Growing up in NYC, in Greenwich Village specifically, Halloween grew to be a particularly unpleasant event. I lived in a brownstone which buffets the street on one side and a garden on the other. The garden side is divided so that flushed against every home is a small garden and bisecting the individual gardens is a community garden running long and rectangular down the center. On Christmas Eve the garden kids stood on a makeshift stage and caroled to their parents and parents friends. Santa sent a sleigh filled with candy over our heads from the MacDougal side of the street to the Sullivan side, stopping in the center to tip over and rain candy on our soft little skulls. And every Halloween we dressed up and went trick or treating from garden door to garden door. We had a parade. We won prizes. We got jacked up on economy candy. Until we got too old and walked from the garden side, through our homes, and out our front doors to the street side.

The street side was steamier, stickier. Life out there on Halloween was rough. Sometimes older kids chased us batting socks filled with rocks of chalk at our heads. Other times kids were beaten for just a singular Twizzler. It got so that Halloween was actually what it was meant to be: scary. That’s why now, every Halloween, without fail, I stay in and watch horror movies. This year, Laurie and Joanna came over. We watched the Ring and most of the time Laurie would suddenly disappear in order to call us and say, “Seven days.” Other times, she’d make me pause the movie so she could pose us looking Halloween scared. Or borrow my water to douse her face with water and giving her best Janet Leigh. And best, when she went to the refrigerator for red jelly…Girl’s got skills. See below.

Even her dog is scared of her.