Where I’m Writing From eli.cranor@gmail.com October 30, 2022 Eli Cranor is an Arkansas novelist whose debut novel, Don’t Know Tough, is available wherever books are sold. He can be reached using the “Contact” page at elicranor.com and found on Twitter @elicranor

I’m writing to you on Halloween Eve.

Due to printing schedules and deadlines, I’m not actually writing this column the day before Halloween, but my mind is already there, looking ahead to my favorite holiday.

My infatuation with Halloween began in the Forrest City middle school cafeteria. My dad was the Mustangs’ counselor, and also the sole force behind the school’s annual haunted house.

A former Art major at UCA, Dad hand painted scenes from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark on wall-sized backdrops. He cut fence pickets down to look like stakes —real wooden stakes he superglued to the mannequin dressed like a vampire in a coffin made of carboard.

I was four, and it was glorious, but not nearly as cool as watching my dad dress up like Freddy Kruger and chase big kids through his nightmare world.

The mask was movie grade, complete with melted scars. The red-and-black-striped sweater, the brown fedora, even the glove with the knife-blade fingers — Dad got it all for Christmas the year before he built the haunted house.

It’s hard to forget watching your father pull an oozing rubber face out of a carefully giftwrapped box on Christmas morning. It’s even harder to forget the way his haunted house made me feel. The spark that was lit as I watched him transform a cafeteria stage into a world where vampires sprung from coffins and the walls crawled with my favorite creepy scenes.

Maybe that’s where my love of Halloween started.

Or maybe it was later, after we’d moved from Forrest City to Russellville and I tried to recreate my father’s black magic. I was at that in-between age where I felt too old to trick-or-treat but still wanted to dress up.

One year, I dressed up as a table with a pumpkin on top and candy scattered all around it. The next, I was a scarecrow sprawled out lifelessly on a bale of hay, watching as throngs of unsuspecting kids approached the front door.

My mother taught kindergarten. With her short dark hair and flowing blue dress, she made the perfect Snow White. Those poor kids flocked to her, not one bit worried about the scarecrow or the teenage boy crouching inside the cardboard box with a plastic pumpkin on his head.

As the years — and the tricks — wore on, some kids started skipping the house at 404 Muscadine Lane. They’d learned their lesson. Others came back again and again. They’d learned a lesson too. The same one I learned in that middle school cafeteria.

I loved spooky stuff, but I loved Halloween most of all.

It’s a strange holiday, when you really think about it, especially the modern, Americanized version. Costumes and candy. Or, if you’re an adult — sexy costumes and beer.

But for me, at least, there’s still magic to be found on October 31st.

There’s electricity in the air, charged, as a child, by the simple fact that you’re out after dark. I’ve been reminded of this in recent years, watching my children scamper across the same lawns in the same neighborhood where I grew up not so long ago.

Each Halloween, I make it a point to stop by 404 Muscadine Lane before all the porch lights get switched off. An older couple lives there now. There’s nobody hiding in the bushes or dressed up on the front porch, but if I close my eyes and the wind blows just right, I’m transported back to 1999.

I can feel the candy, the weight of my plastic bucket as it swings. I can smell the crisp scent of dry leaves and hear them crackling beneath my Nike Air Max 2000s. I can see dim lights flickering from the depths of hollowed-out pumpkins, and the eyes of my friends smiling behind monster masks.

When my eyes open, though, the past fades away, replaced by two little pirates dashing up to the same door I’ve walked through so many times before.

Happy Halloween to all who celebrate, and to those who don’t — Boo!