Mrs. RumMunkey and I are at an impass. I fully intend on dressing up and hiding in the shadows of my home on Hallowe’en and scaring whomever is brave enough to try and get candy from my door.
Now, I’m a realist (some what). I’m not going to make very young children wet themselves in my driveway. But I do plan on doing a whole “I didn’t see you there at first” kind of scare where I am deep in the shadows then step forward and enter the ‘victims’ field of vision; that sort of “I didn’t know you were there” kind of thing. I’m not going to jump out of total hiding, or shout at children. I may take a stutter step here and there like I’m going to, but I won’t.
Very young kids get a free pass obvioulsy, but older kids are going to be scared.
To me it’s all in good fun. That’s what Hallowe’en is, isn’t it? That’s what I remember from being a kid (That and the time I interrupted a young man’s attempts to round 3rd base, but that’s another story).
I’m with you–this is what Halloween is all about. When I was a kid, I lived in a very kid-friendly neighborhood. There were no main roads, every house had a family, it was just a great place to grow up. When I was about 10 or so, a young couple moved in to a house around the block. That Halloween, we discovered that they had apparently gone out for the evening, and left a big bowl of lollipops on the porch, in the lap of a harmless-looking scarecrow, with a sign that said “Please take only one.”
Well. Can you guess what happened if some larcenous little kid took two or three? That’s right–Mr. Scarecrow jumped up and scared the bejeezus out of the poor tyke. Sure, it was scary as hell, but I still think of it as one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life.
Absolutely not. I love scaring the shit out of kids on Halloween. Family members get the brunt of it. Last year my cousing stopped by and while she was saying goodbye to everyone, I was the first one to hug her goodbye, I ran out the side door and got into the backseat of her car. She got in and I reached around and grabbed her shouting “Give me some candy BICH!” I laughed and laughed. Ah…Good times.
You’ve reminded me of an extremely funny post from (I believe) last Halloween. I don’t remember the poster and haven’t been able to put together the right search argument to find it.
Anyway, the gist was that the poster dressed up as some sort of slimey monster and hid under a pile of leaves in the yard. When kids came trick or treating, he would jump out of the leaves and scare them. He tried this on a pair of 10-ish young ladies, who proceeded to knock him down, kick him in the cujones, and generally whup his butt.
So be careful – some of those kids have martial arts training.
I say go for it, with, as others noted, the exception of really small children.
Besides, even if kids AREN’T scared, they’ll pretend to be, in some cases. (When I was little, I used to go trick or treating with my cousins, because they lived in a HUGE plan, and one of my uncles would always wear a scary monster mask. When he’d arrive, we’d run screaming and pretending to be terrified.)
Or the one house, that always did this dark, red strobe-lighted garage, with plastic streamers entrance (think a carwash), with creepy music. And there’d be someone in there dressed up like Freddy Krueger or whoever. I loved that!
My father used to have a great time at halloween. Every year the yard was done up in something different. I know a couple of years he had problems getting kids to come down the driveway. One year he rewired the doorbell to a coffin he hid in. The kids pushed the bell, a light went off and he got out from behind them. Great stuff.
This year I want to see if the kids trick or treat in my area, I’m going to set up my house good I hope.