Halloween

So Halloween 2009 is rapidly becoming history and the mad dash to Christmas is upon us. I even saw that Asda Walmart in North Swindon have their Christmas tree up [ALREADY!!]

Anyway, back to Halloween, this time last week , there was a frenzy of activity, pumpkins to be carved, candy to be purchased, costumes checked out and special effects to be organised.

I've been carving two pumpkins a year for a couple of years now, getting more and more ambitious with each passing year. This time, things were a little stripped back, a simple skull and ghost with the greeting carved in to the skull pumpkin [above]

Rachel was going trick or treating as a scary clown, the clown from Stephen King's "It" to be precise whilst Emily was trick or treating as the devil. Mum was on trick or treat duty whilst I was home minding the store. This year though I had rigged a little "surprise".

I downloaded a number of spooky Halloween sound effects from the Internet, ghostly "whoos", screams, spooky greetings, creaking doors, footsteps, heartbeats etc. Then, with a small speaker in the porch and laptop just inside the door I was able to play suitably Halloween music, "Thriller", spooky music TV show and film theme tunes etc and then when trick or treaters reached the door, they were greeted with a spooky sound effect or 2.

However, the number of trick or treaters this year was significantly lower than last year and the amount of candy the girls managed to collect was also way down, perhaps 2009 was the credit crunch Halloween