How I learned to overcome my fear and love Halloween
It all started with the witch.
I was in first grade when I first heard about her. There I was, just a few weeks into the new school year, trying to adjust to my new surroundings and feeling out of place with my bowl haircut and awful polyester pants. I don’t know who I first heard if from. It was probably a girl named Tatia, who would end up being a lifelong friend and contribute to many, many laugh lines on my face over the years. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter who said it. Everyone knew about it by then. On Halloween day, the witch paid a visit to every classroom. It had been going on for years.
“The w-witch?” I stammered. I’d seen The Wizard of Oz. Witches were evil women who commanded armies of flying monkeys and wanted nothing more in life than to kill off poor, sweet Dorothy and her entourage of lovable misfits. “Like, a real witch?”
“Uh-huh,” probably-Tatia said. “She brings candy.”
Terrified and anxious
Before I got into the school system, I had zero knowledge of how Halloween worked. My parents didn’t always make it a priority to keep their kids entertained. They recognized the traditional holidays—Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day—but the less hoopla made about them, the better. We got cake and a present on our birthdays. No big whoop.
The idea of a witch visiting our class filled me with dread. There were rumors she was actually Mrs. Kunkle in disguise—the school’s speech therapist. My young brain struggled to process this information. I saw Mrs. Kunkel in the hallway every day. She was the sweetest lady. There was no way she could ever be a part of anything so horrible. No, it had to be a real witch. Fear gnawed at the pit of my stomach and only got worse as the day drew inexorably closer.
Then it was Halloween day. My insides were in knots; I felt agitated, anxious, restless. I could hardly keep my mind on my schoolwork, much less carry on a conversation. At recess, I walked around the playground in a daze. Then, around thirty minutes before school let out for the day, a commotion rose up in one of the classrooms down the hall. Kids were screaming! My class was at the opposite end of the hall, but you could hear it plain as day. Above those awful sounds, a sinister cackle floated in our direction, absolutely chilling me to my bones. The screams stopped in the classroom and then started up in another. I trembled with fright as the wave of screams grew closer. The tension was indescribable.
This was back in a simpler time. We didn’t have maniacs walking into schools with guns back then. The scariest thing we had to deal with were winos hanging out in the local park. We had it lucky in those days, and I can’t imagine the fear that some students live with today.
The classroom door burst open like a sudden wind had snatched it off its hinges. If there had been a second door in that room, I certainly would have scrambled towards it. All of us screamed. Maybe even today, part of me is still screaming.
The witching hour is here!
The witch was in our midst! Her face was smeared with green greasepaint. She wore a black pointed hat, and she was holding a broom and a plastic bag. She scurried up and down the aisles, her flowing black garment rippling behind her like a shroud. My heart kicked in my chest like a bronco. I wanted to crawl under my desk. I wanted to be anyplace else. I wanted to shut my eyes, but I couldn’t. If she was going to wrap her ugly claws around my throat, I wanted to see it coming.
“Happy Halloween,” she said, as she passed in front of where I was sitting. Her voice was surprisingly sweet, not even the slightest bit evil. She dropped a handful of candy on my desk and then she was gone.
We all turned to look at one another, adrenaline pumping through our young veins, all of us wondering how the other would deal with this shared horror. Then something strange happened. Someone giggled. Somebody else snorted. The mood in the class suddenly shifted, and pretty soon we were all doubled over with laughter. We were all okay! Nobody got hurt. Plus, we got some candy.Terrified and anxious
Before I got into the school system, I had zero knowledge of how Halloween worked. My parents didn’t always make it a priority to keep their kids entertained. They recognized the traditional holidays—Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day—but the less hoopla made about them, the better. We got cake and a present on our birthdays. No big whoop.
The idea of a witch visiting our class filled me with dread. There were rumors she was actually Mrs. Kunkle in disguise—the school’s speech therapist. My young brain struggled to process this information. I saw Mrs. Kunkel in the hallway every day. She was the sweetest lady. There was no way she could ever be a part of anything so horrible. No, it had to be a real witch. Fear gnawed at the pit of my stomach and only got worse as the day drew inexorably closer.
Then it was Halloween day. My insides were in knots; I felt agitated, anxious, restless. I could hardly keep my mind on my schoolwork, much less carry on a conversation. At recess, I walked around the playground in a daze. Then, around thirty minutes before school let out for the day, a commotion rose up in one of the classrooms down the hall. Kids were screaming! My class was at the opposite end of the hall, but you could hear it plain as day. Above those awful sounds, a sinister cackle floated in our direction, absolutely chilling me to my bones. The screams stopped in the classroom and then started up in another. I trembled with fright as the wave of screams grew closer. The tension was indescribable.
This was back in a simpler time. We didn’t have maniacs walking into schools with guns back then. The scariest thing we had to deal with were winos hanging out in the local park. We had it lucky in those days, and I can’t imagine the fear that some students live with today.
The classroom door burst open like a sudden wind had snatched it off its hinges. If there had been a second door in that room, I certainly would have scrambled towards it. All of us screamed. Maybe even today, part of me is still screaming.
The witching hour is here!
The witch was in our midst! Her face was smeared with green greasepaint. She wore a black pointed hat, and she was holding a broom and a plastic bag. She scurried up and down the aisles, her flowing black garment rippling behind her like a shroud. My heart kicked in my chest like a bronco. I wanted to crawl under my desk. I wanted to be anyplace else. I wanted to shut my eyes, but I couldn’t. If she was going to wrap her ugly claws around my throat, I wanted to see it coming.
“Happy Halloween,” she said, as she passed in front of where I was sitting. Her voice was surprisingly sweet, not even the slightest bit evil. She dropped a handful of candy on my desk and then she was gone.
We all turned to look at one another, adrenaline pumping through our young veins, all of us wondering how the other would deal with this shared horror. Then something strange happened. Someone giggled. Somebody else snorted. The mood in the class suddenly shifted, and pretty soon we were all doubled over with laughter. We were all okay! Nobody got hurt. Plus, we got some candy.
An obsession is born
So, you could say my love affair with Halloween started that day. Certainly, there were other things we did in school that contributed to my obsession, like the art projects that helped me express my creativity. Making tissue paper ghosts. Cutting Halloween shapes out of construction paper. Decorating the entire classroom with scenes of pumpkin patches and graveyards and night skies full of witches and ghost and bats. There was the Halloween carnival with its spook houses and cake walks and costume contest. There was watching Disney’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow in the classroom with all the lights off and listening to records about vampires, black cats and a vengeful ghost who was missing her golden arm. I soaked up every spooky second of it.
Fear leads to courage
But the witch, that was the most important thing. That was when I discovered how much fun fear could be in a controlled situation. If you read my last post, you know that fear can be addictive, like a drug. When the witch visited, I got my first hit of the good stuff. After that, it was a search to find the next experience that would give me that same feeling of excitement— from scary movies to haunted houses to roller coasters. I had learned a valuable lesson that day: you can face your fear and come out stronger for it.
All because of a witch.
Anyway, the witch ended up not being as scary as I’d imagined. Not surprising. In horror movies, the monster is always scarier in our own heads than when it actually shows up on the screen.
Besides, once I thought about it a little more, she did look a lot like Mrs. Kunkel.