Halloween Bust and Haunted House

We made an altar near our front door.  Upon it we set a forty pound pumpkin, several gourds, fake glittery skulls, mini tombstones, dried corn, fake autumn-themed flowers, candles (electric and regular), various sundry items from the dollar store (and no, sundry probably isn't the right word), as well as a squeaky rat.  It looks very cool.  Very.  And around the altar we have little bats pasted to the side of the building and our front door, hanging skulls draped in coffee-stained cheese cloth, and an inflatable cat (not that kind of inflatable pussy, you perverts!).  Hannah and I are sitting outside right now listening to Nox Arcana via the MP3 player hooked up to my laptop's external speakers.  There is a bucket of awesome Halloween grab bags for Trick-or-Treaters on a little circular table beside Hannah.  The set up is perfect - we even darkened the outside light to add to the atmosphere of our little Halloween corner.

Now you would think with all that fun stuff and neatly wrapped goodies just waiting for someone to come by and snarl/sing/laugh/or otherwise say "Trick or Treat!" that we would be quite the attractive mark for all those wandering the streets in costumes tonight.  But, no, we have had a total of two kids come our way.  And we made one of them cry.  Apparently Nox Arcana is just a tad bit too intense for that unmasked little goblin.  I think we made about forty gift bags.  We were hoping that we would run out and have to dig into the reserve candy.  Sadly that isn't going to happen.  We're packing up shop and going on a drive to try and find the mysterious Haunted House spectacle that a nearby family reportedly puts on every year to scare the locals.  I'm a local!  I want to be scared!  So it's off into the night with us.  Happy Halloween to all and to all a good fright! (Did I just come up with that?  I'm patenting it, dammit.)

Update: We never found the free haunted house but went instead to the Haunted House on 4th which is set up by the Lyon's Club.  For the most part it was just people popping out randomly and screaming as loud as they could.  But to get to those parts you had to go through a pitch black labyrinth with a floor that varied from soft soil, hard wood, squishy rubber, inclines, declines, and even vibrations.  There were times when the walls closed in and became very tight and other times when it turned so suddenly that I ran straight into the wall.  In the end a man with a chainsaw chased us through an open air coral.  He couldn't get the thing to work right away and I made a quiet comment about 'performance anxiety' and then hoofed it toward the exit.  It was worth the seven dollars.  After the Haunted House we went in search of a liquor store because it just felt like a liquor night but, lo and behold, all the liquor stores (the ones we knew about anyway) were closed.  So here we are now, back home and getting ready for NaNoWriMo.  Sober.