4. Write about the last thing that spooked you.

I love Halloween; it is honestly my favorite holiday but it’s a close call, with Thanksgiving and Christmas right up there. The main reason I enjoy Halloween is because it has aspects that allowed me to dabble in “scary” things when, as a younger person, I was terrified of that stuff. I find that I am not easily scared by horror movies anymore; there’s too much stuff in real life that scares the crap out of me to worry about fake Hollywood crap!

So every year, I set up my little graveyard and adorn my mantle with a combination of Halloween and Fall decor. This year I found myself more excited about it than usual. I think maybe the cooler temps earlier in the season helped me to get into the spirit.

I like the decorations that border on scary but I don’t really own too many. I found a cool haunted tree blow up at Lowes for the shockingly low amount of 45 bucks so I got that and it’s the first one of those I ever owned. It’s very cool but a little bit of a pain, since if it deflates when the timer goes off and covers the fan that blows it up. It will only inflate halfway and lay limp until you clear the fan. But it’s still really cool.

Besides overthinking about the underlying concepts of scary things, I just don’t get spooked anymore. But the other day, I was walking around downstairs, looking for things to clean and tidy up. I was on a roll and motivated so I was here and there, dusting, randomly straightening and adjusting pillows, etc. I walked through the foyer in front of the stairs to go into the living room and, as I so often do, took a look out the little window. Just as I spied the neighbors’ trees, the road, and the American Flag, my eyes caught something else that honestly gave my heart a start. I thought someone was standing on our front porch!

Alas, it was just our creepy pumpkinhead decoration. He’s not turned on but if he was, with motion, he says, “Come closer…. come closer!” And he laughs this demonic little chuckle.

You can see why I may have been frightened, as I saw it out of the corner of my eye. Thanks God it wasn’t someone standing there!