Why is scaring my kids on Halloween so much fun?
Am I a bad mom?
The anticipation for them to come come and use the bathroom was too much!
They all loved it, they said, even after one kid dropped to the floor in fear.
Maybe I am a cool mom because I like to decorate our home for Halloween?
Maybe I will be paying for therapy one day?
My parents were always doing things like this and I am ok, right?
My mom bought a really old piano, so old it looked like a coffin.
We lived in the “haunted house” in town.
My first “magazine cover” with my dog “Whosit” in front of our home. Who names their dog “Whosit?” My mom does.
You know you have a haunted house in your town too.
The one no one will go trick or treat at on Halloween.
The one that your friends refuse to have a sleepover at.
My home was a Victorian built in 1883 and it only had one family that had ever lived in it. Then we moved in, much later.
The last person that lived in it…died in it.
She bled to death on the marble fireplace in the front parlor. They had to scrape her off. She was an old maid who grew up in the house her father built. Her father, was so mean he would honk the horn on his car in harsh Michigan weather for the maid to come out, open the carriage house doors, and then give him her umbrella so he could walk in dry.
Her name was…Loretta. The one who they scraped up and not the maid.
Loretta was our ghost.
This is what my mom told everyone. I actually believe it is all true, but I don’t believe in ghosts.
It is also why the house sat empty for so long. It is also probably why my mom wanted to buy it and restore it.
It is also why I never got out of my bed in the middle of the night.
The only way you can make the “Adam’s Family House” scarier is by filling it with statues.
And so my mom did.
She even put a life-size George and Martha Washington next to our piano-coffin.
Awesome right?
Wanna see me in my “Barbara Mandrell” meets “Laura Ingalls” stage? That is what happens and your mother is a hippie-Morticia-Adams-type. They let you do things like take banjo lessons and let you and your sister take pictures of yourself in the haunted music room. They even pay to get the picture developed. Remember doing that, getting pictures DEVELOPED?” It amazes me what a photo hoarder I have always been. It also amazes me my photography never turned into a skill or talent. How can I not be any better than I was when I was ten?
With no self respect I share with you “Abbie-Gale-Barbara-Mandrell-Laura-Ingalls.”
My five year old sister took the photo, (the one giving me the bird in my previous post) and even her photo skills were better than mine. She caught a “GHOST” in the photo, (sunlight.) Do you see Martha to the left? You cannot see George because he is on one knee. This is NOT a Halloween photo. This was every day in our home. So many, many other posts come up as I try to finish this one. My childhood is riddled with ADD blogging traps…
Are you done laughing now?
Anyway, my mom had long dark straight hair like Cher or Carly Simon or Morticia Adams.
I love this sliver of an old photo I took of her creeping around the outside of our home around 1978.
Her favorite party to throw?
Seance.
Want to know how ahead of her time she was?
She had a whole group of fabulous gay male friends that would eat her and her fancy seance parties up.
I hid in my room. I would call my aunt and beg for her to come and get me before the demons did.
I was way uncool.
Maybe my mom wasn’t cool too, when she was young.
I know better. They were still talking about her when I was a teenager. (Click here for a story about my mom always being cooler than me.)
I don’t know but I am totally sure that I am SUPER cool now with my haunted mirror in my house where no one has ever died, (but where I almost killed someone by accident last week.)
And my skeleton I ordered from Grandin Road is cool. (Grandin Road Haunted Haven Store Here)
Love it when people ask to use our powder room. They do look at me a little funny when I follow them in with a camera. It is all in the name of Halloween
Even if she is a cross-dresser.
I have to change the pass code on my iPhone. You didn’t get any naked pictures of me did you? She thinks she is so funny.
Or a nudist. I think that makes her more interesting.
Would have been nice if she put on some pants before climbing up on my grandmother’s piano.
OMG! I have turned into my crazy mom.
Abbie Gale at allthatmakesyou.com
You may enjoy this one…
Make sure mom is really dead before we dig the hole
Or understand my mom a little better from this one…
She didn’t mother me but she taught me how
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Comments
Hi Abbie. I absolutely loved this post. Your words. The scary mirror. The stories about your Mom. Made me laugh so much. I want to spend a Halloween at your house. Thanks for sharing your wit. Keep writing. More please.
Thanks and you might change your mind when you walk past the bush that shakes and growls! Why can’t I find another one of those things anywhere? I bought it at the grocery store for a few bucks and it is motion sensored. You just tie a bunch of little plastic wires to the braches and when someone walks by it sounds like a monster is inside. I forget sometimes and it gets me!
Neat post. I know lots of people get a kick out of Halloween, I’m just not one of them. May seem odd to you, but I’ve had “close encounters” of the real kind and respect that world that we can’t see, So I kind of lay low on Halloween… 😐
My whole entire family back in Michigan are scared to death and believe in ghosts! They are an awesome combination of superstitious and southern and I love to tease them about the bible left open to a verse when the cat fell dead on the spot. I am grateful they give me stories and they laugh at themselves so they are sports! They all probably think I tune all the ghosts around me since I was raised in a haunted house. I figure if there were ghosts I would already have been “undone” by now!