“Hi, my name is Bill, and I’m a (hard swallow) Propaholic/Halloween Enthusiast. It’s been several weeks since my last build.” The gallery nods in acknowledgement.
“It all started innocently enough. When I was 14 (now 49) I put my creative abilities to work by crafting and hanging an 8’x8’ black Visqueen “room” (floor, ceiling and walls) in the foyer of my parents home. It was a dark, foreboding room with thin black ribbons of plastic dangling in the doorway. I artfully, as much as a 14-year-old could be, hand-painted spooky (read as “cheesy”) skeletons, eyeballs, ghosts, and other assorted Halloween figures with fluorescent paint throughout my scary little domain. I then grabbed my new 18” blacklight out of my bedroom (oh, you should have seen the great fluorescent posters I had back then – hey, it was 1974, what did you expect?!!) and hung it ever so cleverly just above the doorway. Then, I stuffed newspapers into clothing to make a “terrifying” scarecrow to reside on the wooden bench outside our front door. Disney’s Haunted Mansion had nothing on me! I was THE propmaster (well, at least in my mind, anyway). On Halloween night, I sat within the confines of my “room of terror” eagerly awaiting my first evening of innocent victims. Now, if I would have just thought first about our barking miniature Poodle and the blaring TV in the background ruining the scary atmosphere, things might have not been so amateur. Well, throughout that night I experienced the thrill of having an emotional affect on TOTs. I found that the groups had their brave individual who always cautiously peeked in with trepidation, and I then would jump out from my secret vantage point and get my reward – that spontaneous and reflexive “agh!”, “whoa!” or “eeek!”. Ah, the sweet sound of success. Following my ritual of fright, I would product my treasured selection of delicate, sweet morsels to reward the brave souls whom had survived their face-to-face encounter with sheer and utter terror. Those lucky few who made it out alive ran to tell their quivering friends of their encounter with all that is evil. Yup, it was fun even coaxing in the littlest kids that would approach no closer than ten feet away from what surely the gates of Hell itself. Surely, I had found my calling! It’s to instill terror into other kids each Halloween. It seems it wasn’t too hard to do since they each had infused themselves with anticipation of the evening; all I had to do was push their mental button. Later that night, I found I enjoyed showing the older kids how I had made my own world of horror. Some were duly impressed.”
Since that time, I have celebrated the season to varying degrees. I enjoy it now more than ever. Come on, admit it…we enthusiasts enjoy eliciting unrestrained emotion from our prey, be it shock, fear (including, of course, the elusive sudden-loss-of-bladder-control), curiosity, terror, awe, or even just plain-old happiness. I believe we all share the same zeal and grin-evoking thoughts each Halloween season as we relive our fondest Halloween memories.
-Bill
“It all started innocently enough. When I was 14 (now 49) I put my creative abilities to work by crafting and hanging an 8’x8’ black Visqueen “room” (floor, ceiling and walls) in the foyer of my parents home. It was a dark, foreboding room with thin black ribbons of plastic dangling in the doorway. I artfully, as much as a 14-year-old could be, hand-painted spooky (read as “cheesy”) skeletons, eyeballs, ghosts, and other assorted Halloween figures with fluorescent paint throughout my scary little domain. I then grabbed my new 18” blacklight out of my bedroom (oh, you should have seen the great fluorescent posters I had back then – hey, it was 1974, what did you expect?!!) and hung it ever so cleverly just above the doorway. Then, I stuffed newspapers into clothing to make a “terrifying” scarecrow to reside on the wooden bench outside our front door. Disney’s Haunted Mansion had nothing on me! I was THE propmaster (well, at least in my mind, anyway). On Halloween night, I sat within the confines of my “room of terror” eagerly awaiting my first evening of innocent victims. Now, if I would have just thought first about our barking miniature Poodle and the blaring TV in the background ruining the scary atmosphere, things might have not been so amateur. Well, throughout that night I experienced the thrill of having an emotional affect on TOTs. I found that the groups had their brave individual who always cautiously peeked in with trepidation, and I then would jump out from my secret vantage point and get my reward – that spontaneous and reflexive “agh!”, “whoa!” or “eeek!”. Ah, the sweet sound of success. Following my ritual of fright, I would product my treasured selection of delicate, sweet morsels to reward the brave souls whom had survived their face-to-face encounter with sheer and utter terror. Those lucky few who made it out alive ran to tell their quivering friends of their encounter with all that is evil. Yup, it was fun even coaxing in the littlest kids that would approach no closer than ten feet away from what surely the gates of Hell itself. Surely, I had found my calling! It’s to instill terror into other kids each Halloween. It seems it wasn’t too hard to do since they each had infused themselves with anticipation of the evening; all I had to do was push their mental button. Later that night, I found I enjoyed showing the older kids how I had made my own world of horror. Some were duly impressed.”
Since that time, I have celebrated the season to varying degrees. I enjoy it now more than ever. Come on, admit it…we enthusiasts enjoy eliciting unrestrained emotion from our prey, be it shock, fear (including, of course, the elusive sudden-loss-of-bladder-control), curiosity, terror, awe, or even just plain-old happiness. I believe we all share the same zeal and grin-evoking thoughts each Halloween season as we relive our fondest Halloween memories.
-Bill