As a kid, I didn’t generally get that excited about dressing up in a costume for Halloween. To me what was (and is) great about Halloween is the atmosphere. The chills in the air, the longer hours of darkness each night, and the general feeling of melancholy is what I love about the season. I’d much rather walk around after dark in street clothes, looking for ghosts and such. Getting dressed up in an uncomfortable costume was just a nuisance to me.

But there was one costume I had that I always loved wearing. It consisted of:

1. Black Jeans.
2. Black Sweater
3. Black Shoes.
4. Black Cape 
5. One of these. 

I also had a plastic ax I would sometimes carry, but that was usually too cumbersome. And, of course, I couldn’t be bothered with such a thing as mere trick-or-treating when in this costume. In my twelve year-old mind, I was a spectral vision of terror; the embodiment of all the horror that has stalked humanity since the dawn of time; and as such, felt that it would be inappropriate to be seen asking for Snickers bars.

I realize now that I didn’t look terribly scary–anyone who saw me probably thought I’d had a mishap with an ink jar–but at the time I assumed that everyone was recoiling in terror at the sight of this sinister vision walking down the street.