Treat Yourself to Some Fond Halloween Memories from Divination Hollow and Friends
We love it when our fellow Horror Pals come out to share in a community-wide celebration! Thank you to all of our friends who submitted content this month, but especially these delightful and spooky Halloween stories from their personal lives. What a blast!
Halloween Memories
We asked our team and Div Hollow friends to let us know all about their memories of Halloween. See the responses below!
Halloween in the UK
Halloween in the U.K. has never been as big as it is in the U.S. As a kid in the 1970's it was a small-scale affair with home-made costumes and traditions. The one abiding memory I have of Halloween is that of an aching jaw, because the 'entertainment' mainly consisted of an apple attached by its stalk to a long piece of string which was then pinned to the top of a door frame. Hands tied behind my back and blindfolded, I would then spend around half an hour (or until my jaw gave up the ghost) trying to eat the apple by locating its whereabouts through sense of touch only. Pushing it up against the door frame to take a bite was considered cheating, but eating the apple without doing so was nigh on impossible. I still remember the dull throb in my jaw all these years later.
-Catherine McCarthy
Author of Immortelle
https://www.catherine-mccarthy-author.com/
My Mother’s Fright Wig
My mother always celebrated Halloween with flair. Every year we would decorate the lawn with an old steamer trunk made up to look like a coffin, and we’d hang ghostly sheets from the gnarled olive tree in the yard. She would put on a frazzled black fright wig and dispense candy from a cauldron. In 1966, when I was ten and The Beatles dominated the pop charts, she suggested I dress up as the Phantom of the Opera for a community Halloween party and costume contest. We both adored the silent film starring Lon Chaney, although the phantom’s skeletal, acid-ravaged face terrified me. She dressed me in a kid’s suit jacket, darkened my eye sockets with eye shadow, and put the black fright wig on my head. I entered the competition and, much to my humiliation, won for funniest costume. The judges thought I was made up to look like one of The Beatles after a hard day's night.
Thank you, Divination Hollow, for the opportunity to share this Halloween memory.
-Jon O’Bergh
Author of Shockadelica
A Canadian Halloween
I grew up in a small rural Ontario town. It was pretty easy to be considered "weird", something as benign as wearing a black t-shirt two days in a row would garner comments. So I spent a lot of time as a kid either alone or hiding my "weirdness". The exception to this was on Halloween. On October 31st, it was socially acceptable to be weird, even the Baptist churches put on haunted houses (though they'd slip religious pamphlets in with the candy). And although I loved the trick 'r' treating and the scary movies, my favourite part of Halloween was decorating the house.
Out in the country, with no neighbours for kilometres on either side, I had an entire forest I could decorate. I'd hang my stuffed animals with homemade nooses, place scarecrow bodies under the lawnmower, and just make our property as terrifying as possible. One year, I scared some of the other kids on my bus so bad, my mom had to field angry phone calls for days. (Sorry MomA)
Decorating for Halloween brought my family together and was one of the best childhood memories I ever made. Today, I get to continue that tradition with my own family. In fact, as I write this, I'm waiting for my wife to get home from work so we can start decorating!
-Ian Bain
Divination Hollow’s Horror Hoser
Fright Night
My sisters and I had just moved to a new town, so we only had each other while Trick-or-Treating that Halloween. One of our neighbors went all out on the decorations: skeletons and cobwebs hanging from the trees, spooky music, a smoke machine, and a coffin smack in the middle of their lawn. My sisters and I headed toward the front door, screaming our heads off when the coffin popped open. Our neighbor, dressed as a gruesome vampire, jumped out and cackled while chasing us in circles around the yard. We loved the scare so much that we visited once more on the way home, and every year after, that was our favorite house to visit.
-Jennifer Soucy
Author of The Mother We Share
https://www.jenniferlsoucy.com/
Family Traditions
Watching Hocus Pocus with my sister is one of my favorite parts of Halloween. That movie came to mean the official start of spooky season and we watched it every year from its release up until we no longer lived together in our twenties. Even now, if we're together for Halloween, we make a point to put on Hocus Pocus. Occasionally, we still call each other a "buck-toothed, mop riding, firefly from hell!" Don't know exactly what it is, but there's some real magic in the Sanderson sisters that continues to hold up for these sisters.
-S.H. Cooper
Author of Inheriting Her Ghosts
A Halloween Fairy
When I was younger, and I mean a lot younger, I was obsessed with fairies. I loved their magic, their association with nature, their big wings and sparkly dresses (which I'd come to associate with the fae), and I hadn’t quite realized that I liked witches more. So that year, my parent decided to splurge and buy me a gorgeous fairy costume with big wings and a fancy silver dress. Naturally, I was hellbent on wearing it outside to go trick-or-treating… even with the unexpected snowstorm we’d had earlier that day. Although a light dusting of snow isn’t too uncommon for late October or early November here in Quebec, the couple of inches we’d gotten were unseasonable. While my parents had still agreed to take my brother and me trick-or-treating, it was under the condition that we were to wear snowsuits in addition to our costumes. It was clear my parents wanted me to wear my thick coat and snow pants over my costume, leaving only the wings visible. But, always one to be dramatic and stubborn, I put on my snowsuit and boots as requested before stuffing myself—parka and all—into my dress. It was ungodly tight. All night long it looked like I was about to Hulk out of my dress. I was ten pounds of child in a two-pound bag. The costume was so taut that it was hard for me to breathe, let alone walk through mountains of snow, and while I did get that sweet sweet Halloween candy it was at the expense of the fairy dress, which had been stretched out so severely that it was beyond repair. (Totally worth it though.)
- Caitlin Marceau
Author of Laughlin Hills Community Magazine
Home Alone
I've been trying to think which Halloween Memory to use, would it be the one where I went trick or treating for the very first time? We weren't a Halloween family really; we'd been to a dance school Halloween party, but my parents didn’t like the idea of begging for sweets. Whilst that was a great memory, I think the one that really made Halloween for me was actually when I was left home alone. I was told in no uncertain terms not to answer the door and I'd heard the stories of fireworks through letter boxes if you didn't answer. So I was watching scary movies in my room with all the lights off so people might believe I was out, there was a bang outside, I accidentally turned a light on, the film got too scary and that moment of pure panic stayed with me somewhere, and every year since I have participated in Halloween in one way or the other.
-Becky Lambert
AKA Rebbie Reviews
https://rebbiereviews.wordpress.com/about/
Bloody Halloween
When I was a kid growing up in England, pumpkins for Halloween weren't really a thing. Instead, we made Jack-o'-lanterns out of hollowed out turnips instead. The trouble with turnips is they are a heck of a lot harder than pumpkins and require quite a bit of elbow grease to chop into and remove the (really quite smelly) insides.
When I was 12, me and my two friends – sisters, who were coincidentally also my neighbours – decided to carve our own. Against our better judgement, and without our parents' permission, we stole three turnips and three very sharp knives from my friends' mother's kitchen and took them upstairs to the elder sister's bedroom to create our spooky works of art. The elder sister, putting all her strength behind the knife as she cut out chunks, managed to slip. The knife stabbed into the fleshy part of her thumb and stayed there. She held it up so we could all see.
"Ummm..." she began. "I suppose I'd better go and tell Mum."
So we all, very sheepishly, went to find her mum. Her mum took one look at the knife still stuck in her hand and yelped, then started to laugh.
"Oh, well done, girls," she said. "You got me." It became quickly apparent that my friend's mum thought we were playing a Halloween prank on her.
"But Mum," my friend protested. "It's real. Look!" And she proceeded to yank out the knife.
I'd never seen so much blood before, and I had to look away. But not before I saw the smile fall away from my friend's mum's face as she turned white and slumped to the floor. It turned out the mum was not great with the sight of blood, and had passed out cold.
My friend's sister grabbed a tea towel and wrapped it around the wound, which I was grateful for because I was starting to feel like I might follow in their mother's footsteps. Luckily, their dad came home at just that moment, and upon being appraised of the situation, leapt into action.
My friend was mostly fine, but she did need to go to Accident and Emergency and had quite an impressive scar for a while afterwards. Her mum was fine too, but she gave us an extreme telling off, as did my mum when she found out. We were banned from ever taking anything from the kitchen without asking, especially very sharp knives.
We didn't have turnip Jack-o'-lanterns that year. Somehow, no one was keen on making them anymore.
-T Wood
Author of Seeds
Decorations
My family and I always made a big occasion out of decorating. We had tubs upon tubs of Halloween decorations that we'd pull out of the attic, and we'd usually spend a whole Sunday putting everything up. The decor included a paper plate witch I made as a child that my parents still have, as well as a sound-activated shrieking ghost we bought when I was four. I still treat it like an occasion when I decorate my own home for Halloween!
Sonora Taylor
-Author of Seeing Things
Parties
When I think back to childhood Halloweens, I remember the parties put on by my aunt. These usually involved my brothers, myself and three of my cousins, the two boys who were around the same age as my brothers, and the youngest, a year younger than me. There was always chaos when the six of us were in a room together – normally the boys making their respective sisters fight each other (I never came out the winner) – but at Halloween, it was different. Each family spent the preceding nights creating small plays. I’ll never forget – though I doubt my brothers remember – being hunched over our black and green computer, inputting words and watching them appear on the screen. My brothers were five years older than me, yet when it came to writing, they allowed me to take the lead, and they actually listened to my ideas!
Our plays were based around whatever costumes we had. Usually for me a witch – with a cheap plastic hat, broom and a bin bag ‘dress’ – or a vampire – with cheap plastic fangs and a bin bag cape. One year, I changed it up, and dressed as a devil instead, with, well, cheap plastic horns and pitchfork and, yes, of course, a bin bag cape.
The rest of the family would be ushered in to watch our ‘performances’, and bless them forever for putting up with them! We’d also do bobbing for apples, which normally resulted in me absolutely terrified, the boys promising they wouldn’t dunk me, then, inevitably, getting dunked by one of them.
When the boys became teenagers, of course they were no longer interested, and the parties saw friends attend, instead, first from our primary school then my cousin’s friends from high school. The plays disappeared, replaced by games, but the apple bobbing remained, as did my aunt’s excellent food. No one puts on any sort of buffet or tea party quite like my aunt.
I have to admit, I think of those parties quite often at Halloween. It was, after all, my first taste of any ‘writing’ being made public for me, and my brothers always encouraged me. And our families must have put up with some absolutely dreadful stuff! But we always had a lot of fun, and there’s nothing more you can really ask for, is there?
-Elle Turpitt
Writer, Editor, Divination Hollows’ Co-Admin
https://elleturpitt.com/