My father was that guy that is in every neighborhood that gave out bad candy. He loved those old fashioned peanut butter kisses in the orange and black wrappers. He would buy several bags of them AFTER Halloween and save them until next year... and the year after...
Oh, those peanut butter kisses are vile! LOL! But even worse I think are Good and Plenty candy - YUCK. LOL!
Dad would be milking the cows, (we lived on a dairy farm) so he didn't have too much of an influence...but Mom would do the decorating and the grandparents would do that story thing I always go on about...and then you'd have DC comics, and the horror hosts like Vampira, or Graves Ghastly, or Superhost, and the t.v. shows...
By the way...one girl I knew grew up under some of the same awful circumstances some of the rest of you did...her dad took off and got loaded Halloween and she didn't get over to our place to go trick or treating soon enough...the next day when we were at her place to get on the bus, we saw her dad in the back of the truck...still out cold...it had frozen during the night, but not enough to KILL him..he was still breathing..she poked him a few times with her finger (pretty hard to...) and then said;"I don't care if I have to move to Timbucktu...THIS will NOT happen to MY children.." And it DIDN'T she married a super guy and she could probably outdo Martha Stewart....if Martha Stewart dressed up like Elvira and did the Time Warp...
Well, my parents always let me watch scary movies as a kid, even as young as 5 I was watching JAWS, The Shining, Halloween, etc. It led to lots of "Can I sleep with you tonight?" type nights, but they still let me watch. Also, my mom is a big shopper, always was, and I was her little shopping buddy. So as a result, I always got to see all the Halloween merchandise as soon as it was put out. I clearly rememeber going to a store called "The Book and Record"..it sold..well..books and recors\ds, and lots of seasonal items. The front of the store had a huge display of these people-faced foam pumpkins called "The Oh' Lantern Family." They were kind of pricey for the 80's..I think maybe 10-15 bucks each, but I was a particularly good girl that day and my mom let me choose one (I still have it). From then, I would round up things I found scary and do a tiny little table display. During my teen years I kind of stopped. Several years ago, I was like 26 or 27, my dad came home with a small u-haul and told me there was a surprise inside for me. I opened the doors and this was in it:
In my case, I'm pretty sure it's all Mom's fault. I don't think she had much of a Halloween when she was a kid, but when I was little it seemed like making costumes for us kids was a huge priority. She put together some amazing costumes, often just with stuff from around the house. I still have a Dracula cape she made for me back in the 70s - we use it in our yard display and I still get compliments on it. Decoration-wise, our house was always THE house on the street - pretty tame by today's standards, but most folks only had Jack-O-Lanterns back then.
I think she was just very creative and Halloween gave her a chance to flex those muscles.
She also had a tendency to impulse buy stuff that she thought was strange or cool (or just a good deal), so that added to our display stuff as well.
But having a neighbourhood full of kids made Halloween a big event, and EVERYONE TOTd back then.
I have 3 older siblings, so they take some credit for establishing holiday excitement. But my dad was the person in our family that got into Halloween, which is surprising as he is not a festive person in any way.
He carved the pumpkins, and most importantly, he took us TOTing! He would walk us up and down every street in our large neighbourhood, and he carried an extra pillow case for the massive amount of candy we would get. He even owned one mask (the rubber ones with hair) that he wore every year.
My mom put up the paper decorations, stayed home to hand out candy, and kept turning over the Horror Sounds of the Night cassette playing in the garage at my request.
I think this combined with the perfect neighbourhood for TOTing and my own leaning towards the dark and abnormal made me the way I am. Now I am being sure to raise my daughter to such high standards!
Parents went to a few fancy dress parties, but I don't think they got me into anything, mind you they love dressing up and coming up on the day and when my mum sees items I'm working on she does the "oh you could use this or get that or I know where I can get this for you"
My parents were completely responsible for my love of Halloween. I remember the whole family (Grandma included) decking out the whole yard yearly, and then watching my parents create their costumes and head out to all the contests and come home with prize after prize. Even when I went away to college, a Halloween never passed without a box full of decorating goodies and a card coming my way in the mail.
Now the family haunting is hosted with myself and the husband. No kids yet, but when we do, I fully intend to pass our love onto them too.
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"Your cadaverous palour, betrays an aura of foreboding, almost as though you sense a disquieting metamorphosis..."
I was raised by aunt and uncle/godparents and they were older, in their late 50's when they took me in, I was 3. They weren't really into Halloween hard core like we are, but they took me trick or treating until I was about 10 and put up paper decorations around the house. We also did jack o lanterns and they took me to rent a nice costume a few years in a row. When I was little, I had the cheapy plastic costumes. So I guess they got me started, I just took it like ten steps further. My dad liked what I did with the house every year, he used to sit out for a little bit on Halloween night with me to pass out candy to the tot's. One of my sisters also decorates for Halloween, but not anywhere near as much as we do.
snowballs, snowballs I tell you 
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