Umph...missed that holiday.

Halloween has been a favorite holiday of mine since I was a young'un. This year, however, I was out sick. Didn't get to dress up. Didn't get to attend a single haunt. Didn't pass out candy. Didn't get to trick/treat w/my kids. *Sigh*

Like most celebrations, events, etc. in our culture, Halloween has become big business. I'm not going to cite facts here, but trust me, it's worth your investigation. I was part of the 'haunt industry' for a couple of years, 'was even swapping email and online chat jabber with some of the biggest names in the fright business. It is a fascinating field, and what's most fascinating about it to me now is that behind most large commercial haunted houses stands...not some geeky creep who wears face paint year'round...but a business man/woman. It takes a business minded individual to keep the turnstile turning, the cost-per-scare reasonable, and the promotional dollars balanced with the gallons of fake blood. (That, of course, would be a factor in why Toxic Terror, my haunted enterprise, is no-more. Actually, there's a lot to why Toxic Terror had a meltdown, not the least, the fact that I left for western kansas.) A haunt manager must also have a characteristic that makes them distinctly different from other entrepreneurs: sadism. At least some degree of a haunt manager's thinking must always be on how to freak out the customers in new and gruesome ways. (There again, I have a degree of wickedness, but I just don't think I ever had the constitution to creep people out as they would need.)

I digress. Actually, I don't know what I was writing about here, except a general lamentation that I missed Halloween.