Haunted Mask

Way back in the day I used to decorate our front yard for Halloween. I loved this. I would get old clothes, stuff them with newspaper and then arrange them around the yard to make "Jen's Haunted Yard of Horrors." One feature was just a torso coming out of the ground as if he'd been stuffed into the earth. Another was legs sticking out, of the same nature (that was a trick to stand it up, but i did it). I also recall an old grave stone we had in the garage (why? creepy) and I set that up and stuffed some shirtsleeves to be reaching out of the ground in front of it. Which is probably totally disrespectful now that I think about it. I'm pretty sure that was a real head stone. Ah well. In essence, Jen's Yard of Horrors was awesome. This is just a short, somewhat irrelevant story to give you an idea how much i love Halloween.

Several years ago my sister and I concocted a really cool set-up to inflict on unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. It was called the "Tunnel of Terror." We were going to tie two parallel ropes from the roof down to by the mailbox, drape black plastic over it, and make the kids go through it to get to our door. We had all sorts of fun things planned like having compartments separated by strips of plastic, cutting slits in the side, and reaching our arms through them, grabbing kids as they passed, spraying silly string on them at one point, and decorating the inside with glow-in-the-dark-stickers. It was a brilliant plan, and maybe overly-ambitious but i don't think so. In the end, though, it didn't work out because it was fiercely windy that day. Seriously, the elements were adamantly opposed to our Halloween plans and thwarted each and every one of them. We worked on that all day long, trying to figure out how to keep the tarp down. No dice. Plus i remember it being -70 degrees out so after an aggravating battle with frozen, raw hands, we gave up, shouted "fine! you win!" to the wind and slammed the door. I was a little bit heart broken but what can you do.

Also for the tunnel, we purchased some super awesome masks and by awesome i mean TERRIFYING! I kind of have a child's imagination and i don't do well with scary movies where they show scary images (usually having to do with faces) that will stay in my brain for all eternity. I recall them at the worst possible moments and can really scare myself. Anyway, my mask was a hooded alien face that glowed in the dark. NICE. Stephanie's was this white-haired ogre monster that was just frightening. But, as cool as they were, after the holiday my mask started to scare me, and Stephanie would take great delight in placing the mask in a somewhat hidden place (in the day time) in my bedroom so that when i shut off the lights and got into bed at night, i'd open my eyes and there would be this glowing alien face staring at me in the dark just a few feet away and my heart would seize and I'd die from cardiac arrest where I lay.

UPDATE: Here's a picture of my mask. (Steph is wearing it and my nephew is wearing his own. His totally freaks me out. ) I thought that was Stephanie's but i can't remember now what it looks like. But anyway, creepy alien. It haunts my dreams, and may it now haunt YOURS.