Halloween 2012..I have been waiting for you

All Hallow's Eve...I Have Been Waiting For You

Preface / Introduction

Ah yes..it's that time of year again..Halloween 2012! All the kids in the neighborhood comming by
for their treats. I love this time of year because it get a kick out of trying to guess who's who behind
those scary masks or makeup. What about you? I can remember as a kid getting so excited going
with my mom to pick out what I was gonna be for Halloween. Then the anticipation of that special
day when I'd get to wear it and fool all of the neighbors. We used to go to this one house down the
street and if she could not guess who you were you got an EXTRA TREAT! It became a contest
with all of us in the neighborhood. Ah those were the days. I hope this ebook brings back some of
those special memories for you to. Oh yes, I almost forgot...before you begin, go to any search
engine and pick out my favorite Halloween tune..”The Monster Mash". Play it lound and proud as
you read and Happy Halloween!

Table of Contents
1. Trick or Treat. Halloween in the great American heartland, way too much candy, costumes from
Woolworth's, and ghouls from the best families...
2. All Hallow's Eve, October 31, 2012 with II Commendatore, the headless body of Ichabod Crane,
still hopeful pathetic Linus van Pelt, and a Great Pumpkin you will never see and one you will.
You're invited... formal dress and all decorations to be worn...
3. 'Pardon the witches of Connecticut', say relatives. 'Cause there's no nicer witch than you.' Some
thoughts.


Trick or Treat. Halloween in the great American heartland,
way too much candy, costumes from Woolworth's, and
ghouls from the best families...
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. It seems to me that far too little attention has been directed to the creation of
music suitable for Halloween. You can think of classic tunes for Christmas, Thanksgiving, New
Year's Eve... but Halloween? You will be hard pressed. That is why in considering a suitable song
for today's much watered down version of its medieval predecessors... when the business at hand
was dealing with things like the unhallowed dead and their piercing screams as they burnt in the
fires of Hell... or something like that.
That is why for something suitably affecting (which means capable of getting your flesh to crawl and
have nightmares for weeks), we need to access the far bigger archive of music made for the horror
films we pay good money to scare us witless. There are many fine tunes here, but I'm going with the
theme music for one of the all-time scariest films... Director George Romero's 1968 masterpiece
"Night of the Living Dead." Being of a susceptible nature myself, I can assure you... this grand
daddy of horror films will scare you to death which is, I know, just what you want. Find it in any
search engine. Listen to the music alone in a big empty house one night when the wind is howling
outside and anything could happen... especially if you happen to be dead... and unburied.
An out house and Aunt Doris Jean
Perhaps my first memory of Halloween is a story that I can laugh about a good 75 years after it
happened. My father was a "good boy" from a "good family" and so he got away if not with murder,
as least man slaughter. Anyway, one Halloween my father and his buddies got the suave idea of
picking up the out house when someone was within and.... you get the picture. The entree and egress
of relatives and friends was carefully noted and victim selected: my father's younger sister Doris
Jean who was of a noticeable plumpness and a shy disposition. In due course she was left alone in
the night air.. suitably pranked... while the laughter of the boys skimmed along the wind like pucas.
It was midden mayhem and makes us all smile unless you're a teen-age girl in the icky stage or a 14
year-old boy... and then you'll think this the funniest thing you've ever heard. This set the tone for all
future Halloweens, more I regret to report in the telling than in the doing.
Pranks
I have long felt an avowed contempt for the neighborhood children who, all unknowing, let down
the side on the matter of "trick or treat." Not one child in a thousand stops to think (or even cares)
that they are the current repositories of an age-old tradition, a tradition where the house holder got to
throw down his answer to the question of the hour: "trick or treat?" Here are the facts:
The children would knock on the door. The house holder, sometimes dressed for the occasion,
especially if they were having a Halloween party, would answer and look astonished at the motley
crew of pirates and princesses, pretending not to know a single one. This crew would then scream
the choices in high pitched voice and glee, defying the answering authority to make his choice... to
either be fleeced by the little monsters at his door there and then... or suffer their judicious mischief
later. The flood of cheap candy ensured that canny house holders would get off lightly. It was
sensible to just pay up in high sugar booty.
As for other tried and true pranks to the deserving, these included soaping windows (always with
Ivory soap since it was the most difficult to remove and could do real damage), limburger cheese in
the car manifold (guaranteed stench for weeks or even longer), revolting things in sure-find places I

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the car manifold (guaranteed stench for weeks or even longer), revolting things in sure-find places I
once froze a snake and put it in the freezer where my mother was sure to find it. Before she closed
the door on her hasty conference with my father, I heard these words indicating this operation was a
complete success, "Don, we've got to do something about Jeffrey..."
There were still more certified pranks... just mischief you understand... including the lavish use of
toilet paper in unusual (and difficult to remove) places... and my personal piece de resistance: the
evening I worked long and hard when my brother Kevin was sleeping to create a massive spider web
in which he was positioned in the center as dinner. How I managed to do this without waking him
remains a mystery even to me. His screams when he awoke and saw those red eyes starring at him
resonate in my mind... and with total satisfaction since this was the accomplished work of a master.
The matter of costumes.
As every cinema star knows, the importance of having just the right clothes is absolutely vital.
That's what made a dress genius like Edith Head so valuable to the studios... she could turn a sow's
ear into a silk purse... but the problem is we had no such genius at hand in Downers Grove, Illinois
circa 1955. Just plenty of sows' ears. Thus, there were just two choices: buy or make do with
whatever you had, an odd assortment of old clothes and the even then well worn costumes of past
years. What was that red stain on the ghost costume? Blood? Lipstick? Difficult to tell.
If you had a costume in mind (as many kids did) you were advised by mom to check the old stuff
first. Smart parents counted pennies. But you ranted, railed and threw carefully calibrated tantrums
to get what you wanted: something new that would command the eye and admiration of all. Your
pleadings, screamings, and artful displays of pique and pertinacity have won you the right to looking
for something new and wonderful... not like the abashing hand-me-downs and that "old clothes" look
that's so distressing. And thus came the visits to the only two establishments in town that could
assist, Mackey's General Store and Woolworth's.
It's hard to impart for the new generation of online buyers what a big deal it was to go searching for
just the right costume. Shopping online gives you far greater choice, efficiency, comfort and speed...
but it lacks the essential mystique so necessary in selecting a costume, for well under $5, tax
included. But at last you did find the costume you so wanted,but whose very mention in later years
will make you red with embarrassment when the inevitable photos are dragged out.
Now it's time for grannie... and the loot.
The first place we went after getting ready was always my mother's mother, Victoria Lauing. She
knew just how to play Halloween, as she knew how to play so much else. She made a point of
pretending she didn't know you until the masks came off and the "It's you!" comments came.
Masterful. And she made sure we were well stocked up on her famous popcorn balls, made only at
Halloween and with Karo corn syrup; their secret went to the grave with her. But that was no
concern of anyone in costume. We had a treasure trove to find and gather, the better to induce
stomach cramps and ruin our appetites for months.
Suffice it to say, we perfected our "trick or treat" strategies until they produced unseemly bumper
crops. But before we were allowed to sample a single morsel (and here our rules of operation were
exacting), mother spread a clean sheet on the floor and poured our finds on it, my brother and I
keeping a sharp watch so that neither got an extra chocolate bar, the certain property of the other.
Infractions were frequent.
Then my mother did what made her such a good mother. She scrutinized everything with practised,
skeptical eye... and was ruthless in discarding. One year, one of our neighbors was giving out old
comic books and copies of "Mad Magazine," and Kevin and I both got several... which she promptly



threw in the fire and stirred them into the flame. Such trash, however funny, had no place in her
house, or our lives. It is because of her protective love of literacy, words, and language that I am a
professional writer today with millions of readers worldwide.
That why I'd like nothing more than the chance to visit this Halloween with my ghosts, grandmother
and mother both, popcorn balls for all... a very different night of the living dead...



All Hallow's Eve, October 31, 2012 with II Commendatore, the
headless body of Ichabod Crane, still hopeful pathetic Linus
van Pelt, and a Great Pumpkin you will never see and one
you will. You're invited... formal dress and all decorations to
be worn...
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. Leave it to Mozart, thrilling Mozart, sublime Mozart to produce the most
evocative music for the multi-aspect event we call Halloween. It is, of course, from "Don Giovanni"
(premiered in Prague, 29 October 1787). I am talking of Il Commendatore's adamant call to Don
Giovanni, his summons to Hades and his eternal roasting in the exquisite fires of the damned where a
man finally learns, and learns at once and forever, that each of us prepares his own place of
perdition and torment... which is why we know and understand its every nuance so well... for it is a
place only to be found in the unhallowed depths of our imagination, a place where fear lives, seizes
and torments us...
Go now to any search engine where you'll find the dawning awareness of one doomed soul, the once
dashing and heedless Don, who only at the last and far too late understands the consequences of the
evil he has wrought. When you select the version you like best, turn up its volume until the very
foundation of your abode shakes. Then I shall be glad to receive you, honored guest, at this my little
soiree with only the creme de la creme of this baleful season.
I've been waiting for you... and now at last you are here... en route to eternity... and the fate you
have selected for yourself and honed to unbearable perfection...
The unseen barrier between the sweetness of life and the thrall of death lifts... and All Hallow's Eve
ushers in what we fear most... the return of our once loved and honored dead... now amongst us
again... reeking figures of disgust and horror... withered arms outreaching to drag you into fearsome
oblivion with them. Well might good people cross themselves with fervor and implore, "Jesu', now
and in the hour of my death", seeking thereby to make too late amends for all that has gone before.
Such mad hope is the greatest self deception of all and so great grinning fate grins greater still, at
you, your hopeful antics and gyrations, arduous, strenuous, belated, pitiful.
The veil lifts...
Our pagan ancestors knew this: the line between the life we embrace and the death that steals
everything we value is an unbridgeable chasm, shut tight 364 days but on October 31, at the feast of
Samhain (pronounced sow-in) it lifts to reveal every horrid thing we ever suspected, heralded by
noxious brimstone which once smelled we can never efface, no matter how many sweet posies we
try.
Death once smelled is always with us... the dead who venture forth All Hallow's Eve ensure that...
and so we loathe their approach and presence, huddling close to other chary travelers who this night
above all nights crave the touch and warmth of the flesh that will, and far too soon, be putrid,
noisome and foul. Oh, yes, we need others of our kind this grim night most of all... and the balm of
forgetfulness, if only for the stages of this night of horror and dread apprehension now fully upon us.

"Well-known New York socialite found dead in the street, HEADLESS."
Let me introduce you to author Washington Irving's friend Ichabod Crane. You'll recall his



Let me introduce you to author Washington Irving's friend Ichabod Crane. You'll recall his
celebrated 1820 report on the matter, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". Please don't comment on his
headless state; he's sensitive about it. After all, he was, in life, vain about his comely face and even
features, and it distresses him that he has them no longer; the pumpkin you see in its place, while
bravura of its kind and exquisitely carved, is not, after all, the beautiful visage God gave him, as
poor Mr. Crane will surely tell you, for in truth he has nowadays no other subject of conversation.
"Ah, Ichabod, would you favor us..." And Ichabod does, with every lurid detail at his finger tips.
How he was the most fervent of party animals, gracing every social event for miles around. How he
used his silver tongue and insinuating manners to fashion the very best of lives (including free room
and board from those beguiled by such a paragon and man of bon ton). How he came to know and
love (as much as such an acolyte of Narcissus can ever love another) Miss Katrina Van Tassel,
something of an heiress with fertile acres and the promise of tasty hot meals for life her appealing
dowry... getting her to love him and promise him those acres and those tasty meals was child's play
for such a man... and, besides, he may even have loved her, at least as he understood love.
Thus promises, pledges, and florid declarations were made, made again, and savored, along, you
may suppose, with the trinkets and keep-sakes so much treasured in the giving and the getting. "Pray
continue, dear Ichabod, for my guests must leave before..."
And so Ichabod continues his painful narration. Of how he believed one and every myth, legend, tall
tale and prophesy. And of how one dark October night, yes, this very time of the year, Ichabod
Crane, so near his goal, encountered on his road home a traveler who reveals that he is the ghost of a
Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannon ball in the American Revolution. He, too, has a
goal: would Ichabod provide his head, for his own was much worn, its features degraded, gruesome,
and oozing?
And so commenced the epic chase of Sleepy Hollow... the chase Ichabod Crane thought he'd won,
when he crossed the bridge which meant safety. But the horseman threw his own severed head at
Crane with diabolical skill. Next day Ichabod was gone, only his hat and a pumpkin remained.
Abraham "Brom Bones" van Brunt was questioned, but said nothing, then or ever. "He married
Katrina, didn't he?" And so Ichabod Crane finished, as all sinners finish; blaming others, claiming a
state of grace, pleading for understanding, empathy, and above all for absolution, adamant that they
were innocent, always innocent, wrongly caught in the cycles of eternal damnation.
Resolute, committed, determined, pathetic. Linus van Pelt.
"Ah Linus, I didn't expect you this year what with your great matter, the Great Pumpkin."
"I came to see if Mr. Schulz allows me to see the Great Pumpkin at last, after waiting so long, since
October 27, 1966." But he knew better. Charles Schulz in life (1922-2000) insisted that the Great
Pumpkin would never come, would remain invisible, allowed no sight, sound, apparition or clue;
that poor Linus, alone in the night air, armed with only thumb, blanket and a child's unshakable
faith, would so confront the ages.
So decreed his creator, who is now (if there is any justice) a pre-school teacher in Hell in a school
for toddlers with excessive lobar capacity and preternatural skills for bugging adults. He would have
come to my little event, but Linus tells me he's been super-glued to a particularly uncomfortable
chair whilst screaming tots record every colorful expletive and imprecation he ever knew and
continuously uses; texting each and every profanity to every school board in the land along with the
pieces of his latest cartoon strip, pieces so ill assorted they can never be put properly together.
Delicious.
Poor Mr. Schulz! Despite the fact that he made up to $40 million a year, everything, every single



thing made him nervous... and so he is probably fretting right this minute about what those kids are
doing to him. And if the kids were this instant taken off Pester Patrol, he'd worry about that too,
wondering what it meant. You can surely see the hand of Old Scratch in all this. "You can't create
humor out of happiness," Schulz once said. Now he's got enough unhappiness for "Peanuts" strips
forever.
The last guest to arrive.
All those participating in the All Hallow's festivities can leave Hades any time October 31 to
commence their grisly rounds. However each must return by the final stroke, the 12th stroke, of the
clock at midnight. Otherwise, they are assigned some degrading, demeaning or derisory task, to
perform until Hades opens again to call them "home".
"Ah, it's Mr. Ron Wallace, isn't it, whose pumpkin at the Topsfield Fair has just become the biggest
in history, about 2000 pounds, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir, Ron Wallace is back! Ron Wallace is back! It took me six years to get back on top and
now I have!" "Many felicitations, Mr. Wallace. By the way, have you read your task?"
Wallace, the champ, looked irked. Task indeed! He ripped open the envelope, and his face fell. "It
says I'm to spent this year producing my next pumpkin. But that I will only be able to grow one of
just 2 pounds... and that each person at the fair will be asked to get up and ridicule my 'achievement'.
I'll be pilloried, especially after all the great things I said about myself when the results were
released September 28." "No doubt, Mr. Wallace, too sad..."
By the way, dear guest, I have a letter for you, too. It contains your little task. Open it now. I can't
wait to see what you'll be doing. Happy All Hallow's. So awfully good to see you.



'Pardon the witches of Connecticut', say relatives. 'Cause
there's no nicer witch than you.' Some thoughts.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. It all happened a long time ago, in 1663 in fact, but some of the good citizens
of Connecticut just cannot let it go. And it's easy to understand why. After all, it was their ancestors
who were burnt, hanged and otherwise mistreated because their anxious neighbors deemed them
witches and were adamant that their property values would plummet if they didn't take Immediate
Action and get rid of these noisome influences immediately.
This is the story of how it happened, why it happened, and how it is that His Excellency Connecticut
Governor Dannel Malloy is spending so many of his waking (and perhaps sleeping) moments
dealing with the matter, trying hard to find a formula that will accommodate everyone and end this
matter once and for all.
Such a subject, you'll agree, needs an appropriate tune to put you in the mood for what follows. So
I've selected Frank Sinatra's sultry 1957 song "Witchcraft". It was composed by Cy Coleman with
lyrics by Carolyn Leigh. Go find it now in any search engine. Watch out! Its seductive sound and
smooth words are designed to entrance you, "Cause it's witchcraft, wicked witchcraft/ And although,
I know, it's strictly taboo".
"It's such an ancient pitch."
Admit it, we're fascinated and repelled by the idea of witches, gals who like to spend their time
boiling the body parts of particularly disgusting creatures; turning them into potions, philtres,
unguents, incenses, elixirs, oils and other loathsome concoctions all easily found in their handy
grimoire, the textbook of white and black magic. Such people, hair uncombed, stinking and
unwashed (my particular aversion) gathered deep in forests, there to summon their Boss, known
hereabouts in New England as Old Scratch. They liked being able to summon him. It made for a
really festive evening. He was such a cut up and his tricks with fire were mesmerizing!
However, I've got a hunch Scratch didn't much like hanging out with such a motley, reeking crew,
but since a guy's got to take his followers where he can find them, he no doubt made the best of it, as
we all do. Besides I have it on excellent authority that Scratch particularly favored their preserves
featuring hard-to-find eye of newt. He could always position himself to avoid their more gruesome
features. And as for the smells... he could always sit upwind and use his brimstone cologne.
"I've got no defense for it/The heat is too intense for it."
Of course the participants want their little soirees to be discrete, private, secret. Equally, people who
want to know will move heaven and earth (there's a potion for this) to find out. And in due course,
they do... and, man oh man, are they ever shocked, not least at the smell, for remember these are
Puritans where cleanliness is next to Godliness.
In short order, the fat is in the fire and the Witch Problem commences. Witches are suspected,
identified, charged, tried, found guilty and done away with as quickly, publicly and painfully as
possible. Their remains are often left to be seen, to warn others that witches are real, are evil, move
amongst us... and that if you ever see anything odd to summon at once the authorities, the purest of
the Puritans, who can take action and return the community and all its residents to God's strict,
unalterable tenets. Hallelujah!
Sadly, to achieve the desired results, a few must be extinguished but since these are always
low-income, low status, completely powerless women, the Godly divines go forward, sure that the



sweeping removal of such undesirables is beneficial, their mere existence in the community being
outrage enough to justify even the most heinous deed.
"My Grandmother Mary Was Hanged."
This time the problem was discovered by 82 year-old Bernice Mable Graham Telian. She was
researching her family tree when she discovered that her seventh grandmother, Mary Barnes of
Farmington, Connecticut, was condemned as a witch; then dispatched by the gallows at the site of
the old State House in Hartford. This happened in 1663.
"You won't find Mary's grave. She and all these people who were hanged were dumped in a hole.
Their graves aren't marked," said Telian,a retired university administrator who now lives in Delhi,
New York.
This discovery so shocked Telian that she spent the last five years writing a book entitled "My
Grandmother Mary Was Hanged." She was immediately recruited by other outraged citizens with
ancestors charged with witchcraft and executed. For you see, Mary Barnes was only one of 11
Connecticut residents so charged and executed between 1647 and 1663.
What would you have done? The most difficult question of all, information, empathy, due
deliberation required.
Since Connecticut and the other colonies of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Virginia assigned
those believed to be witches to death, our view of God, evil, Satan, witches and punishment has
changed dramatically. Thus we, with our progressive view on the matter, imagine that had we been
present we would surely have saved the ladies from the gallows. But I argue this view is naive,
merely another opportunity to praise ourselves and assign virtues which are at best spurious. I am
not saying that these executions were right; they were not. However, are they understandable? Can
you see how otherwise reasonable people made such decisions under the stress of the moment?
They believed in sin, in the devil and that the devil's disciples, some called witches, actively moved
amongst them. They did not just think this as some intellectual parlor game. It was an essential
element of what they believed and how therefore they arranged their lives in every aspect. And so,
given their viewpoint they made decisions of the greatest gravity, ending lives because by so ending
they saved and preserved the community of the Godly they had established in the New World. All
this is overlooked, forgotten and pooh-poohed by those who, in an instant, condemn the perpetrators
without understanding, their judgements sweeping, emphatic, final... and wrong.
"Cause there's no nicer witch than you."
Of course you can't ask Bernice Telian to accept this. It's her ancestor who was charged, found
guilty and executed for witchcraft. That ancestor, Mary Barnes by name, deserves absolution,
pardon, her name entirely cleared. The descendants of the other "witches" entirely concur, and they
are now inundating Governor Malloy with postcards reading "I am a Pagan/Witch and vote. Clear
the names of Connecticut's eleven accused and executed witches."
Malloy is in hot pursuit of a way to accommodate the aggrieved but he lacks the constitutional
ability to pardon while the state Board of Pardons and Paroles doesn't grant posthumous pardons.
Still, I feel sure they'll find a way of resolving the matter to the satisfaction of all, "Cause there's no
nicer witch than you."



Resource
About the author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide
range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Your response to this article is
requested. What do you think? Let Dr. Lant know by posting your comments below.
Republished with author's permission by Dale Thomson http://HomeBizGroup5000.com.


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