Halloweeeeeeeeeeeeen!

I have to wonder...Does anyone in the entire world love Halloween as much as I do? I feel such a rush of excitement and pleasure just thinking about it...and I think about it a lot!

I spend countless hours all throughout the year looking at websites devoted to my favorite obsession. Costumes, special effects makeup, haunted attractions. Ghosts, zombies, assorted cryptids and my hands-down favorite, Vampires!

Scary movies, darkly haunting music, books that keep me up late at night -you name it. If it's dark and spooky or mysterious, I want to wallow in it.

I can trace the birth of my profound interest in scaring and being scared. It was Scooby Doo. No, don't laugh, it's true. Think about it. Even the lyrics still thrill me to this day. "While Scooby Doo is running from a spooky ghost..." (happy shivers)

As a little kid with a predilection toward all things dark, this cartoon was like crack for me and it's still my favorite after all the intervening years. Each week Scooby and the gang had these grand adventures with all of the creatures that I find so fascinating. Imagine being chased by a wolfman! Hiding from a mummy! Tumbling down a ski slope to evade the abominable snowman! Holy crow, what a rush. I still want to be Velma when I grow up.

So yeah, Halloween is a big deal. A couple of years ago I hooked up with the local theatre to work behind the scenes on their annual haunted attraction-style fundraiser, Stage Fright. What a fantastic experience! A dream come true, really. I helped create life-size mummies, destroy and paint grisly faces on babydolls, find props, decorate sets and do makeup for the zombie curse-themed walk-through haunt. I even got to make up some E-VIL clowns for the funhouse maze, ah-hahahahahahah! I can't tell you when I've had so much fun! I'm so greatful I had the opportunity because that was the last year they put on that event. (Now they've decided to do the Rocky Horror Show every year instead. Maybe I'll audition this year - who knows.) The biggest problem - for me, anyway - with that decision is that now my beloved home town has NOTHING remotely scary going on during "The Season" and my merry band of ghouls and I have to create our own brand of fun. (More on that in a future blog.)

Like a little kid, I look forward to the big day all year long and every year I experience a profound sadness and sense of loss on November 1st - what will I do with myself for another whole year?! Nobody I know quite understands - they try, but.... Thank God for the internet and social networking sites - those places are full of like-minded freaks and I fit in there like it's old home week. Those folks are just as excited as I am in the weeks leading up to the hallowed evening and just as depressed as I am when it's over. So...we gather in cyberspace to celebrate - and bemoan our fates - together. It's therapeutic.

To the non-initiated, today is "only" June 8th, and Halloween is likely not on your radar at all. But we, the children of the night know that it's ONLY 145 days left till the most exciting, splendiferous, terrorific day of the year! Got your costume picked out yet?