The Best Halloween

My favourite Halloween would have to be my very first Halloween.

During my lifetime, living with my parents, I could not celebrate Halloween like my friends did, due to my parents and other family members religious beliefs and views I wasn’t allowed to celebrate my favourite holiday. Although publicly I could not and did not celebrate, I found a way to still get my Halloween fix, celebrating in private, hidden from my family and their religion. I uploaded outfits, makeup transformations and artwork about Halloween for a month before and a month after the wonderful holiday on my social medias, which my parents did not know I had, let alone could have access to. I was very smart about hiding my socials, my security was very strict on it and my friends could only follow through a code that I would give them, that would become useless after one use.

Finally, at the age of 23, I could freely celebrate Halloween for the very first time. The only downside was that I couldn’t celebrate it with any of my friends. Not because they didn’t want to celebrate with me or that I didn’t want to celebrate it with them, but because it was physically impossible. I was dead.

Just after moving out of my parents’ house, I was attacked on my way to my flat after celebrating my 23^rd birthday with my friends, I ended up in hospital and after a few days, I was able to go home; however, due to my injuries and concussion, I ended up mis stepping as I was walking up to my flat and fell down the stairs. Back in the hospital, I was in a coma for two weeks before passing away.

My funeral was held a week after my death, around two weeks before Halloween and I watched my Parents, Grandparents, Aunt, Uncles, Cousins, sisters, brother and friends mourn after me, praying for my soul’s happiness and leaving the most beautiful memorials at my gravestone. I watched my Mother crying on my Father’s shoulder, his arm cradled around her with a solemn expression the entire day. My sisters and female cousins all wearing matching deep red dress’ and my brother and male cousins wore black suits with deep red ties’. Red is my favourite colour.

My friends pooled together to buy some silk red roses that have been on my gravesite ever since. It was a bouquet of 13 pure red roses with deep green leaves. My grandparents also got something for my gravesite, a small ivory porcelain love heart with a small red robin painted on the front of it, Robins are my favourite birds. It has been hanging on my gravestone ever since the funeral.

Now, lets get onto my first Halloween experience.

My friends held a Halloween party at the town hall, right near the graveyard. They played horror movie soundtracks, stereotypical Halloween songs and a few normal songs included. They had snacks and drinks labelled something creepy, like Eyeballs for grapes which would be skinned and Zombie Fingers for mini sausage rolls with ketchup or BBQ sauce. They dressed up in creepy costumes, with funny props and amazing special effect makeup; vampires, werewolves mid-transformation, zombies and crazy doctors just to name a few.

Because of the circumstances around my death, I could not move on to the other side, so I could hear my friends at their party. I decided to go along, although they wouldn’t be able to see or hear me, I wanted to spend Halloween with them. I had also made friends with some other ghosts who could also not pass over to the other plain, so I invited them to come and see my old living friends.

Some of my ghost friends had been dead for years, decades or even centuries and had never left the graveyard. Some were excited, some apprehensive and cautious but we all wanted to go, particularly myself. I hadn’t seen my friends since my funeral.

My ghosts friends and I left the graveyard and as we all walked over the threshold, our souls became a little weaker, as we were no longer in the same place as our bodies. We continue walking a few buildings to the Town Hall and stood outside for a couple minutes, watching my living friends laughing, talking and celebrating the best Holiday of the year.

The music was pounding, the lights strobed and waved, and the smell of the food wafted out of the hall into the street as my friend Kimberley opened the door, propping it open with a chair for some airflow. She looked out into the street, almost right at me, turned around and went right back in. I don’t think she actually saw me, but for a minute, I thought that she did.

My ghost friends all waited a moment as I went inside, and I shouted for them to join me. The party was amazing, decorated with little skeleton figures, orange, green and black bunting with “Happy Halloween”, “Spooky” and “Boo!” written on them. They had little plastic ghosts, bats and flying witches hanging from the ceiling and windows. Carved pumpkins lined the stage at the far end of the hall, some with sill faces and others with creepy smirks and narrow eyes.

We danced, laughed and sang along to the music alongside my living friends; the early evening air turned to late night chill and then early morning winds, the door opened and closed a few times throughout the night in response to temperature changes from the bodies in the hall. Within the timespan of the party, three of my living friends looked directly at me, made eye contact with me, but still didn’t see me.

It was kind of sad, knowing that I was with all of my best friends, but they couldn’t see me, they didn’t know that I was there. That was until one of my living friends, Jennifer, came to my grave the following weekend to visit me.

“I could sense you at the party, Faith. Kimberley saw you outside the Town Hall. We miss you, but I’m glad you came to the party. I will come and see you again soon. Kimberley said she would visit this weekend too, when she gets back from her Dad and Step mum’s house tomorrow afternoon.”