November 1st, 2013

Halloween 2013 is over. Months of prep, research, building, painting, testing- all down to one night. Blood, sweat, fortunately no tears. But a fair amount of blood. All for about 3 hours of trick or treating. Is it worth it?

Absolutely.

So many kids said "thank you for doing this for us." They thanked us for the time we spent making it, thanked us for putting in the effort, thanked us for making it special. "Thanks for giving us something to talk about tomorrow," one pair of teens offered.

Most of the kids made a point of telling us how much they liked the decorations. Parents too, but it's the kids we're doing this for. Today's trick or treater will be tomorrow's haunter, and we're giving them some great memories to draw upon. Thirty years from now, the kid who told me how great my house looked will be listening to another kid tell HIM how great his house looks.

Even better, there were many more houses with foggers, music, lights, and so forth. The trend in our neighborhood is for more decorations, and I have hopes that the next few years will see a golden age of haunted houses.

There were still the jerky kids who show up with little/no costume and barely mumbled trick or treat- but they were the minority and most of them came around. I can be...persuasive.

The fog machines put out too much fog- at one point we had zero visibility, and for much of the night the fog was actually covering about half the block- I turned it off as it was a traffic hazard.

It was a lot of work, and at the end of the evening I was completely beat- but riding a wave of euphoria from the great response.

The angels proved to be a big hit, and surprisingly scary. Quite a few kids (and adults) didn't want to come up to the house because of them. I made several trips down to the sidewalk to deliver candy to little ones too frightened to come up.

Can't wait for next year!

Drac, Drac Jr., and the SpiderWitch pose for a family photo.

The fog begins to creep across the yard

Drac Jr. prepares to venture in search of candy

About 6pm, foggers haven't really chilled the vapor yet- that's why it's billowing up instead of across the grass. Still, makes a nice, eerie effect and if you're already expecting something to jump at you, the fog intensifies that fear- so many kids completely freaked themselves out without me doing a thing!

From the front porch looking out. The music is "Translyvania" from Nox Arcana. GREAT music, well worth what I paid for it.

This is a pretty representative video of the evening. There are the kids who only want the candy, the kids who like the decorations, and the kids who are REALLY impressed.