Boo!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

There’s a phenomenon that I’ve only noticed recently called “Boo!”, whereby, prior to Halloween, neighbors bring some goodies by, leave it on the doorstep, ring the bell and run. A flyer with the goodies says that “You’ve been ‘Booed!’” (or haunted) and you need to do the same to 2 other neighbors. You also have to put a little ghost flyer in your window so that the same house isn’t done twice. My kids really enjoyed it, particularly last year when it occurred right after we moved to our new neighborhood last year.

Now, last night, as is sometimes the case, my daughter was having trouble getting to sleep, but lying quitely in her room. Mrs Shibb and I were in the other room, drinking a glass of wine and watching something or other on the television. Suddenly there was a loud, shrill scream from my daughters room and the sound of running feet. I was sure some critter must have crawled into bed with her. So I rushed over to her room and she was sobbing uncontrollably. She said she’d heard something, sounded like someone was shaking the tree outside her window. I went outside to have a look, and didn’t see anyone in the vicinity. But on the way back in I found a little basket of goodies, with the familiar ghost.

We’d been “booed” and my daughter definitely got a big scare out of it. I’ve not talked with her yet today to see how she is, but she did smile when I showed her the basket last night, even though she was still teary-eyed at that point. I’m a little torn on this, since it was a nice gesture, but did cause the Girl to panic and spooked her pretty well. I don’t think that they intended to have that affect, and it’s quite possible that they were just walking up to the door, heard her scream, and set the basket down and ran. Might have frightened whoever was doing the frightening, since her scream was somewhat blood curdling. Or it could have been some older kids intentionally setting out to do a “trick” with the “treats”.

2

Out of curiosity what time of night was this? I think that if it was after nine o’clock then whoever did it, though probably well intentioned, shouldn’t have. I’m guessing nine is a reasonable time for which a young child would be in bed. I think the “tradition” is kind of cool, but perhaps should be done in early evening hours.

3

Yeah, it was actually a little after ten. If they just made inadvertent noise, then normally she’d have been asleep, no harm no foul. If it had been before 9 then she probably wouldn’t have been in her room.

4

You’re supposed to do this to two other people? What is this, a chain-prank?
I’m not sure I’d be as tolerant as you on this one, regardless of how it affected the little Shibb.

5

We’ve been “Boo’d” before and I gathered that the whole jist of the exercise was to leave the recipient clueless and curious as to just who had in fact “Boo’d” them. Sounds like a good intention coupled with bad execution.

6

That sums it up fairly well. When we’ve delivered the treats to others before we’ve normally done it around 7-8 pm, and knocked or rang the bell.

7

We did this in three of the neighborhoods we lived in when I was a kid (oh-so-many years ago…) and started it in the last one. It was so much fun, although we tended to do it early evening, not late night.

8

Sounds like fun :slight_smile: But if someone was shaking the tree outside her window, that’s getting beyond fun and into creepy…