Welcome to Day 3 of the October Frights Blog Hop! Today I've got something different for you. Instead of fiction, this is a little peek inside my mind, as I reminisce about what Halloween meant in my youth.
Before we get into that, though, just a reminder that you should check out A. F. Stewart's blog page, http://afstewartblog.blogspot.com, for a complete list of all the bloggers participating in the blog hop, and visit https://tinyurl.com/StoryOriginGiveaways from now to Oct. 31 to pick up some free horror stories and novels.
A Misspent Youth
But growing up in the 1970s and 1980s was a very different time than now. We had no fear of child molesters stealing us off the streets, and we lived in a small enough town that we didn’t worry about poison or needles in our candy bars (although we threw away any apples dropped into our bags—usually in the direction of the house where we’d received them!). We didn’t have to be in by dark; in fact, our curfews were often suspended for the evening. We roamed as far as our legs would take us in search of new houses to trick-or-treat at, and ate as much of our stash as our bellies could hold before heading home.
We also did some things that today would get us crucified in social media and have a murder of attorneys at our door before morning light. This makes my nieces and nephews smile when I talk about 'the old day' —they tend to think I mean tossing rotten tomatoes at houses or lighting bags of dog poo on fire on porches.
“Tame stuff,” I tell them. And it was. We had a game we liked to play, one passed down to us from the generation of kids (older brothers and sisters!) before us.
In the neighborhood where I lived, we had two cemeteries nearby. Both of them dating back to the Revolutionary War. Many of the graves had collapsed decades ago, leaving nothing but sunken pits. What we’d do is have someone lay in the depression, and then we’d cover him with leaves. Later, we’d get some of the younger kids to head up to the cemetery with us—as an initiation of sorts, we’d say. Hang out with us while we tell scary stories at dusk, and you’re one of us after that.
Of course, in the middle of a story—usually one about a man with a hook for an arm, or a creature that stalks the woods looking for children to eat—the person under the leaves would leap up and shout at the top of their lungs.
That would send the young’uns screaming for the hills!
Today, you couldn’t get away with that. Or the other things we’d do, like lock people in a mausoleum for a few hours, or leave them alone on an empty road in the middle of the woods and make them think they’d have to walk miles to get home. Or, as a group, spending the night in sleeping bags in a graveyard.
The thing is, after a brief moment of terror, they all loved it. So did I, when it it happened to me. Better than any scary movie or book!
That's why every October, when the autumn days turn crisp, and the smell of cold earth and dead leaves fills the air, I can't help but think back to my misspent youth.
And how I wish times were that simple again.
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