This was my first American Halloween, and while I knew that trick or treating was a big thing for kids, I was surprised by the enthusiasm everyone shows for dressing up and decorating everything in sight with ghosts and pumpkins.
Before the big day everyone goes to one of the pumpkins patches that spring up in October on all the farms within driving distance of town. The idea is to choose a variety of pumkins to decorate your home – some to be carved into Jack-o’-lanterns and others to be left whole and unadorned.
The pumpkin patch also had lots of themed activities: a tractor ride round the pumpkins, a train ride through a ghost-infested greenhouse, a range of suitably spooky inflatables – and some truly hideous merch.
And it’s not just the pumpkin patch that’s decorated for Halloween. We went to visit a farm and they’d also gone to town with the decorations. Whoever decorated the chicken pen most definitely has a sadistic streak, covering the place with bird skeletons to remind them of the next stage in their life cycle. There were even decorations at the Pilates studio and a prize for the best costume – the winner came as a butterfly with large fabric wings attached at her shoulder, wrist and ankle. I felt that she deserved a prize just for attempting Pilates in an outfit that managed to twist itself into a multicoloured straitjacket after about five minutes.
The houses in the neighbourhood have all gone to town too, with decorations that range from humorous to downright macabre. I’m also impressed by the amount of time some people have spent decorating their entire front garden with graves, skeletons, bats and spiders. I’m sure they’re the same people who will have their lawns festooned with dancing Santas and reindeer with flashing antlers in a month’s time, before moving on to Cupids in February, chicks and bunnies in April and flags for the fourth of July. They obviously have a great deal of free time and endless storage space.
All these houses will be back to normal next week, their grisly embellishments packed away until next October. But when I saw Stephen King’s house on my recent jaunt to New England, I realised that for him, there’s no packing away of the spooky decor straight after Halloween – he lives with it all year round.
His gothic turrets don’t look too menacing on a beautiful sunny day, but the gates are covered in bats, spiders and cobwebs, and in the garden there’s an enormous wooden sculpture topped off with a variety of birds of prey. I suppose it’s not surprising that this is a man who leans into Halloween in a big way.