By Neal Wooten
Halloween is my favorite holiday. I loved the trick-or-treaters we used to get in Milwaukee. They came from every background and every part of town. I dressed up every year and set a table on the sidewalk so I wouldn’t miss anyone. That became a tradition in that neighborhood. By the time I moved away, at least half the residents set up tables on the sidewalks.
The other great part of Halloween is the haunted houses, haunted woods, and haunted hayrides. I’m not sure why we enjoy getting scared out of our minds, but most of us do. Maybe it’s the adrenaline rush, or maybe it’s like being in an actual horror movie, one we know we’ll survive — hopefully. Here are some of my memories.
I went to a haunted house in Milwaukee. When a dozen people were paid and waiting, a man led us down into the basement and explained the “experiment.” We paused before a big window. Inside were two scientists working on a corpse. Suddenly, the lights went out, and red lights started flashing with a siren blaring. When the lights came back on, the two scientists were dead, the corpse was missing, and the door had been knocked open. Military men in full gear and real-looking M-16s showed up to help us get to safety, which wasn’t easy because that basement was crawling with zombies.
Then, there was the year the Jaycees held their haunted house in Sequoyah Caverns. That was brilliant. I was in the lead of a group and was told to follow the rope. It went down a crevice in the rocks, but it ended. The lights went out, and it was pitch black. A chainsaw roared to life, and it sounded like it had to be the person next to you. We were freaking out. When the lights came back on, it was two men on ledges about eight feet above us.
Every year, a friend in Montgomery, who is a movie special-effects artist, went all out. One year, he enclosed his covered front porch with black drapes and invited people to step inside and have a look at his monster. It was dimly lit, and a fog machine added to the effect. The monster looked like the thing from The Thing (1982). As I was admiring the work, a teenage girl covered in a black cloak stepped out of the black wall and grabbed my arm. I screamed like a five-year-old girl.
When I was a kid, October 31 was every day because our dad loved scaring us. That was not fun at all. But if it’s Halloween and I’m expecting it, I say, “Bring it on.”
