The Ghost of Halloween Past

I can still see it all very clearly in my mind.

I can see it, if one can ever see a ghost clearly, that is. Most ghosts have indefinite, fuzzy silhouettes, like the ones you see in a steamed-up mirror after a long shower or in foggy woods on November hikes. The image you almost see in the mirror is your own, of course; the one in the woods? Well, that one might be harder to identify.

The figure I can still see is out there, though, and it lies somewhere between the mirror and the forest. The thing is, it appears to be frozen in a way a ghost really cannot be frozen because as we know there is nothing but air inside its blurry outline. It contains no moisture whatsoever. Still and all, I see this figure as engraved on the stone-hard slab of the past, similar to the way cuneiform script is engraved. 

Is there an attempt to make a pun here? Graves and engraved? Walking above ground and encased in a coffin? Of course there is, but don’t be so sure this pun is funny. It should be making your skin crawl.

What I see, and this happens often, is usually my first recollection of the holiday that falls on the last day of October. I use the verb to fall with perfect awareness of its multiple meanings. The day with its night falls on the 31st, but it also falls like 80% of the leaves on the oaks and maples. It falls like the sunlight, dipping earthward and disappearing far too early in the afternoon as winter approaches. This day descends on the mind like a pall. 

Funny, but pall, like fall, has a range of meanings. None of them is far from gloomy or eerie. There is nothing to like about those four letters.

Before I continue, I want you to know Halloween was actually a fun time of year, but something has happened, some transformation has occurred - like a pall - when I retrieve the events that correspond to this earliest memory. It’s like I was aware of everything back then, but was being spirited along by other forces, forces that were maternal and societal. I did not know there. For a space of about five hours, it was an out-of-mind experience. 

The experience was blurry, foggy, steamy, but over many years it has never dissipated. I suppose that is the real issue. It should not be fresh in my mind, yet it is. And it is not like I want it to be. That is the hard part.

I, at five, am thus my first recollection of Halloween, and I can see right this very minute how I am a ghost on this day that happened so long ago. I am a real, live ghost. 

Note how now we not only have the grave pun from earlier in this story to deal with; we also have a real, live ghost. A real little-girl ghost, not a fake one. And a live one, because I certainly am not dead, no matter what you might think. Otherwise, if I were not still alive, you know I would not be here telling you this story, which is about my ghost and not somebody else’s.

I hope this clarifies things.

The number five slides across the memory screen, which is why I think I must have been five and have decided to be five for the occasion being described here. Five is old enough to do lots of things you couldn’t do the year before. I would have been just barely five. You might say I turned years, in the same month of October, like the leaves on all the trees in town with the exception of the tall pines up in the park always turned red, yellow, orange, brown. 

I didn’t turn different colors, and on this night I was only white, the color of a sacrificed bed sheet. Also, the afore-mentioned park will become significant in a moment. 

The newly-five me would’ve been in kindergarten for nearly two months. That - kindergarten - was when I began to realize I could survive when not tied to my mother’s apron strings. My mother really did wear aprons, you ought to know. That means kindergarten had taught me the beginnings of independence, because I now saw the control those apron strings had over me. Even walking down Main Street at night in a parade was a big, liberating step.

To be honest, I only thought kindergarten had taught me independence. Now I am not so sure. 

I will explain, because you might not understand where I’m going with all of this. Just chalk it up to all the years that have passed. With age, memories can become so very tenuous.

The ghost of me who has recently turned five had no idea of what the white blobs that go boo! in the night are or what that single syllable might mean. The boo! says simply, ‘you are afraid of me’. Or it says ‘you will cry’. The little one who was barely five after all obeys, ducked her head, and clung to the apron. That is the script I remember. Trying to grow up, but confused.

It was a good script, when the apron was nearby.

Only that is not what this former ghostlet remembers, not at all. More than imitating a spirit I didn’t comprehend, I have clear images of the material nature of a ghost. 

More oxymoron and more puns, in case you didn’t notice. What material could a ghost be made of, if it is nothing but a spirit?

The flesh-and-blood me, the material me, even when ghost-posing, needed to look the part. I recall my mother looking a bit concerned at first, perhaps because part of the bed linens might need to be sacrificed and we had no money to spare. What other material was white and large enough?

I honestly have no idea how the matter was resolved, but suddenly a Sheet appeared. It could have been a ghost, it showed up so unexpected... that’s why I decided to write the word with a capital letter. It was that important.

Seriously, it was a Sheet from somewhere; I just don’t think it was ours. It was clean, though, and nicely ironed. Back then sheets had to be ironed. They were actually cotton or linen. The sheets were meant to be used forever, which is why they were on the one hand perfect to create a ghost that was eternal, or on the other hand, it was very wrong to use one for a one-night costume. That meant it was ruined for use again on a bed. A waste of good material.

A ghost needs a face, or my mother seemed to think so. After all, she was in charge of getting me suited up for my first Halloween on my own, and had to show some authority. (Before that I didn’t go out. I stayed home and helped my mother give out treats. We always gave out a zillion types of candy, popcorn balls, and apples. Those were the days before razors, right?) 

The faceless ghost that I still was after the sheet was fitted then got her eyes cut out. I’m thinking as I say this that it sounds like my mother was blinding me, but of course it was the ghost costume that got it eyes cut out. My mother loved me too much to ever hurt me. That, at least, is true. It needs to be clear.

Next it seems there was a nose cut out, because all ghosts needed to breathe or they might suffocate to death. 

A lot of tropes going on here. Ghosts don’t generally need to breathe. They can’t. They’re dead. The same figure of speech applies to a ghost dying by suffocation. They can’t. They’re dead. This would probably have been easier to explain if I had remembered to say ‘the little girl wearing the sheet needed holes in the face so she could see, breathe, and talk’.

Too late now.

The cutting of the holes was not an easy task for a mother whom I now think had OCD, but I bet they didn’t know about that condition back then. The holes had to line up with my features and so the measurements had to be made very carefully. They had to be just big enough so little me could see to walk, but not so big that it would be obvious a five-year-old was underneath. That would ruin the effect and nobody would believe it was a ghost going down the middle of Main Street in a parade.

Despite the precision cutting to permit seeing, breathing, and speaking, I don’t actually recall needing to talk or use my nose. I don’t recall if dark circles were drawn around my eye sockets, I mean eye holes. That would be for emphasis, to make my ghost, or me as a ghost, look more real.

There probably is some logic to that, but it is beyond me.

It became extremely clear that evening that there were many fashions for ghosts, once the participants in the festivities had begun milling around in front of the Community Center/Fire Department building. Everybody knew they would have to walk four blocks - a jaunt which was exactly the length of the eastern side of Maine Street. Four blocks was quite a distance back then. It felt very grown up.

I considered my appearance to be superior: After all, I had been ironed. I had holes in my face that were the perfect size. My lower hem was neither too short nor dragging on the ground. My mother had gone to great lengths to turn me into a respectable ghost, I have to give her that.

There is one more thing, though, and it is not insignificant. You see, Mom always wore lipstick. She thought it was nice. She also thought it was required for special occasions like Halloween, Christmas, and dance recitals. I agreed with her back then, but in the decades since I moved away from the apron, I have never used nor owned a tube of lipstick. That’s a long time. I only bring up the lipstick part because part of me is pretty sure this ghost of Halloween past had red lips. Not in imitation of blood (this is about a ghost, not a vampire), but in celebration of one of the special occasions. Also because it was the color my mother always wore.

That bright color screaming from the face of a five year old now strikes such a note of discord with the idea of making an authentic ghost costume - nothing but a well-measured white sheet with discreet facial apertures - that I can only hope this is a confusion of special occasions. I don’t want to think of my five-year-old self with red lips and how embarrassing that would have been. I seem to remember that we scrunched through the dry leaves to the gazebo (well, actually they called it a bandstand), crowding around like a swarm of white bees. We were all straining to be recognized for the merits of our costumes. Ghosts were a dime a dozen, so none of us could be singled out. We all were passed over, I’m pretty sure. A Halloween ghost is not at all original.

My mother was hovering at every moment as I walked, in my ghostly array of clean, ironed and nicely draped sheet that fit perfectly, in the town parade. After all, the parade was a big part of the costume thing. People were looking at us! The young ones were always under watchful eyes because parents followed the children’s movement along all four blocks. A child could always stumble, have a panic attack, or need a bathroom. Back then, the town was completely safe, but the parents were concerned about their children and wanted to follow them by going along the sidewalks. It was the custom in the town. Children understood this, but even we smaller ones wanted to be ‘in’ Halloween without those watchful eyes every minute. Not every minute.

We wanted to strut down Main Street and be admired. We wanted to go into the park, get your prize, which was a real silver dollar, then go on the other side of Main Street to the community center. That was where, amid pumpkins and corn stalks, all of us children could bob for apples, drink cider, receive candy, and have our photographs taken. 

A year or two later I went as a princess, and I have a vivid memory of posing for a portrait by a haystack set right there on the basketball court. My mother was with me in at least one of the photos taken by a professional photographer. I am very afraid that no five-year-old ghost photos remain. Maybe there never were any.

I must insist: We wanted to do some of these things by ourselves. We wanted to see what the night felt like. We wanted to be frightened, not protected. After all, this was Halloween and we were in very small town America. In my town, even the caterpillars knew everybody else. Bobbing for apples put nobody in danger of drowning. Nobody every got hurt.

Nevertheless, there is an item I am confused about. Did I have a container for treats? After a while, say a couple of years later, I got a plastic pumpkin, but I don’t think they were making those yet. I am pretty certain that when I was barely five the custom was to carry a paper bag. Of course the bag was decorated with scary drawings in crayon. 

I doubt that I needed the bag during the parade, though. 

I guess some parts of this memory are just not meant to be. I can invent them, however. Like the ones about the town park. It had those cannons from the Spanish-American War that I knew virtually nothing about. I didn’t know when the war had taken place or why. I had yet to learn that one of the biggest heroes from the war had been from my little town. 

As I got older, I learned these historical things, but the ghost-by-the-gazebo scene is foremost in my mind. Years later, I learned a lot of Spanish and got some history under my belt so that the real reasons for the war became clear and the local hero wasn’t really a hero. As a result, the park with its gazebo bandstand and black cannons was still only the red-leaf-riddled backdrop for a gaggle of ghosts hoping to collect a silver coin.

The earliest memories seem to be the strongest and the most permanent for many of us.

***

I told you the park was significant. 

I think it felt like death. All that war bottled up in four or five mammoth cannons. I could touch them and I shuddered. They were the black ghosts of War Past. They had killed. 

Halloween was for little ghosts flitting around in the black night air and imagining they were scaring people.

The cannons did not move, but they were scary, and they weren’t even wearing white sheets.