the sun'll come out

Relief! Deep breaths! Sleep in (kind of)!

All the Halloween commitments are over and went ever so well.

So, I decided to see if I can exceed my photobucket bandwidth limit. :)

Last night's event was excellent! It was a more staid Halloween treat - instead of walking down a creepy hallway where things jumped out at you, this was more of a story-based haunt - more culture than the typical Halloween program.

When one walked up and purchased their ticket, they would go up onto the porch of the house where Jeanie as Madame Rosa would tell their fortune (hilarious!!!), then they would come inside where they would be told a ghostly story about the house from Tara:

Tara, the tour guide:

After that they would be ushered into a room where Steve (no picture available) would tell them a story of Salem, witchcraft, voodoo, and threats.

After that they would be ushered into the front parlor where I would regail them with a classic gothic tale (which goes to show you how few people really know the classic gothic pieces!). I adapted the narrative "A Ghost of a Hand" by J.S. Le Fanu, and performed it - quite well, I think. My first group included a cute little boy dressed up as a mouse, and, well, I cut out some sections of the story as his eyes were huge and round, and I was rather afraid I was scaring him too much. I had a great time though, scaring people the rest of the night. It's a great story, and after about the 3rd retelling I had it down so well that I was able to really start embellishing and playing with the story depending on audience reactions.

Anyway, me, the storyteller:

Then, once they were done with the in-house activities they coul go through the garden where poetry was being recited by spooks in hats:


And around the back where they could get a snack from the anime food troop. The group did pretty well, for basically a bake sale, they snagged a good $50.
Sara and Megan were excellent witches walking around being all "witchy". To prove her essential witchiness, Sara did take care to wear mis-matched socks, of which she was quite proud.


All in all, it was quite a bit of fun. But I think I'll wait another year to do that again!