The Day After.

Tuesday, October 30: Partly sunny, with a high of 63 degrees.

Wednesday, October 31: Rain, with a high of 61 degrees.

Thursday, November 1: Rain, heavy at times, with a high of 49 degrees.

Sometimes we need to take a step back and see things from a larger perspective. All week, I got knots in my stomach when I checked the updated Halloween night forecast. Rain. Rain. Rain. And it wasn't improving. The weather has always been my biggest Halloween night nemesis. The one thing I cannot control.

On Halloween Eve, I sat out on a warm and dry night going over my checklist. Everything was staged and ready to go. The family jack-o-lanterns were carved and ready to be placed within the Cemetery. The props and the lighting were all sorted. The Canned Food Drive coffin was ready for the evening's donations. And the costumes were all laid out, ready for a quick transformation. But I knew that the next day was going to be a challenge...

And sure enough, just as we began our Halloween morning set up, the skies opened up. On-and-off showers plagued our well-orchestrated plans. Each time it would rain, my frustration increased. 30 days of solid planning, building and celebrating were being dashed the wetter I, and all of my props, got. 

As we got closer to trick-or-treat time, I made the painful decision to scale back and keep all of my animatronics, including my brand new and just-finished rotating skeleton corpse prop, in the garage for this year. No sense in having them ruined in the rain. Honestly, I felt like giving up...

We still set up all the tombstones and lighting, and then focused on detailing the walk-in crypt on the porch. It was an area unaffected by the rain, so I was going to make at least ONE thing look good this year.

It continued to rain as we finished up our scaled-back display and quickly got into costume. 

The official trick-or-treat started at 6, with only a small smattering of kids coming to the house. My heart was crushed. The rain had played havoc on the day's festivities and our attendance was going to be at an all-time low...



But then something happened...

The rain stopped. And a wave of trick-or-treaters appeared out of nowhere. And I mean a TON. Kids, parents, neighbors and outside visitors descended upon our house, marveling at our cemetery set up. Canned food donations poured in. There was a line to get into the porch crypt, with everyone stopping to check out the cool new laser swamp effect at their feet. Even the wind died down and our cemetery and crypt fog was some of the best we've ever had. Suddenly, we were back in our Halloween groove. We interacted with everyone that came up to see the display. I even chased a few of the teenagers down the block. They loved it as much as I did! I just couldn't believe how things had turned around.

After a whirlwind of putting on the haunt, getting a ton of photos of the display, tearing the entire thing down and then passing out everyone's hard-earned 2018 Highbury Cemetery shirts, I was completely exhausted. I could barely walk. My legs, back and arms ached. I sat on the couch with a cold beer and a few slices of pizza, utterly amazed. I had a grin of disbelief etched into my tired face. I still couldn't believe that the evening ended on such a high note. I dragged myself up the stairs for a long, hot shower and quickly staggered into bed...


6:00 am came quickly this morning with the buzzing of my alarm clock. I won't lie when I say that the snooze button was tapped more than a few times. I finally gave in and pulled my broken body out of bed. Every inch throbbed. My feet, my knees, my hip, my back, my arms. But I still had the smile. We managed to pull off another great haunt display, even in the face of bad weather.

As I crossed the room, I peeked out the window. Rain. Absolutely pouring. I checked the forecast. Non-stop, heavy rain all day, but now it was 20 degrees colder than it was less than 12 hours ago.

It really made me stop and think. And it really made me change my perspective on things. While Halloween's weather sucked compared to the day before, today's awful weather probably would have forced a complete cancelation had we tried to set up. In the bigger picture, we got a bit lucky. And while it did rain, and I did have to scale back, it didn't bother anybody else. Throngs of people still came out to see what we had put up this year and we got tons of compliments. And through it all, we all had a lot of fun this Halloween night.



I was able to grab a bunch of photos before last night's tear down and I hope to have them all posted by this weekend. I'll also share this year's donation numbers and will deliver everything to our local food bank by Monday. But for now, I'm calling it a night early. This old body is still aching and crying out for a good night's sleep. See everyone again this weekend!!

  

The Day After.

From the pitch black darkness, I was jolted awake from the sound of the alarm clock buzzing in the other room. It was my son's clock. That meant that it was 6:30 am. Strange, because I distinctly remember setting my own alarm for 5:30 am, just before completely passing out from total exhaustion. That was about 11:45 last night...

As I tried to pull myself out of bed, I groaned from deep aches and pains that ran the entire length of my body. The middle of my back was one giant, twisted knot. My lower back felt like two dried skeletal bones painfully grinding together. My knee had been tweaked somewhere along the line, and was now swollen tight and stiff. My heel felt like a sharp concrete block that I could barely put pressure on. I literally felt like I had been run over by a dump truck. But still I was grinning from ear to ear.

As I sat and reflected on the whirlwind events from the previous night, the grin began to glow and an excited buzz began to course through my veins.



Last night's Halloween trick-or-treat celebration was awesome. Absolutely awesome. And that growing buzz helped dull the deep aches and pains from the previous day's long and heavy workload.

Our depleted crew of three began our annual Halloween yard haunt setup at 9:00 am. It was a razor sharp battle between schedule and clock. Our goal? Everything and everyone had to be in place and ready to go by 6:00 pm. That gave us just 9 hours to get it all done. Sound crazy? I knew we had a lot of time, but we would still need to be incredibly efficient to get it all done. Especially working as a team of only three.

And without an extensive and detailed setup plan, we never would have made it. Somehow, some way, everything was up and running at 5:57. All props, all lighting, all audio, all electrical. Everything. I had to stop and take it all in for a brief moment. A testament to our dedicated work and a finely detailed plan to get it all done. I took one deep breath. Exhaled. And then raced into the house. I had roughly 5 minutes to get my makeup done...

I threw in some colored contact lenses, whipped up a few grungy streaks and colors across my face, and haphazardly assembled a costume out of pieces of my MHC Masquerade Ball costumes from the past three years. And I stepped out into the haunt at roughly 6:10, ready to greet the oncoming hordes of trick-or-treaters racing to our crypt door.

And the trick-or-treaters kept coming. And coming. And coming. It was a relentless onslaught of kids, parents, friends and curious neighbors all night long. At times, it was impossible to count all the people coming and going through the cemetery arch. But they kept coming.

The two hours of trick-or-treat flew by, but each of us, now numbering 11 total actors and helpers, had an incredibly fun time. And the weather was absolutely perfect. The nighttime air was dry, but perfectly chilly and crisp. The clouds thinned, revealing the murky glow of a near-full moon. The wind even died down, allowing for some of the thickest plumes of fog I have ever seen in my many years of displays.

The final trick-or-treaters left at about 8:30 pm, and I quickly grabbed my camera, wildly snapping photos throughout the display. And by 9:00, it was time for the evening's crescendo: the tear down. 11 individuals working together to get it all taken down and put away, leaving no trace of the events that had taken place just an hour earlier. The magic of the day's events was now complete. Setup of the display, an amazing haunt visual and auditory show, then a complete tear down, returning to the stark plainness of an unlit, empty yard.

But the best part of the evening sat in a coffin at the top of the driveway. All night long, people brought donations to our first annual Halloween canned food drive. The coffin was nearly filled to the top by the end of the night. When I went to see how much we had collected, I was beside myself in shock. Neighbors and friends had really stepped up and filled the coffin for a cause! It was the perfect ending for an absolutely perfect night...

After everything had been stashed away and the annual thank you t-shirts had been given out, I limped up the stairs to upload all of the evening's photos. I was very happy with what I was able to capture! I'm currently going through and picking the best of the best to present here and across the interwebs. I'm incredibly proud of what the team was able to accomplish last night and incredibly humbled by the outpouring of support from the rest of the neighborhood.

Check back tomorrow night for a full gallery of Highbury Cemetery 2017 shots and a detailed review of the evening's events.