Halloween Pranks

Earlysville Road, Charlottesville, Virginia

This post is dedicated to my Halloween kindred spirit - Bren - BOO.

I love Halloween and S P O O K Y things.  Creepy houses, candy, Devils and Ghosts.  When we moved into our family home built in 1932 we tried our hardest to resurrect the spirits - NOTHING - 20 years of nothing... except for the meowie Crow that always seemed to appear at my darkest moments.  When I was down in the dumps it always seemed this Crow would appear and make a cat like meowie sound.  One time I was up at the family cemetery plot and was deep in sadness the Crow appeared and started meowing.  I always associated the Crow with my Grandmother watching over me.  She apparently liked many of the things I like such as flowers, books, and cooking.  The freaky thing is that when we moved 3 hours away, shortly afterwards, here came a meowie Crow.  We still have a large flock of Crow's that hang out at our house, just like they did at our old house.

Our old house - lots of vegetation to hide in!

Our old house was a perfect haunted house having two huge trees out front, a long front porch, and lots of fallen leaves.  I had moved from a condo that was not scary friendly.  I so longed to scare the bejesus out of some Trick or Treaters and now I had the perfect setting.  I of course had an evil assortment of costumes, a Witch, Devil, and Skeleton.  With my husbands help, we created a leaf pile that moved.  A string and cube of cardboard was buried in the pile and a sign that read, Beware of the LEAF PILE of course got the Trick or Treaters curious about the pile.  At just the right moment, my husband who was hidden in the bushes pulled the string.  We laughed so hard watching the kids scream and run into the night.

We loved "candy" pranks.  Dressed up as a Witch, spooky music in the background, I would snap out a scarred plastic hand just as the kids were grabbing a glob of candy and say "don't take too many".  It worked every time, getting a jump out of the kids and saving more candy for us (ha ha).  I would present a tray of Pennies to the kids.  The faces were so funny, looks of -- are you nuts -- WE WANT CANDY - forget the MONEY - we want CANDY!  I had an old metal dish that had a piece of wrapped candy that had melted and was stuck to the bottom.  It was too funny to watch the kids try to get it off.  I had to discontinue one prank... I had a tray of bone shaped Dog Biscuits - a few kids would laugh and not take but several took them.  The next day my neighbor said one kid came to their door that said, those people over there are giving out bone shaped candy --- holding a piece with a bite out --- "it's not very good."  I never imagined anyone would actually EAT IT.

Happy Halloween and have FUN.

-Rebecca