Halloween Open Mic

35°f/1.3°C, clear. If there was frost, it melted off  early.

I rested up this morning after last night's open mic. Whew. Trying to be emcee, cameraman, host, and also do the broom dance kept me hopping! But what a fun evening it was. Here's a look at our shenanigans:

The broom dance! Not perfect, but fun. We will do it again Saturday in town,and hopefully it will ve better. Jewels Whitley, yoga and belly dance instructor, led our group. 

Doc and Fudd's Oldtime Vaudeville Show showed up, and they were a hoot! Crowd favorites were their renditions of Ghost Chickens in the Sky, Purple People Eater. A couple clips of their performance below the photo. 

Our featured presenter was author Sherri Brake, who leads ghost and paranormal tours all over the US and internationally as well. She did a slide show of her latest book about Point Pleasant, home of the legendary Mothman. 

She sold quite a few books. I have known Sherri for at least 20 years, but it has probably been at least 12 years since I last saw her. We both wrote columns for the now-defunct Two-Lane Livin' periodically for about 10 years.

When she left us she was headed to a high school in central West Virginia, then on to Canton and Cleveland, Ohio. One busy lady!

Some of the wiches who rode in:

No one recognized Becky, not even her best friends!

This costume won the funniest award---the Identity Thief! She had name tags all over her black sweatsuit. So clever.

Witches again, with their "familiar", a black cat.

Our local opera singer came in this gorgeous outfit. Her singing is just incredible, and self-taught.

Judy came as the Thrift Shopping Queen, in the craziest thrifted outfit. Her husband, not in his costume yet in this photo, was the High Lonesome Rambler and they tied for Most Original.

Here's a short clip of Randy's performance, in his costume:

Brenda and Sheree looked great too. Brenda, in pajamas, a patched-up bathrobe, slippers and curlers in her hair, was the Real Housewife of Fairplain. She won Best costume. Sheree came as a very genteel and classy lady.

Larry came as himself!

I didn't get photos of all the costumes, but I hope someone who did will share them. 

My hat this year had a decidedly forest-y look about it.

And last, the treats I made for the evening, which were displayed like this on each table: ghosts, haystacks, monster finger sugar cookies, and brooms.

And there were blood shots to drink for those daring enough to try them!

We had a blast. It was a bit of work, but so worth it in the end. 

Today I mostly rested! Went to lunch with granddaughter Hannah and her precious little baby Sutton, browsed Goodwill, came home and did laundry...normal life resumes!

October Days

38°f/3 3°C, clear.

Our dance crew. Witches of all ages! I forgot my hat. 

We practiced the broom dance last night. Great fun! We will perform it at open mic tomorrow night,  and again Saturday night for the Monster Bash in town. 

Today I will get started on making the treats for tomorrow evening. 

Some October thoughts:

A Flower Fairy for October, by Cecily Mary Barker.

October is the month for painted leaves.... As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky; November the later twilight. ~Henry David Thoreau, "Autumnal Tints"

Oh, come to the woods, the merry green woods,

      While gaily the autumn leaves fall.

Just look overhead, 'mid leaves brown and red,

      The squirrels all chatter and call,

"October is here, the Queen of the Year,

      Merry, merry, October!"

Oh, out in the woods, the merry green woods,

      The fairies their revels will keep;

Then, when it is dark, comes the Frost Spirit—hark!

      He is singing the flowers to sleep!

"October is here, the Queen of the Year,

      Merry, merry October!"

~Author unknown, early 1900s

"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it?..." ~Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942), Anne of Green Gables, 1908

Some Advice for the Haunted Season

44°f/6.7°C, clear. Lovely day, just a bit chilly. Frost is possible tonight.

I love this season--- the stories, the decorations, the traditions, and the folklore. And since we're out rousing the spirits (both good and bad!), you might be wondering how to keep them out of your house and away from you and yours! In the old folklore there are quite a few superstitions on the topic. For example:

• sprinkle a ring of salt around your home. It was believed that spirits would not cross salt.
• paint the window and door frames of your house blue. Might clash with your green siding, but spirits apparently will not cross a blue threshold. Down south, there's even a color called Haint Blue, often used to paint the ceilings of porches.
• Hang a hagstone (a stone with a hole through it) by your door. For some reason these deter evil. 
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• You can also hang bells to warn you of approaching spirits.
• hang a mirror outside your door. Spirits must be vain because apparently they must stop and look at themselves in a mirror, and they forget why they came to your house (must have short memories too). A slightly different belief is that mirrors must be covered after a death in the family to prevent the person's spirit from returning through the mirror, thought to be portal to the other side. 
• Put screen wire over all your doors and windows. Spirits seem to be obsessive-compulsive because they have to count every single tiny hole in the screen. By the time they've counted all the holes, day is breaking and they must return to whence they came. As an old night-visiting ballad says, "Oh the winds do blow and the moorcock crows,  and it's nearly breaking day, and it's time for the living to depart from the dead, so now my love I must away, away, so now I must away."
• hang blue bottles on a bush in your yard. As explained to me, the custom springs from a belief that spirits would be attracted to the bottles and get trapped inside. 
• Hang rosemary, tied with red ribbon, outside your door. A twist on this is to put the tied rosemary into a seashell--apparently that can capture a spirit inside the shell!
• Lastly, storyteller Kathryn Windham of Alabama advises her listeners to turn their shoes in opposite directions under the bed at night. This confuses the spirits, she says, because they can't tell if you're coming or going! (Kathryn is a great teller of ghost stories as well as hilarious personal stories, and at 89 is still going strong.)

If you all these instructions, you should feel fairly safe from any ill-intended spirit visits. Of course, by the time you've done all this, it will be daylight anyway and the need for protection will be gone!
For some interesting superstitions, read Haints, Witches and Boogers, Tales from Upper East Tennessee, or Witches, Ghosts and Signs by Patrick Gainer; or the new work by Jerry Milnes, Signs, cures, and witchery : German Appalachian Folklore.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.