us we would be sorry and a bunch of stuff to scare us. We knew deep down they weren't really going to do anything to us, but we were scared lol. We had to stay there for four hours until they all went home for the night. It was a fun night then, and looking back today it was probably one of the most fun nights of my childhood/earlyteens. Oh and the ones of us that played football, we had to run six miles a day for two weeks at practice haha, but other than that nothing came out of it.

 

[Mitch Henessey]

I think I was about eleven or twelve, when it happened, and I went trick-or-treating with one of my cousins, because he was staying over for a few days. Funny thing about it is, at school the day before, we got a little lecture about staying away from dark houses with no lights on during trick-or-treating.

Well, at the end of my street, there was this big house with no lights, and we said to hell with it, and together, we walked up to the door with our cheap little plastic pumpkin buckets. We ring the door bell and knock on the door a few times.....nothing. So we turn around and walk away, then all of the sudden, the door slowly opens. Looking in from the doorstep, it's PITCH dark in the house, we take two steps forward, and the lights pop on. Four guys wearing zombie masks jump out of nowhere, start yelling, and we nearly shit our pants, screaming and everything.

It was like something out of a horror movie, and before it all happened, I thought I was some kind of bad ass with my White Ranger costume (cousin was dressed in his regular clothes). But the guys were super cool. They took off their masks, and after a while we were all laughing together. And to top it off, they gave us full sized Hershey's Cookies & Cream and Twix bars (two of each for the both of us).

Now a days, I just do my annual horror movie marathon (Trick 'r Treat, Halloween '78, Evil Dead 2, Night Of The Demons '88, Fright Night '85, Fright Night II '88 on the computer, and some other random stuff I'll pick out of nowhere to mix it up) with pizza. Used to follow the annual Halloween and Friday The 13th marathons an AMC, when I was younger, but the censored versions pissed me off, and I own most of those films on DVD now (I will never pay a dime for Halloween Resurrection).

Every year during October, I make the rounds at Best Buy, MovieStop, and Wal-Mart to take advantage of the horror movie sales for new films on Halloween. But nothing beats MovieStop's deals, NOTHING. The deals aren't limited to buy 2 used (I can't believe someone would trade in the original Nightmare On Elm Street...what the fuck) and get 1 free, they also have discounts on brand new DVDs/Blu-Rays for October. And I always laugh my ass off at the number of used DVDs for The Hitcher, House Of Wax, and The Fog remakes Every year there's a TON of them sitting out front, stacked together, and no one touches them.

 

[Kris Benwa]

It was the first time me and my girlfriend did something as a couple. She dressed as a sexy bumblebee and I was dressed as Darth Vader it was a great time I got a little bit of some boob. That's my favorite memory mostly because none of my other Halloween's have been super spectacular and I always thought it was sort of corny.

 

[Slash-LN]

Nothing too exciting here on my end.

One year, 4th grade I think, I dressed up as The Undertaker. We did a "parade" where each class would walk through the gym and they would pick best costume. My sister said she could hear the "judges" talking and the only one who knew what I was supposed to be was my principal. I thought it was cool that an adult knew what I was. I didn't win though. Not that I cared.

One year I was a zombie hockey player. The only reason I'm mentioning this one is because my brother (not my oldest brother that's a loser) and I had a bad relationship but this was one of the nice things he did for me. He did my zombie makeup and it was awesome.

The year I moved to a new town my mom drove me back to my old town and dropped me off. I was 13 so the fact that she left me to wander around my town with no plans was cool for me at the time. I pretty much just walked around spent time with my old friends. When it got to be trick or treating time a couple friends asked me to go with them. I had no costume or anything but the place I moved from only had a couple hundred people so most of the houses I went to I knew the people and they gave me candy anyway.

When I was 15 there was a kid I babysat and his mom asked me to take him around our neighborhood so I did. I didn't plan to trick or treat at all but some woman gave me a bag with a bunch of candy in it and some of the houses I took the kid to gave me candy. When we got back his sister asked me to go with their family to another part of the town so I went home and got my sting mask and some black clothes. That was the last time I went trick or treating.

At a hotel job I was working at the head of housekeeping invited all staff members to her house for a Halloween party. Our general manager and my roommate who also worked at the hotel and I were the only employees to show up. There were some of her family and friends there too and my general manager brought his parents, his girlfriend and their little girl to the party. A few of us played football and we all had a really good time. It was pretty awesome being able to tackle my boss and not get in trouble for it. I had never worked anywhere where employees got together and did that kind of stuff so it was pretty cool.

Now Halloween for me is pretty much getting to see what my nieces and nephews dress up as but even that I didn't get to see much of this year. A bunch of my friends plastered pictures of their kids in their costumes on Facebook so it was kind of cool seeing that.

We don't get many trick or treaters here. We only had three this year but the weather was also bad.

 

[Wolf Pac]

I've only gone trick-or-treating once or twice in my life but my favourite memory was when me & my friends went trick-or-treating, we didn't go knocking on doors together, we each took turns at different houses wearing our friend's Ghostface mask, and when it was my turn I went to a house where a Somalian family lived, and after this woman opened the door and I screamed "trick-or-treat" at her, she took off one of her slippers and started chasing after me to hit me with her slipper, probably thinking I was going to rob her or something, lol. Luckily, I managed to get away and she went back into her house and me & my friends had a big laugh about it afterwards. If I knew the family didn't understand a lick of English and what Halloween was, I wouldn't have done it, it was embarrassing at the time but also hilarious. I never went trick-or-treating after that again and I've just been watching Halloween TV specials and movies ever since. Last night, I watched a Celebrity Juice Halloween special (yeah I watch Celebrity Juice, what?), some reality horror game show called Release The Hounds, Drag Me To Hell and Ginger Snaps, both movies which I DVR'd on Tuesday and Wednesday.