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!!