BOO! Were you scared???

'Tis the concluding days of the Halloween season which means children will soon be jacked-up on chocolate (even those mini-size bars pack some zip!) and most likely all those Halloween decorations will be taken down --- unless of course, you were one of the few who went with a pleasant, autumnal, corn-stalks and pumpkins theme.

As per the photo at the beginning of this post, that is not the norm in my neighborhood. Of all the ghouls and the skeletal hands reaching up through the ground, this house with it's hanging heads on the front porch and blood-stained guillotine complete with a vulture near the head-catching basket wins the award for most gruesome. I did find this house quite entertaining and actually circled the block twice to capture a photo. Decapitated heads in the doorway the exception, once again, large, menacing, movable spiders were popular this season. As one whom is not easily frightened by spiders this to me is just entertaining, however, if large, movable snake decorations every come into popularity I will not leave the house until November.

What is it about our penchant to want to be frightened? The fright business of decorations, stores and haunted houses, mazes, cornfields and caverns is a $7.4 BILLION industry in the United States!!! Is it our need to get the blood pumping and the adrenaline flowing? Is it a filler for the rush one gets from riding a roller-coaster? Is it the "comfort" of living in a society where for many of us our monsters are make-believe and distant?

As the first frost has arrived and I'm making the final purchases for the Halloween treat bags I'll give to the little goblins, ghosties and hundred Elsas whom knock at my door, I've had the urge to watch a good horror film. They are being featured prominently on the cable networks this time of year and in running through the remote I came across the movie, "Children of the Corn." It was campy and hokey and I started to watch it and then, I confess, I asked myself why do I want to watch a movie that's going to get in my head and frighten me? I clicked over to ESPN.

I've never been a fan of the fear genre. I trace it back to my sophomore year in high school when the movie "HALLOWEEN" with that knife-wielding, wouldn't die, Michael Myers was all the rage. A group of friends and I went to see it. I slept with the lights on for a week and everywhere I went kept looking over my shoulder. Therefore, I was completely floored recently when I saw a gaggle of teens each sporting t-shirts with the white-masked face of Michael Myers emblazoned on the front. Why?

As for me, I'll be filling my pre-Halloween evenings reading Washington Irving's "THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW." I'll let you know if I hear any hoof beats......

sj;