I’d been warned; but I didn’t really understand. I’ve never seen anything like Halloween in Cranbury. At the end of the evening, David and I just looked at each other in amazement and laughed out loud.

Our neighbor tried to prepare us. She told me that she probably gave away around 400 pieces of candy. So David went out and purchased 395 pieces. (I counted.) I decided to play it safe and buy another two bags.

At 5:10, we had our first little Ninja Turtle. Waiting in anticipation for the next, I watched out the window as kids and their parents walked right by our house! I’m sure that for many years, ours was the “haunted” house on the street. I can imagine some kids walked a little faster as they went by and perhaps some of the older kids braved a peek behind the bushes. I’m not one to decorate for Halloween—no spiders or witches or ghosts for me. But I did try to make the house look friendly and lived in. I put some mums on my front steps and hung an autumn wreath on my door. The porch was flanked by two stone lions. (Okay, those might have been a little scary. David bought those for me because I have ALWAYS wanted a pair of lions. I have scores of photos of lions that grace monuments and museums.)

I couldn’t stand watching kids walk by, so I took my chair and my basket of candy and sat on the front porch. That did the trick. It was also fun! Unfortunately, it was also the coldest night, we’ve had since we moved to New Jersey. I thought the cold might slow down the number of trick-or-treaters, but that was naive. The trickle of princesses and minions and action heroes turned into a river. We watched open-mouthed as groups of twenty streamed up the steps. I realized I needed to be much more stringent on how many pieces of candy I gave to each child. But that wasn’t good enough. By 7:10, we ran out of candy. We took advantage of a very brief lull in the action to run into the house and turn off the lights. For the rest of the night we were that scary, dark house again.