Enrique’s posterous

16 years ago, I dressed up like the Grim Reaper, put on a semi-professional latex skull mask, laid into a coffin my father and I built, and sat quietly waiting for poor trick-or-treaters to think I was merely a fancy decoration. Scaring people, within reason, is flat out fun, and 16 years ago, I was a 15 year-old hooked on making Halloween the closest to unreasonable, yet scary, holiday I could.

Here I am, 2009... Twenty tombstones, a pile of body parts (including a chopped up torso, head bolted to a wooden frame, some of an arm, feet, hands, fingers, eyeballs), three special effects zombies, a full corpse… which now resides in a coffin too short to fit me (and too rickety) safely, a mummy, two oversized professional masks, an array of lights, and sounds, torches, weapons, a head on a stick, a hanging skeleton, a couple of gargoyles, vultures, a rat, a little motorized moving hand… oh, and a tomb topper, freshly added.

That’s just what we’ve gathered over the years. It gets worse when you start to consider this year was tame. In fact, before 2001, Halloween night would foster some 100 to 150 families in our neighborhood. Unfortunately we’re now down to about 25, so – we don’t go all-out anymore. The brick-paved sidewalk leading to the candy… front door, isn’t covered in dirt, the front door isn’t covered in black cloth, the “way out” is merely a black covering across the house… no longer a maze with “cobwebs” and ghouls to share in the fright.

There was a point where it took 7people to run the production, and nearly 3 weeks to set it all up. Faux trees, special effects, actors… crowd control. Not a bad number of folks for some measly trick-or-treating, if you ask me.

2010 is going to be year 17, and I’m thinking it might be time to party like it’s pre-9/11 again. We’ll see though. Hope you enjoy the photos!