Marsupials and Halloween

My wife loves Halloween. I think that it is her favorite holiday and the House of 42 Doors makes a great Halloween house. It looks old and big and is set way back from the road in the middle of old trees.

She decorated the house this year with window decorations several weeks ago and last night she added the final touches. A strobe light in an upstairs bedroom, blinking eyes in the window in the attic, three jack o' lanterns, and a rat, a bat and a skull in the dining and living room windows.

She already started talking about next year and how to improve on our rushed decorations. It should keep her busy most of October.

She and Penguin stayed behind at the house to deal with trick or treaters while Pumpkin and I headed out to tour the neighborhood. We hit ten to fifteen houses and scored more than enough candy for a little girl. The only crisis was at the end of the night when pumpkin lost her kitty ears. Fortunately, we backtracked and found them again.

Several of our neighbors stopped by early in the night, before Pumpkin and I went out and we had three separate instances of people asking about ghosts in the house. One mentioned lights in the attic, another mentioned strange noises at night and the last guy (a young teen) didn't mention anything specific. He just mentioned he'd heard it was haunted.

In our neighborhood there is a "Haunted Woods" that some of the residents put on. We didn't go through it this year, but it looks like good fun where a bunch of people dress up in scary costumes, create a path through the woods and then try to scare kids and adults. All through the evening we could hear the shrieks and moans coming from the woods.

It's dark at the House. There is no yard light and the way the property is laid out, it is a good distance to the nearest street light. On top of that, there are tall trees that line the property, blocking out any additional light.

At the end of the night, I was outside cleaning up, gathering up the pumpkins and blowing out the candles. It was dark, I had ghost stories on my mind, and I could hear the screams coming from the Haunted Woods. Very eerie.

Facing the house, there is an open air porch on the left side. The ground falls away a bit so that it's about three or four feet below the porch floor. As I was cleaning up, I heard somebody walking in the leaves at the side of the House, walking from the back of the house to the front, along that open porch wall. I expected to see young kids trespassing (which would have been fine on Halloween). But the noise kept getting closer and closer until whoever it was should have been visible. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck starting to stand up.

Keeping in mind the dark, the ghost stories and the screams, I was really freaked out. So grabbing the pumpkin in my hand (after all, what better weapon could there be on Halloween), I resolved to peek over the wall of the porch to see who was walking in the leaves.

This was not to be my first paranormal experience. Waddling through the leaves was an opossum. I was shocked. I think it was the first time I've ever seen a "wild" opossum. I put the pumpkin down, tore into the house, scooped up Pumpkin (our daughter) and ran out to show her the opossum. We watched it waddle into a tree and settle there. After a bit we went back inside, cleaned up and went home.

All in all, a very memorable Halloween. Oh and lest I forget, the current mouse count is 39 and the electrician starts Monday.