General Halloween Rambling (Apologies in advance)

[Boo]

It's a gloomy, overcast day here in Kingston-Upon-Thames, the leaves are falling steadily from the trees and in sufficient quantity for those wonderful piles of Autumnal crunchiness to form.
It's on days like this, sitting at my work desk, when my mind wanders to times long ago when I was a boy coming home from school kicking my way through the leaves and looking forward to the BBC's after school t.v. programmes that I would watch from 4-6pm before my Dad arrived home and we ate dinner together as a family.
Particularly special were those Halloween evenings. For a couple of years some friends and I went on some highly lucrative trick or treat runs, trick or treat not being popular in our town we pretty much had the place to ourselves - Halloween received some TV specials a mention at school and the very occasional neighbourhood Halloween party. But for the most part it was a solo homage by me, I would read a spooky book, take my dog for a walk longer and later than usual, and just sit in the back garden watching the sky and letting my imagination take me. One Halloween my Grandfather built a bonfire for me in the garden and we baked some potatoes and sausages, just the two of us, it remains my happiest childhood memory.
I missed Halloween from 16-19 but rediscovered it at university when even at the expense of going to the student union bar I would take the day off to walk the ancient paths of Cambridge and to spend the long evening with the Witches of Eastwick, a spooky book and time in the garden....my imagination still worked on demand.
From 23-30 I worked overseas in Asia and Halloween was again forgotten.
At 31 I returned to the UK and gradually I found the magic again, I tried too hard for the first couple of years and failed to recapture those old joys, but then in 2005 my wife and I took my eldest nephew on a ghost hunt on the big day and I was suddenly back in the zone. The next year, 2006, I found these boards and a rapport with the people on them (mostly my colonial cousins but with a Romanian, a few of my fellow Brits and a slightly terrifying Canadian), and suddenly Halloween was a month long event.
I know I'm waffling on, apologies, but to end I wanted to mention that for me Halloween has never really been a party event; I've only been to one Halloween party when I was about 8 years old. Instead Halloween is a state of the mind or maybe of the spirit, I now share it with my wife and my sister's kids and we have great fun, but essentially it's something inside of me that is a personal emotion. It's a month long comfort-blanket where I feel free to indulge myself, where I feel slightly superior to the average Joe because I get it and they don't, and it's also a link to my past, a reservoir of happy memories, a justification for my occasional belief in magic and a link to the history of the country I love.
I'm a big fan of Christmas too and I usually party hard, but it's much more of a group thing and whilst it has all of the great memories associated with it it's just far more in your face. For me Halloween is an annual treasure hunt, a search for the fairies at the bottom of the garden and a nod to myself that that boy from 3 decades ago is still there as part of me and I'm very grateful for it.

[Belladonna]

Thanks for sharing!
It is indeed a state of mind, and for me stays all year long.
It's good to just get away and soak up the vibes. Do a little charcoal rubbings on old gravestones, take long walks kicking through leaves.
I'm a nut for haunted places...real and manufactured ones.

It's a magical time.

[adrian]

I"m happy to hear you found the magic again

i know its way off the "halloween" subject but i know how you feel.. between the age of 16 and 19 i kinda got out of the spirit of christmas... then on the x mas where i was 20... i kinda found the magic of santa claus again so i feel ya on the "losing the spirit"

i'm happy for you happy halloween

[Midnite Shadow]

No need for apologies here...I feel what you said mimics a lot of what I have gone through and feel through the years but it never really leaves you and when it does reveal itself to you again it is warm and glowing feeling...something you embrace from childhood on. It's funny how that 'feeling' manifests itself...it can be a movie or TV show...looking at an old dead tree with huge branches strecthing up into the moonlight or a drive down the road with lots of curves and leaves kicking up as you speed into the night. A walk through the park or forest and the sounds nature makes in the fall and the crisp autumn breeze that comes with it. Halloween really is a state of mind as BellaDonna said...sometimes it only comes out as Halloween Approaches and for some it lasts all year round...

For me it is a year round thing...

[Snoopy/Red Baron]

Boo, this is the post I was looking for to give me a jolt of Halloween nostalgia just like you did in 2006. I remember that year, I was struggling to re-capture that feeling, that essence of Halloween. Kind of like Belladonna and Adrian mentioned in another post about being adrenaline junkies, I was so enthralled about that undescribable feeling of being young around Halloween time and kept trying to re-capture it as I grew older. I would buy more and more decorations, go to bigger and better parties, hit every Halloween event in town and still, the feeling was harder to come by and less and less each year. Then I found this forum and one of the first posts I read was yours. It reminded me that the things I loved about Halloween as a child was never about the mounds of decorations or the parties. It was something much simpler that I was forgetting underneath the piles of Halloween purchases and events. So I just went outside and stood underneath the streetlamp and looked up at the nightsky and basked in the light autumn breeze and stopped trying. And it felt good again, simple, cozy, mysterious. Of course, childhood was a magical time that can never be repeated and of course I love decorations and parties but since 2006, its been more about simple things, and I've found myself enjoying Halloween alot more, and smiling at odd moments at the memory of something silly. I guess this is the gift of this forum, meeting people who share this passion, allowing them to stoke your fires and hopefully, occasionally, you stoke theirs.

[witchy]

Boo that was amazing, I have always love Halloween, I had a terrible childhood & it was my way of getting away from it all, even for one day. I wish I had those fond memories of my childhood you were very lucky. Thanks for the wonderful look into your life, it's nice to hear people have such fond memories of there childhood, I can only hope my children have them. Witchy

[Boo]

It's what's great about this forum, you can post feelings that just don't translate into words and people 'get it'.

The enthusiasm is infectous even through the monitor.

It seems that we're all mostly in agreement, the trappings of Halloween are just that, they're a garnish to the main meal. The real essence is that something we find so hard to describe, but which I certainly enjoy reading people try to.

[adrian]

the feeling of the forum spreads like a deciese through out the threads.. each thread spreading halloween cheer in its own special way i love it!!

[Boo]

Witchy - Sorry to read that you don't share the happy childhood memories that I'm blessed with. Having grown up in a very stable, not poor - not rich, loving family I often assume that everyone else did.
I suppose what you are now empowered to do is to recognise the right way to do things, and you can give your own kids those special memories and develop your own at the same time. What better time than Halloween?!
I can't wait to have my own kids and fully intend to milk my second childhood ruthlessly

Snoop - I suspsect that as far as Halloween goes we may be peas from the same pod, except of course that you are an unwashed colonial and I am a refined English gentleman . Keep the posts coming mate.

[Snoopy/Red Baron]

Boo, haha. I like the British. They had Benny Hill

[Boo]

LOL!
I remember Benny Hill...just.
That comedy has really aged, I watched one of his shows on cable a couple of years ago and nearly had to hide behind the sofa it was so cringe-worthy.