We live in a historical part of Northern California where all the houses in the immediate neighborhood were built in the late 1800's and cannot be redone to conform to present day architectural design.
So al the homes are well kept but definitely look like something out of the Adams' Family.
So most of the residents in this old neighborhood went to major extremes to make each block look like a haunted neighborhood full of haunted houses.
We had a ghost that flew out our front door clear across the street. (Rigged by one of the retired Cirque high wire riggers.)
The ghost was rigged with sound so it flew out screaming like hell yelling the names of the trick or treaters if we were able to ID them before they knocked on the door.
We also rigged bats and spiders that fell on any group of kids brave enough to knock.
The little kids would stand at the bottom of the stairs and more than one probably peed his/her pants. Only a very few dared to come up to the bat/spider infested front door.
Some of the parents that escorted the little kids asked if they could show their kids how it all worked otherwise they would all be going home thinking that ghosts were real. When that happened the ghost would scream. "Ignore those people behind that curtain!" and the elders and teen-agers would laugh because they heard that line many times when they were kids themselves.
I took a break and toured the other haunted houses up and down the block and was most impressed by the "Adams Family residence". All the Adams family members were standing in their front yard cemetery outside their Hollywood style haunted residence and playing the role just as well as those real TV characters. I thought that they were dressed up statues and jumped a few inches out of my sox when I found out otherwise.
This neighborhood goes hog wild on behalf of the kids each year and those kids come from miles away to get scared and a bag full of candy.
And most of the teen aged kids leave that front door saying, "Thanks, this is even better than 14 years ago, but where the hell's the See's we used to get!?"
And the older parents holding hands with bunnies and kitty cats and little pirates chime in .... "Yea, But Ya should have seen it 40 years ago! We got home made candied apples then!"
God bless Granny and her candied apples!
