PeachLantern's
Halloween
Shrine

Eventually we'd end up at the neighborhood park that was tucked tucked away with no major street access and we'd stay there for a little while playing games, doing the park's costume contest, and taking pictures with the people we recognized or with whoever had a cool outfit. The park had a walk-through haunted house in the recreation center and a bunch of family friendly Halloween games set up on the basketball court. Most of the kids that I went to school with all lived in the same few blocks so we'd run into each other here. It stayed open until 9pm, but people stopped opening their doors around the same time, so we'd all have to leave "early" to finish up the routes back home. This was about the point where my feet were whining and I was ready to be done, so it worked out well.

Lastly we put out "flaming" solar lights in the front yard to make a new walkway up the grass in case we have too many cars in the driveway blocking the walkway access. We got those on Amazon and they're actually pretty good!

At my work we have floating candles that get strung up in the hallway between treatment rooms. My treatment room has black garlands with orange flowers strung between the wall sconces, with purple string lights and metal bat string lights hanging from them. I usually have a full candy bowl for my clients and a Halloween Squishmallow (one of my bats or sometimes the witch cat) in there as well. I'm limited on countertop space so I have to be clever with how I set things out; all of my countertop candles go onto the upper shelf for ambience with a black and orange garland sat in front of them, and the candy bowl takes up the space they had prior. A black and purple tinsel garland gets draped over the door. We're fun at my work. I also start coming in with Halloween makeup in the last week of October, but I'm never at work on Halloween. It's a personal rule that I take the day off and keep my night time options open for parties, theme parks, events, etc.

We'd all get to work and trudge into the back entrance of the park, which lead us through an area that was still populated with daytime guests before the park closed temporarily for the nighttime switch. We'd go into the employee area, get our timecards punched, check out our costumes from the warehouse wardrobe, get our makeup done, and then hang out up until it was time to go to whichever area we'd been assigned at hire. I was always a maze monster, so I'd go to the same maze every year with many of the same people. We all became very close, seeing each other for 8 hours a day, 5 nights a week, and at our absolute worst (dirty, sweaty, broken, sick, tired...). It breaks down a lot of social barriers between people to all go through that kind of daily workout, the yearly illness (because someone always got really sick from the fog machines versus the weather change, and two handfuls of other people came down with a milder version of it), so we get really close really fast.

Every Sunday after work was over we'd have a party somewhere- this was monster-wide across the park, not just our area, so there'd be about a hundred or more people at each event. The first weekend was always at a bowling alley for Zombie Bowling (named for how filthy we were and how we walked after our first week of running/jumping/etc. all night); the second was broom ball at a hockey rink; third was a skate rink for Monster Skate; fourth was a house party, designated at a different house each year; fifth was on the last night of work and was a banquet hall rented out for "awards" and a last hurrah.

Mid 20s on, Halloween was at the goth clubs where I worked as a cashier/cash runner between the door and the bar/DJ assistant (I was not the DJ). We'd get to dress up as much or as little as we wanted and the clubs were open until 2:30am. The biggest issue with themw as getting to them, because traffic on Halloween going into the city was brutal; I'd have to leave at 6:30pm to guarantee that I'd be there by 9pm (I was only 20 miles away, for reference), and sometimes it was just squeezing in right on the dot.

But the parties here were decadent and people usually went all out with their outfits, whether they were costumes or more of elaborate gowns and cloaks. I looked forward so much to these events and the pictures that came from them. Sadly a lot of the clubs went by the wayside after the pandemic a few years ago, and now they're pretty empty compared to how tightly packed they were. We're also over a decade older and people have new jobs and families, so there's that.

For a while in my 30s Downtown Disney was the place to go for Halloween, as they had a costume walk where people could dress up and kids could trick-or-treat at the stores in the shopping stretch. You could dress up as much as you wanted as long as you weren't posing as a character actor for the park or drawing lines or too much attention. Unfortunately Disney rescinded this event to where only kids 14 and under could come in costumes (and their parents could dress up with them, but no kids = no costumes). We were almost turned away at security when we found out that they were implementing this. They had a good thing going back then. I'm sure they're not hurting for numbers, but I know a lot of people were disappointed when this became the new D-law.

These days I stay home, hang out and watch movies in a group Discord with a bunch of online friends, pass out candy to the few trick-or-treaters that we get, and be on a MMORPG playing their Halloween event. If I get antsy to get out there are a handful of amusement parks with Halloween stuff going on that I can get to within 2 hours (costume-free). Not sure what my plans are for this year; we'll see the night of what I feel like doing.