Ghosts of Halloween Past

Happy Halloween! To celebrate this All Hallow's Eve I present to you a tour of my costumes of Halloween past. Hope you enjoy.


We start the tour in the year of 1971. My sister is 1 1/2 and I am (almost) 3. The outfit that sis is wearing is something that Mom concocted with a bedsheet. She had me wear the same thing when I was Amy's age. In fact, there's a photo of me wearing this bedsheet/bunny-thing and I have this strange confused look on my face. Mom tells me that I'm looking at her as she's trying to take the photo but can't because she's laughing so hard at me. (I couldn't find the photo.) UPDATE: Found it! Here, my love for Disney and Mickey Mouse becomes self evident at the (extremely brown) kitchen table.


Next is 1973. Umm, I have to explain this. See, my Dad was notorious for freestyling a costume for Halloween. The more ludicrous, the better. He would dress up in anything that he could get his hands on: in this year's case, it was some old white pantyhose and an outrageous bedsheet. (Just check out that pattern! What could we do? It was the 70's.) Amy is 3, I'm (almost) 5. Lookit, I'm already digging the classic horror monsters: Frankenstein's monster. Amy is another monster of sorts: Barbie.


1976: This is me, our friend Susan, and my sister Amy. I'm some sort of ghoul, not sure what Susan was, sis was a gypsy. This is just as we are about to embark upon our trick-or-treatin' -- I was in full character with that freakish pose. I believe Mom painted on that third eye, probably at the last minute.


Just down the street, our neighbors loved our costumes so much that they took a photo of us. I'm posting this because I find it hilarious that I'm still in character.


1978: I'm saving the best for last. This is perhaps one of my favorite Halloween costumes of all time. I was almost 10 and was so into horror and blood and creepy stuff. I definitely was into full "gross phase" at this stage in my life.

My costume was as follows: I ripped up some old jeans and a sweater and put some fake blood in the rips and holes, I painted the skull on my face myself (complete with fake blood), I had Mom buy some black leggings so I could paint skeleton legs that could be seen through the holes in the jeans, and -- the kicker -- I taped my right eye shut and glued a paper mache eyeball that I had made by myself earlier in the day (with optical nerve, of course). Also, I had a fake rubber hand that was supposed to be in the shot here (it's on the ground in front of me), and with it, I would try to freak people out by dropping it into the candy bowl or whatever as I went out trick-or-treating. Ahh, good times.

That's it for this year's Halloween! Hope you all have a wonderfully spooky time tonight and don't get too stuffed from your annual haunting the neighborhood for sweets and sugar!