Halloween Listener Special

What does Halloween mean to you? For this listener submission episode, we asked you to send in your favorite Halloween memories and you delivered the spooky, the funny, and the heartfelt, showing that this schlocky holiday may in fact be the true holiday of love. Original music brought to you by Magpie Cinema Club Produced + edited by Miranda Zickler Send your submissions for the Where I Live holiday special to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Sarah Marshall?

  Submit it for your approval from your wrong about your Halloween tales of goblins, ghouls, and ghosties. Prepare yourself for a trip to a world beyond imagination. Perhaps we could even call it the Twilight Zone, except that you guys didn't really send in hardly any scary stories. And we were thinking about doing an episode with scary stories, but we didn't really get any. And so we decided to go with what you sent us and to make you a cozy nostalgic, crispy crunchy Halloween memory episode, because these are memories that we all get to make together. And so without further comment,

• 0:44Sarah Marshall?

  here are your wonderful Halloween memories.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Hi Sarah.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Hello, You're Wrong About family. Hello Sarah.

• 0:54Speaker 03

  Hi Sarah. Hello Sarah Marshall. I always wanted to say that like I'm on the podcast. Hi Sarah. Hi Sarah.

• 1:01Speaker 04

  Hi You're Wrong About. My name is Megan and I live in Montana. My favorite Halloween memory comes from when I was nine years old. My family at that time was living in Florida. We took trick or treating very seriously every year. I was dressed as a ghost and I don't remember what my sister or my best friend were dressed as. And we were all going to go out trick or treating together. That year, a late season tropical storm was hitting Florida and we decided that was not going to stop us. So we went out in our costumes with raincoats over our costumes, which is probably why I don't remember anybody else's costumes. And the beautiful thing about rain in Florida is it's warm. So we trick or treated

• 1:43Speaker 04

  all night, running through puddles. We were soaking wet and we got more candy than I ever got any other year because no one else was really out. I don't remember seeing other kids and we had so much fun. So that is my favorite Halloween memory.

• 2:00Speaker 05

  My favorite Halloween memory, it was not my favorite Halloween memory in the moment. But in hindsight, at 32 years old, I look back on when my parents told me that they were getting a divorce. I was about four years old. It was right before Halloween and my main concern was, is daddy still going to take me trick or treating? Because I loved trick or treating with my dad. And he still took me trick or treating. And then I got to go back to my mom's house and go trick or treating in her neighborhood too. And from then on out, I had two Halloweens every single year. So shout out to my parents divorce.

• 2:33Speaker 06

  Like most millennials, I have a lot of nostalgia for Halloween. When I was probably 11 years old, I wanted to dress as Alfred Hitchcock for Halloween. And I went to a thrift store. I got extra large dress pants and an extra large dress shirt and then stuffed two pillows into it and waddled around the neighborhood as Alfred Hitchcock. But the problem was I didn't have a belt big enough for the outfit. And so kind of what ended up happening is I would knock on a neighbor's door. They would open up the door, holding a bowl of candy. And I would say, good evening. And then my pants would fall down. So it

• 3:18Speaker 06

  was just kind of a confusing experience for everybody.

• 3:22Speaker 07

  I wanted to tell you the story of my mother's first Halloween. She grew up in the 1970s in Pretoria, which is a city in South Africa. And at that time, it would have been very conservative, very far crump, not a great vibe. And nobody celebrated Halloween. They didn't have any kind of traditional trick or treating until a new girl arrived at my mom's school when she was about 13. And she had been living in England until that point. And she knew about Halloween and she convinced my mom and her friends that they should get dressed up on the 31st of October and go and try to get some sweets in the Pretoria suburbs.

• 4:07Speaker 07

  I haven't seen photographs of this event, but I've seen other dresser parties from the era and it would have been very rudimentary. But they would have set out into the suburbs. I mean, Halloween is in spring in South Africa. So I imagine all the lawns would have been brown from a cold, dry winter. The jack around the trees would have been in bloom. Perhaps one of the first of the summer thunderstorms would have just rolled through, leaving the tar wet and hot under their feet as they set out. They didn't get any sweets as far as I'm aware, but they did get maced. A man pulled up to them in his car, rolled down

• 4:50Speaker 07

  his windows and sprayed them with pepper spray. And they were in shock, in pain, in confusion. And they rushed into the nearest house that they could and found a family sitting down to dinner who looked over their shoulders at them, saw this gaggle of 13 year old girls, eyes streaming, makeup running down their faces, dressed as witches and ghosts and ghouls and said, Satanista. My mom throughout my childhood was quite a cheerleader for Halloween. It's her birthday and we always used to hang up creepy things in the tree outside our house and put together high concept costumes. So I don't think she let it get

• 5:35Speaker 07

  her down. And maybe one could say that she was one of the first people to bring Halloween culture to South Africa. But she certainly was able to convince some people that there really were teenage Satanists in the suburbs.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  I grew up in Northern California, Sonoma County, and my neighborhood was semi rural off of a highway on the edge of town. So it was its own little country island. And all of the kids in our whole neighborhood would go together on Halloween in one big group with no streetlights and go knock on each house. And so everybody in the neighborhood only had to open their door one time. And there were no adults with us. We would all walk together as kids with the big kids watching the little kids. And one house would give out silver dollars, which was a big deal in the early 70s.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  The very first time I ever went trick or treating, actually, the only time I went trick or treating as a child was when I was 12 years old. I wasn't permitted to do that beforehand. And I happened to be with my cousins this year. So I was able to go because they were going. I was a little apprehensive because I'd never been before, but I was really excited to participate in this big American tradition that I up until then hadn't been permitted to participate in. And sure enough, the very first house that we went to, the elderly lady that opened the door immediately started chiding me, you know, like, don't you think you're a little too old to be trick or treating? And man, that really took the wind out of my sails. And it just made me so sad and a little hard for me to go on to the next

• 7:14Speaker 01

  houses, even though it was my very first time. So all that to say, I think it's silly to have these rules. You know, you never know anybody's story and we should let kids be kids. It's a joyful experience and I'm glad I get to do that with my kids now.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  My wife and I bought a house last year for the first time. And we're so excited that this meant we might actually get trick or treaters. We'd celebrated the holiday together in various apartment complexes over the years and only ever got one or two kids at our doorstep. So I was thrilled when our doorbell rang at around 8:00 PM on Halloween of last year and kept going for the whole rest of the night. I learned quickly that the best way to hand out candy is to physically hand out candy and drop pieces into each kid's bag. If you present the bowl to children to pick out for themselves, they will grab a fistful and you will run out midway through the night, leaving you to make a panicked run to the store to replenish your supply.

• 8:15Speaker 06

  My name's Amanda and I live in Melbourne, Australia. So being in Australia, Halloween is obviously a little bit different for us. It's a little bit of a quieter affair than it seems to be in the US. But also because it's spring for us, it has such a different energy. The sun is shining and it's light till really late at night, like maybe like 7:30 or 8 o'clock. So while kids are out in the street and running along, it's bright and it feels really happy and really fun, which just seems really nice. Like, you know, it can still be spooky, but I think as a whole, the event doesn't really have that kind of dark menacing vibe here because the weather just doesn't allow it.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  I love Halloween. I have so many wonderful memories associated with it with my family. We always made our own Halloween costumes. It was something that we did together. My mom would sew the only time, really in the year that she would do any sewing. My dad would come up with the ideas of how to do things. My brother and I would come up with an idea of whatever we wanted to be. And my parents would help us make it happen. We would all kind of create the costumes together. So my favorite costume was when I was about five or six, I really wanted to be a rattlesnake. So my mom took this wonderful camouflage fabric and, you know, from head to toe,

• 9:48Speaker 01

  I was just covered in this fabric and had a nice, long tail. And my dad had the idea to tie at the end of the tail, a baby rattle, like a little baby's rattle, so I could pick up the end of my tail with the rattle in it and shake it around like it was a, like a real rattlesnake tail. And it was wonderful. It looked just like a baby rattle. We didn't change anything about it. And I just loved it.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  When you said you're looking for Halloween stories and you told your story about the unitard, as soon as I heard the word unitard, it all came flooding back to me. So I'm 13, 14 years old in this story, 14, I think. And I decide for a party, I'm going to dress in drag for the first time. I didn't really have a reference specifically. I just went to the thrift store. I got like a cotton candy wig. I got like this really bad One Piece bathing suit. I wore a unitard underneath it. I made fake boobs out of water balloons with pudding in them, like Thor a virgin now and then. I think I was going for like a Spice Girl reference of some kind, but I don't even know. I have used some of my mom's lipstick. I really think it was really exciting. I just remember my heart was beating fast. I was terrified. But I really feel like Halloween, I did, I did drag for many years after that.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  It was the first time, but now I'm 40 years old. I'm a recovered drag queen, but I still like to dress up. I'm a gender creative queer person. I think for a lot of us queer people, Halloween really is that first opportunity to like put on the other clothes or express yourself in a way that's kind of safe, kind of dangerous, a little bit of both. But I think a lot of us really find ourselves in Halloween, obviously. Like it's just such an important holiday for queers. And, and so in this time, I'm all dressed up and I'm like, I gotta sneak out of my house. And I hope that none of my family's gonna see me. So I figured no one was home. It was still pretty early. And as I'm sneaking out, my mom had come home early from work. And I walk into the living room and she's just sitting there. Her mouth just drops. She sees me full drag and she looks at me and it's silence.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  And then after a while, she says, you look like me. And we both just laughed so hard and she kind of was just cool with it. And it was just a joke from that point forward. Every time I did drag, she'd pull out old pictures of her from the seventies, show me how I looked just like her as a teenager. It was just like a magical moment that I'll always remember. I love Halloween. I love your show. My mom called me as I was making this recording. I just saw her missed call. So she's a witch too. I think it's a very witchy time. And I hope everyone keeps dressing up, dragging it up. Halloween is the best. Talk to you soon.

• 12:20Speaker 05

  I just think of how Halloween is such a liberating holiday for any gender non-conforming kid. And how, I think for a lot of us, a lot of stuff was either unlocked and/or buried or a combination of both through the holiday. And one year that really sticks out for me is the first year I went as a boy character instead of a girl character. I went as Legolas and my brother was Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings. I was so excited. I got a blonde wig and my bow was made out of this like stick that I found in the yard, which in retrospect, like whenever I see the photos, I was like, in my eight-year-old mind, I was like, I whittled this to perfection. Like this is gorgeous. It looks like a bow and it doesn't. It looks like a stick that a kid tied a string to,

• 13:04Speaker 05

  but I think that was perfect. And it was just so fun. And I felt like I was getting away with something. Like it really was just this beautiful, like illicit feeling of this like gender heist. That was like a year that we had so much fun together. And my brother has since died. The 10-year anniversary of his death was just this past July. And it's just stuff like that that really makes me smile to remember him and remember like egging each other on to wear the most ridiculous version of our costumes. And he never batted an eye that I wanted to be a boy with him.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  I grew up in eastern Washington on an apple orchard. So super conservative area, super religious area, super unpopulated area. And when I was about 10, I was really obsessed with David Bowie. And all I wanted to be when I grew up was Ziggy Stardust. So I went for Halloween one year as Ziggy Stardust with a small group of kids. And I just remember that being probably the first time that I realized that I didn't quite fit in the community where I was growing up. Because none of the adults and none of the kids, when they would say, you know, what are you? And I'd be like, I'm Ziggy Stardust, obviously. And not a, not a one of them knew what that was. But I think it was also the time that I realized that I didn't really mind not fitting in

• 14:23Speaker 01

  and didn't bother me and made me more determined to find somewhere that I fit better. And I was great.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  So when I was 12 years old, I planned an entire Halloween costume around a mask that I had bought at the gift shop of the Salem Witch Museum. It was celestial themed. It had stars and moons on it. And so of course I was dreaming really big and I decided that I was going to be the night sky. I ended up just wearing black with a silver vest. And then my mom and I glued some silver stars onto a black cape. And I had the mask, of course, the centerpiece of the whole thing. Unsurprisingly, not a single person knew what I was. And whilst trick or treating at one neighbor's house, she asked me what I was and I told her very proudly that I was the night sky. And she said, is that a superhero?

• 15:20Speaker 02

  And I said, no, it's the sky at night. My favorite costume that my family came up with over the many, many years was my dad's. He taught himself how to use a sewing machine so he could bring his vision fully to life.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  And he went out with us trick or treating, dressed as a middle-aged mutant ninja turnip. I had an alien mask. I would breathe in the mask and it would like fog up on the inside because the eyes weren't cut out. They were like these big plastic bulbs essentially over the eyes. And so at one point I was talking to someone and breathing in this mask and just slammed directly into a car. It wasn't a moving car, thankfully. So I came out unscathed, apart from my nine-year-old ego.

• 16:12Speaker 07

  Halloween 1996, it was decided that I would be an angel for Halloween. My mom set about dressing me in white and making angel wings for me and teasing my blonde hair out as big as she could get it and lots of blush, lots of lipstick. I looked more like a beauty pageant queen than an angel, but the wings and the halo, I guess, were the selling point. Toward the end of the night, we got to one of our neighbor's houses and she looked at my costume and sort of frowned and looked at my dad and said, don't you think this is kind of in poor taste? And my dad said, what do you mean? I, I don't understand.

• 16:54Speaker 07

  And basically this neighbor thought that I was dressed as JonBenet Ramsey.

• 17:01Speaker 04

  I was born in 1972, so I am a tried and true Gen Xer. And my memory isn't necessarily one that's specific, but it's the smell of our incredibly flammable, plastic Halloween costumes.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  When I was around seven or eight years old, I went trick or treating with my two older brothers and I was dressed as a bunny rabbit. And we went to this guy's house and he had hired teenagers to portray monsters and goblins and creepy things and roam around the front yard. And they would scare off kids. And then the brave ones who got by them all, got candy. So my two older brothers, of course, wanted to go to this house. And as we approached, one guy who was dressed up as a zombie came up to me and he was saying in a funny voice, bunny rabbit. And he picked me up and he plopped me in a nearby tree up high enough to where I couldn't jump down.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  And I remember being up there and I think I was pretty upset, but everyone was laughing. They all found it really funny. And obviously this kid was, I think he felt pretty bad because I was getting very upset up in the tree. But everyone thought it was funny because bunnies, you know, don't go in trees. At the time, I was pretty upset, but looking back, it's funny.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  I grew up in a very small mid-Atlantic town, so it was very like classically Halloweeny in a 90s movie type of way. And one of my favorite memories is when I was in elementary school and my oldest brother at the time was probably early high school. And a couple of days before mischief night, the night before Halloween, he took me in our backyard to practice throwing eggs because he wanted to take me out for mischief night, which is a very sweet and mischievous older brother activity. And I just remember him having me aim at this tree. And then after a few times when I hit it, him being like,

• 19:17Speaker 01

  "You're ready. We'll go out tomorrow night."

• 19:22Speaker 01

  This is one of my favorite topics. Living in New England my whole life has been Halloween central. That year's costume was a blue and white, I Dream of Genie styled ensemble. And man, did my mama crush it. I was marching up and down the street at night, going trick or treating with my friends when I ran into Matt from school. And he was out bombing. For the uninitiated, that's when you dress all in black and you carry warped bottles of shaving cream and eggs and you just go out looking for mischief. And so I'm on the sidewalk, no grownups around, and there's Matt with eggs in two hands and a bottle of shaving cream at his hip.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  And he's got that look on his face like, "Oh, I'm gonna get you, girl." And I remember threatening him that if he threw one of those eggs at me, I was gonna chase him down the street and punch him in the face. And sure enough, Matt picked up an egg, went to throw it. I dodged it like a ninja and I swung. And I was pretty proud of myself that night. I felt kind of unstoppable in my genie costume. And you know, years later, when my grandparents passed away, I had the joyful opportunity to inherit their home. And so now I'm here making costumes with my five-year-old boy. Not quite the level of what my mother was capable of, but every year we look forward to that experience together.

• 20:50Speaker 05

  I wanted to tell you about my favorite Halloween. It's when my band played a Halloween show, which means, of course, we had to have a coordinated band costume. And we decided to go as the characters from Scooby Doo. This was great because our band covered generally pretty serious like subject matter and made heavy music. But it gave us the opportunity to have a lighter experience of covering The Stooges, I Wanna Be Your Dog, while our vocalist screamed it while wearing her Scooby costume.

• 21:31Speaker 05

  At the time of this show, I had a crush on my bandmate as well. And then after the show, I thought, maybe it seemed like we liked each other and it was mutual and wasn't really sure. And I went home and carved pumpkins with my mom. And I ended up crying like the grandpa on Moonstruck because I was confused. And then the week after, when we went and talked about how the show went really great, actually, me and my bandmate discovered that we did like each other. And now we've been together for five years and I love them so much.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  I am from a little town called Anniston, Alabama. I grew up pretty Christian. We didn't really celebrate Halloween, at least not my family specifically. So I don't really have a childhood Halloween story, but I do think I had the ultimate Halloween memory. In Alabama, not Anniston, but in another city in Alabama, not that many years ago, about three or four, Stevie Nicks performed on Halloween night in Huntsville, Alabama. And that's my favorite Halloween memory. It meant a lot to me that this legend could be performing anywhere in the world on Halloween, that she was here with us. And she herself was happy.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  She says she didn't even really remember performing that often, if ever, on Halloween. The concert was amazing, as usual. I was mesmerized. My two favorite parts about the concert was that someone threw a flower crown on the stage and she picked it up and wore it on her head for about three or four songs kind of later in her show. But eventually she did take it off because for the encore, herself and all of her band wore witches' hats as they performed "Rhiannon."

• 23:45Speaker 07

  I wanted to talk a little bit about a suburban South Jersey autumnal nostalgia trip. When I was younger, my favorite Halloween included is setting up a mad science laboratory maze during the haunted trail in my small town. I absolutely loved that it was so cold back then during Halloween and everything was so covered in these crispy leaves, especially by the lake. We taped up all this plastic sheeting and had holes so we could jut our hands out and put on a mask and pop out at people. And in the main room, my dad and I were wearing these lab coats

• 24:29Speaker 07

  and funny wigs and glasses. I think I had some snakes that somebody had caught outside and I was holding them. And we ended up taking care of them until the summertime because we were afraid that the shock of the cold would hurt them. And I just remember setting this up with my dad and it being so cold at night, but all the lighting we had set up was so beautiful and swirling. And just knowing that I had created this space to scare people, but also be silly and just really embody Halloween. It's one of my favorite memories that I think about all the time. People in my hometown, which is very tiny in rural Illinois,

• 25:13Speaker 07

  still remember my birthday parties. My birthday is a week before Halloween. So one year, one of the best years, we set up a haunted house that people had to walk through in one of the outbuildings on our farm. And it had a fake corpse with the hands and feet were rubber gloves and rubber boots that we filled with water and froze in the deep freeze. The guts were made of spaghetti. The brains were made of pumpkin guts. And then you walked a plank and ended up in a hay rack ride

• 25:58Speaker 07

  that then went through a bunch of our neighbor's property. And they were hiding in different places in the field. And there were kids that like jumped out with pantyhose over their faces. And the big finale was the hay rack ride, finished by going by the tiny pioneer cemetery. One of the neighbors set up a full-on coffin. And as the hay rack ride was going by, like slowly sat up and got out of the coffin.

• 26:38Speaker 07

  And some of my fellow classmates were pretty shook up and unsettled by some of the shenanigans.

• 26:51Speaker 07

  We would hang up sheets all throughout the basement. We had a tour guide to bring groups through. One year, we put as many as a hundred kids through, which was exhausting for my parents, of parents of like two tweens and all of our tween friends. But it was really amazing. We had themes like phobias, where I was fear of dolls as a little girl dressed up as a doll, climbing out from under a table, singing "Kesara, Sera." But one of my all-time favorite memories of the spook houses in general was the dummies that we would create. My dad was really, really great at building these dummies out of pillows. And they were really lifelike. I mean, they didn't really look like humans,

• 27:33Speaker 07

  except for the fact that my dad would then dress himself up also as a dummy. And he looked exactly like the rest of them. So he, one year, on our porch, had the whole dummy family, including himself, on the porch. And this little girl came up. She was being so brave. She was like looking at all the dummies. She kind of waved at the dummies. And as she was leaving, my dad was like, "I think she can handle this." And so he was like, "Happy Halloween," and waved to her. And she sort of smiled and waved back. And then she walked straight down to her dad and burst into tears. And my poor dad was traumatized by this, as I'm sure she was too. He always jokingly said that his goal of her year was to send at least one child into therapy.

• 28:16Speaker 07

  I don't think he was serious, but I do think he may have accidentally did it that year. My dad passed away last year and Halloween is a really special memory for us. So thank you.

• 28:28Speaker 03

  I'm a big horror fan, but I wasn't always. And that's because I am, at my core, a scaredy cat. And I think I know where this began, or at least where this became obvious about me. So my Halloween memory is, I must have been about six years old when this happened. I remember I was a princess and I was out trick or treating. It was me and my parents. And one house we get to has a bowl on a table with the candy in it. And there's like a scarecrow in the chair next to the bowl. You can probably see where this is going. I was six years old, so I did not. I approached the bowl to take the candy. And predictably, as I pull my hand away, the scarecrow comes to life because it is in fact a man

• 29:11Speaker 03

  who like kind of does the zombie walk towards me. And in my memory, he chased me. I don't remember if he actually did that. And I freak out, scream, start sobbing. Run away and like run back to my parents, hug my mom and just like immediately trick or treating is over. I have to go home. I don't even care about hitting the rest of the neighborhood. And so we go home and I'm like a sobbing wreck for the rest of the night. And I do think like, you know, in hindsight, I'm like, that is pretty funny, but also dude, come on, not to a six year old. And so I hate jump scares. I've only been through one haunted house when I was seven and I bailed after the first room. And I think this is where that all began, or maybe this was just like the moment I discovered my own cowardice. And like, now I'm like a certified horror fangirl.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  I would like to go to Halloween Horror Nights this year for the first time, but I will need someone to go with me so I can cling to them like Scooby Doo.

• 30:08Sarah Marshall?

  I had seen killer clowns from outer space and it really stuck in my mind for some reason. And so of course, that year, the first decorations that my mom put up were pictures of killer clowns in these like fancy frames. And I got so scared to walk past them. They were up for like the whole month of October. And then the night of the party comes and we're doing, you know, activities in the backyard. And unbeknownst to me, or really to anybody except for my parents, they had enlisted the help of some local puppeteers who dressed as killer clowns and were wandering around the woods next to the house. And I don't even think they ever came into the party. This was never fully

• 30:49Sarah Marshall?

  revealed to be a joke until, until quite a bit later. But one of them was taking flash photos. And so it was just these terrifying clowns wandering around illuminated by flashes of light. And of course, eventually I saw them and they were wearing the same masks as the photos that had been hung up in our house all month. So of course, that cemented a lifelong fear of clowns that is still ongoing, despite how much I respect the art of clowning. But I wanted to honor those memories and see how grateful I am for that. Because, you know, this gave people an opportunity to be artistic and creative and build community.

• 31:30Sarah Marshall?

  And what else is Halloween about? But showing other people that you care by showing that you know them well enough to traumatize them for life.

• 31:56Speaker 07

  My name is Eric. I'm a longtime listener and wanted to submit my spooky story for the Halloween episode. This is one that my friends and family always seem to love. A few years ago, at my old job, I was tasked with managing three cemeteries and I did it for about, you know, two years or so. This wasn't something I asked for, but it came in as a other duties is assigned kind of thing. Back then, and even now, when I mention this to anyone, I always get asked if weird things happen in cemeteries. And I am here to tell you, yes, absolutely. The cemeteries I managed were open around 1850 or so, and they're all still active, meaning you can still buy plots and be buried there. I did everything at the cemeteries except dig the graves. So I spent at least a few hours in them each week. Two of them were fine, but one always made me a little uneasy.

• 32:41Speaker 07

  It wasn't a big piece of land, maybe a football field in size, and it had a horseshoe driveway off a major road. Yet even though it was totally out in the open, it had a way of making you feel isolated. Usually if I had to go there, I did it before noon. But one winter day after a snowstorm, I realized I had to go to this particular cemetery to pull any down branches down to the road for pickup. I'd somehow gotten busy during the day and ended up getting there around 4:30 as the sun was getting low. I hurried

• 33:06Speaker 06

  and got most of it done fairly quickly. But just as I was turning to go back to my car, I heard a very loud, distinct, "Hey!" I looked around, thinking somebody else was there. And when I didn't see anybody, I looked hard at the road, trying to figure out if somebody was down there on the sidewalk. Again, I didn't see anyone, but I reasoned that somebody had to be there. And I started walking towards my car, admittedly, probably a little faster than I otherwise would have. I got in the car real fast and I immediately turned the engine on. And while it turned over just fine, nothing on the dash would light up at all. There was no radio, no speedometer, no engine lights, no nothing. It was just dead. I thought to myself, it had to be a fuse or a short. And since I

• 33:48Speaker 06

  wasn't that far from the office, I started driving. And I drove about the 200 feet or so to the exit and stopped, trying again to see if anybody was out in the road. Seeing no one, I remembered something that the old caretaker told me before he'd left. He said to me, "If they bother you, just tell them you're leaving." So I took a deep breath and said firmly, "Okay, I'm leaving now." And the entire dashboard just lit up like Christmas, like nothing had happened at all. This actually happened to me three times. Once here, once at another cemetery of mine, and once at a cemetery I was visiting. Each time, I would just say, "Okay, I'm leaving now." And it worked. I never did get that problem to repeat again outside of the cemetery at all.

• 34:32Speaker 06

  My name is Steven from California. And for this Halloween special, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about the university that I just graduated from. So I went to California State University, Channel Islands. And that originally opened in 2003, and it's actually the newest university in the California State Program. But the campus is actually much older. So when it originally opened, it was known as Camarillo State Mental Hospital. And it was open from 1936, when it was first built, until 1997, when it was shut down. At its peak, late 50s, early 60s, it was actually the largest mental hospital in the

• 35:13Speaker 06

  entire United States. And that meant that all the most cutting edge treatments took place there. Things like lobotomies, and electroshock therapy, and other things that we'd look back now and can't believe that anyone would actually do that to someone else. But we have to remember that they were the most cutting edge medical science at the time. And I think what gets lost is that they were still performed by well meaning people who really thought that they could make a difference in somebody's life. It's just unfortunate that it didn't quite work out that way. But anyway, I was a student at this university. I was a writer for the school newspaper. And so for Halloween, at the beginning of the school year, it was my idea to put out advertisements for the

• 35:54Speaker 06

  rest of the campus community, asking if they had seen ghosts on campus. Because as you can imagine, with this history on the campus, it was notoriously haunted. Everyone knew about it, the students, faculty, and the whole community. So what better way to celebrate Halloween than to write about it for the school newspaper? So I got a huge response. And I got to write another one because it was so popular, and another one. And I wrote four of them over the whole school year. And I heard from all kinds of people that heard screaming, they saw shadows, they had conversations and full on interactions with people that should not have been there. But I wanted to share my story because it actually happened to me. So one day, I was walking down a hallway. It was quiet, no

• 36:37Speaker 06

  one else around. There's a door behind me and a door in front of me at both ends of the hallway. So I needed something out of my bag. I moved over to the side of the hallway. And while I'm digging around, I hear the door behind me open all by itself. There's nobody around, nobody that could have opened the door. There's no wind or anything. There's no way that that door could have opened by itself. And while I'm trying to figure this out, the other door at the opposite end of the hallway opened. And the only explanation I have is that it was a ghost going down the hallway behind me.

• 37:13Speaker 06

  My favorite scary story, I don't think it's scary, but the person who experienced it thought it was really scary. I have a beautiful antique brass bed that dates back to the Civil War. And I firmly believe that this beautiful brass bed is haunted. Quite a few things have happened to people who haven't been me sleeping in it. Things have happened to me in it. I had a really bad fever while having pneumonia once when I was home alone. And I felt someone petting my hair and stroking my back. This bed belonged to my great grandmother and was a hand me down. I got her antique brass bed in her middle name. And my favorite haunted bed story was I have a very abusive ex. They

• 37:57Speaker 06

  were terrible to me when we were together. And we were staying at my parents' house where my brass bed was. And I had gone down to sleep on the couch because I just didn't feel safe sleeping next to them. And it would take me like five years of therapy to be able to say that sentence. And they said, they woke up to me kicking them in the back really hard repeatedly. And then they said they heard a voice, plain as Jay, saying, "Be nicer to Jess." So-

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Ghosts are scary, but like mine have my back. So I guess, you know, listen, be nice to me. Alright, happy Halloween, gang.

• 38:37Speaker 07

  I have a real life scary story that happened this summer. It was a Wednesday in July, and this is scene setting. I microwaved three frozen meatballs and ate them all. Delicious, no problems. Three days later, I'm sitting in my living room. I look up into my kitchen. There's something on the floor, and I think to myself, that looks like a meatball, but it couldn't be, right? So my brain is running through all the things it could possibly be. Finally, I get up and go check. It's a meatball. How did it get there? I don't know. I hadn't eaten meatballs in three days, and at that time, I had eaten

• 39:19Speaker 07

  three, the three that I had cooked. There was no extra one. So now, I think either my cats are far more intelligent than I thought they were, or dexterous perhaps, or there's someone living in my walls, and that's terrifying. Thank you very much.

• 39:37Speaker 06

  Here's a growing up Halloween story for you from 1972. I was five years old, and to put my parents into context, earlier in the year, The Godfather had come out, and they took us kids to the drive-in, my two older sisters, six and a half and eight, and we watched a double feature. The first movie couldn't even begin to tell you what it was, but the second movie was The Godfather, and that's the parents. So we go forward, I'm still five years old, hit Halloween, and I had graduated to that bed in between a little kid's bed and a pre-teen's bed that was maybe like five feet long. And it

• 40:20Speaker 06

  was high, and there was room underneath it, and my mother crawled underneath the bed, waited until I fell asleep, and then cackled like a witch, which of course frightened me and sent me running, screaming out of the room, which the entire family thought was just hysterical. So there you have it. Halloween, 1972, five-year-old.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  This prompt made me think of what might have been my last Halloween going out trick-or-treating as a kid. It was 2002 in rural mid-Michigan. I was 11. At this age, I was really into rollerblading to 90s pop music, gel pens, exploring nature, and witchcraft in an 11-year-old girl way. If you know, you know. I also really loved cats at this age. My sister and I went trick-or-treating at my cousin's house. She lived in an old farm town that felt haunted in the best way year-round. It was dark and windy with bursts of cold rain. My mom trailed behind the three of us. We walked up to a house that had silver-colored kittens bolting around outside, and when the woman came out to give us candy, I politely told her how

• 41:30Speaker 01

  cute her kittens were, and she told me they were strays and that I should take one home. I ran to my mom and immediately started begging. I remember saying things like, I don't even want candy, all I want is this kitten, and I'll never ask for anything again. And to my surprise, she said yes. I quickly captured a spunky little guy. He was pale blue, gray color with a big splash of white on his face. He had a little white tip on his tail and bright blue eyes. I happily sacrificed my candy to my sister and my cousins so I could carry him better, and they were thrilled. I wrapped him in my pillowcase, and off we went. It was just a magical night. Best Halloween ever. Thanks, Mom.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  I was inspired to what you know about my favorite Halloween memory, and it's kind of two Halloweens that go together. We always have a Halloween party, and we were all outside having a good time, and slowly everyone started leaving the backyard, until it was just a couple of my friends left and I, and I was told to go downstairs. I went down there, and my boyfriend had gathered everyone in the basement to propose to me. We were dressed as the king and queen of beer. I, of course, said yes, and it was awesome.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  And then, fast forward to the next year, we decided to forego all of the big, traditional wedding things, and we had our Halloween party slash wedding in our backyard, and we had a chili cook-off. Everyone brought different chilies. We had so much fun, and we were dressed as the Bride of Frankenstein and Frankenstein. It's the best.

• 43:21Speaker 07

  I think that Halloween is truly the holiday of love. It's definitely not Valentine's Day. Halloween is where our inhibitions are down, we're dressed as something else, there's new possibilities that can unfold. It's basically like a modern bacchanal. My parents met at a Halloween party, and they had grown up just blocks away from each other in Yonkers, New York, but my mom went to Catholic school, which is why she was dressed as an angel. And he had gone to public school, which is why he was dressed as a D'Agostino stock boy, because he was coming from his part-time job, but they lived close, and

• 44:02Speaker 07

  so she told him that he would be given her a ride home, and the rest is history. I loved Halloween growing up, especially as a trans man in a conservative household. I was given the ability to dress as whatever I wanted to without fear or judgment. Despite that fact, my favorite memory growing up from Halloween was my brothers and I dumping our pillowcases full of candy into the hallway and separating them into piles. We set up a barter system to ensure that each of us would have a good Halloween haul and would end up with a majority of the candy that we liked. I will never forget it. Much love

• 44:47Speaker 07

  to both my brothers and all of those who love the Halloween season.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  I think of Halloween as the time when the veil between life and death, between this world and the next, is particularly thin. And that means a lot to me this year, because this past June, my adopted daughter died of an overdose brought on by mental illness and profound abuse, and most of a lifetime being bounced around the foster care system. And she was still, though, the kind of person who just found her way into your heart. I wish that she had never needed to come into our life, and I'm so, so grateful that she did. In the church that I serve, I'm an Episcopal priest, by the way, we write

• 45:46Speaker 03

  the names of our departed loved ones on a cloth, and then we use that cloth as a covering for the altar during our service on All Saints' Day, which is November 1st. Fun fact, hence, All Hallows' Eve. Hallow means holy or saint. And when we do that, we remember that love lasts forever. And so if you love someone, they're not totally gone from you, even if they've died. And I don't know if this year, standing at that altar with my daughter's name on it, will be a happy thing, or a sad thing, or something in between. I do know that she will be there in spirit, probably giggling and calling me "Father" in her silly way, so I guess maybe it will be happy. Anyway, thank you for giving me this chance

• 46:31Speaker 03

  to think about this time of year in a different way. I hope you all have a great season. Bye.

• 46:39Speaker 07

  The Halloween memory that I want to share is celebrating Samhain. I have been a practicing witch for over 10 years now, and one of the things that I've really enjoyed about being a witch is celebrating the Sabbaths, and our perhaps most important Sabbath is the same day as Halloween, which we call Samhain. And over the past few years, we've held a ritual where our community members come and share in a ritual space where they can speak the names of their beloved dead. Over the years, it's been a very emotional

• 47:22Speaker 07

  ritual that has become in some ways a way for us all to collectively grieve and keep the memories of those that we love who have crossed over to the other side alive. And as with each year that we do it, we find that it's become even more and more important to remember our beloved dead, but also to grieve together as a community. So this Halloween, I will be once again helping to facilitate a ritual for Samhain where we all gather together, build a fire, and share stories of our beloved dead.

• 48:07Speaker 07

  I just had to submit my Halloween memory that's one of my favorites. I was in fifth grade and didn't really have someone to go trick-or-treating with that year, which was kind of par for the course for my childhood, sort of a loner kid, and went down the list of girls that I would want to invite, and settled on Lucy, a girl that I had known since kindergarten, was not super close with, but also another one of the shy, quiet, bookish girls in my grade. And she said yes, and we went trick-or-treating together, and she was a cute little pirate, and I was a headless Robert Shapiro, which ages me, I'm sure, and tells you about what timeframe this was, and also was, I'm sure-

• 48:51Sarah Marshall?

  My mom and dad's idea, I probably had no idea who Robert Shapiro was. I remember we took one of my dad's old blazers and dress shirts and buttoned them kind of over my head and then cut out eye holes and we trick or treated together. And I couldn't see very well out of the eye holes and tripped over a curb and dropped all of my candy in the gutter. And I just remember dramatically yelling, no, and us both laughing hysterically. And we brought it up for years to come. And fast forward a few years to junior high and high school and Lucy is my best friend. And she remained my best friend for many years and the maid of honor at my wedding

• 49:36Sarah Marshall?

  until she died in a car accident in 2013. And I miss her every day and can't talk about her without tearing up. And one of our favorite memories was that Halloween we spent together. I remember even called her and said, no one else wanted to go, well, you go with me. And I still love her to this day and Halloween always makes me think about that. And that was probably my best Halloween. Thanks. Love you guys.

• 50:02Speaker 07

  So at the end of 2019, on October 25th, my mom died and I was 21 years old and I was, you know, the amount of upset that you would expect a person to be about that. And my partner at the time and I went to my dad's house to like be there for funeral, whatever, et cetera. And I was there and then realized like six days had gone by and it was Halloween, which is one of my favorite holidays and also a holiday my mom liked because she was like a spooky lady who had books around that were called like The Modern Witch Woman, which I think were kind of more of just like a secular manifestation wine mom thing. But as a little child, I was like, my mother's a witch.

• 50:45Speaker 07

  Anyway, I realized on Halloween that I really wanted to be out in the Halloween energy, but also that as a 21 year old, I was kind of far beyond what could reasonably be interpreted as a standard trick or treater. So I put on this horrifying skull mask with this stringy hair that had been like around my family home since I was a child. And I, as a person who is 5'8" and probably wasn't fooling anyone about being a trick or treater, but I don't know, there is like some big middle schoolers, went out and collected candy with my partner at the time. And I just sort of was able to hide my crying behind this mask and like have these really like benign, but following a social script, interactions with strangers and take in this

• 51:30Speaker 07

  holiday that I really like enjoy. And that is also so outwardly about like spookiness and death and skeletons and ghosts and whatever the fuck. Anyway. And then since then, every year on the anniversary of my mom's death, I go to a like Halloween horror night at an amusement park because I found that level of like overt acknowledgement of death and grief and horror and then immediately attending catharsis to be like exactly the perfect thing.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  I want to share with you a Halloween story about my youngest brother, Jacob. This occurred when he was about four years old. And I'm recording this on August 28th and we are approaching the two year anniversary of Jacob's death. He was 44 when he died from brain cancer and he lived in New Zealand. So while we were in touch, I didn't get to see him in person immediately before he died. In any event, this very sweet story about him at Halloween came immediately to mind when you put out your call for Halloween stories. So if Jake was four, that made me about eight and my other brother, Eric, who would have been six at the time, the three of us went trick or treating that year.

• 52:43Speaker 04

  This would have been about 1984. And Jacob, being very young, couldn't quite say trick or treat. He said, "Shwee shwee." And it was so completely adorable that of course he got lots and lots and lots of candy from our neighbors. Well, the next day, November 1st, must've been a school day because I came home from school and I found Jacob going to our neighbors' houses and knocking on the door and saying, "Shwee shwee," because he didn't understand that it only happened on Halloween. So that's my story in memory of my dear brother, who I'm missing a lot right now.

• 53:20Speaker 06

  Uh, I want to tell you about my favorite Halloween event. I've been sober a long time, but when I was sober, about three years, uh, this woman moved back to Boise AA. She'd been gone to grad school and we were both working on our PhDs. Uh, but she'd had, earlier in her life, she'd had, uh, brain cancer and decided to go off and get her PhD as a celebration of life and it came back. And, uh, you know, there was of course a big AA dance. I mean, because AA's like to get together for things like that. And, uh, she asked me to it because it was her favorite holiday and she knew it was her

• 54:05Speaker 06

  last, her last, uh, Halloween. And, uh, so we went to that dance and we had a wonderful time. And she gave me a little, um, stuffed scarecrow, kind of a pillow looking, a small pillow looking thing. And, uh, and I still have that and I still display that in my house where I see it every day, uh, because it was her last. And, uh, and I got to help make it special for her and she helped make it special for me. And, uh, I've always appreciated that gift.

• 55:06Speaker 06

  Hello, my name is Kira. I am from Sydney, Australia, and I wanted to share with you my best Halloween ever. So in 2024, after planning and saving up for a long time, I was able to take myself on a trip to the USA. Due to possibly being on the autism spectrum, I am kind of a late bloomer. So I struggled for quite a while with stuff like employment and going away from home. So being able to do something like that, like for a long time, I thought that I might never get to do that, which is why being able to take that trip was so special to me.

• 55:49Speaker 06

  And because my favorite thing ever is movies and specifically horror movies. And I also love Halloween. I obviously went during the month of October and I couldn't even believe the amount of stuff I got to do that they have in the USA, like compared to in Australia. I got to go to Halloween horror nights at Universal. I got to see Stephen King's house. I got to see like a bunch of places where they filmed all different horror movies. I got to see some new horror movies like weeks before they would have come out in Australia. And of course I got to experience a real American Halloween, which is basically like

• 56:33Speaker 06

  my life's dream. And something that was actually the best part that I didn't expect was how many people I met who were kind to me and helpful to me when I was in the USA by myself. Like sometimes I need stuff explained to me with more detail than maybe what the average

• 56:55Sarah Marshall?

  person might need. And sometimes I can be very naive, but there were like so many hotel staff and restaurant staff and just like random people who took time out of their days to explain to me how things worked and answer my silly questions. And like, these people probably don't think about me at all, but I think about them still. One time I had a loose Hot Pocket and I've never had a Hot Pocket before and I didn't understand how to heat it up. So the receptionist at the motel I was at told me like all about in detail how to heat it up and cook it so I could have it for dinner.

• 57:37Sarah Marshall?

  And she let me see some pictures of the jack-o'-lanterns she'd been making for Halloween. And I remember that night feeling so overwhelmed and so alone and that making me feel like there are people you can make connections with everywhere, actually. Doing all that alone was not without its challenges, but it was all this little stuff like that. And I already tried to give that same energy back to other people, but it really made me realize how big of a difference that can actually make for people. I do consider that one of the great achievements of my life, being able to get over there and do all that.

• 58:22Sarah Marshall?

  And it really would not have been what it was were it not for a lot of kindness from strangers. Thank you very much for listening and I hope you have a great Halloween. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween and thanks for the show. Happy Halloween. I hope everyone has a spectacular Halloween. Thank you so much. We love the tricks and the treats. Happy Halloween, everybody. Happy Halloween. I hope you have an amazing Halloween season and I really can't wait to hear everybody else's stories because God, this is my favorite time of year. Happy Halloween.

• 59:08Sarah Marshall?

  And that was your episode, literally this time. Thank you so much to everyone who sent in a submission. We listened to them all. We loved them all. The original music you heard in this episode was brought to you by Magpie Cinema Club. If you liked this episode and if you want to take part in another listener special, we have another one coming up. It is the second time now that we're doing our holiday special called Where I Live, where we want you to send us a three minutes or less voice memo telling us about where you are in the world. Because I love having the chance, especially at this time of year, to hear actually human

• 59:49Sarah Marshall?

  voices spanning the globe and I don't know, doing a hands across America thing with all of you. And so if you want to listen to last year's episode, you can find it in our feed from last December. And if you want to send in a voice memo telling us about where you live, what it's like, what are people wrong about where you're from and what you love about it and love to hate about it and feel conflicted about all of it, um, in three minutes. And if you want to share with us the sound of where you live, we would love to hear that too. And you can send it to [email protected].

• 1:00:30Sarah Marshall?

  And thank you for being sloppy and alive with us as we head into the holidays. Thank you to Miranda Zickler, who is our producer and editor and Magpie. Thank you to Nicole Ortiz, who is our administrative assistant. Thank you to you for listening. Thank you for supporting on Patreon and Apple Plus if you do that. And thank you for being here if you don't. Happy Halloween.