Once again, Halloween has come and gone, and we’ve got a whole year to wait until it comes around again. Normally, this time of year leaves me feeling melancholy, but this year has been remarkably good. We’ve had an open house over the weekend, which has kept me busy and extended the feeling of the holiday through the beginning of November. Also, a realization that I had sometime last year is helping out a bit, too. In thinking about the tradition of ghost stories at Christmas, I realized that looking at Halloween as the end of a spooky season had it all backward. Halloween is the gateway to the spooky season, when nights are long and cold, and everyone huddles around the light and tells stories of why they’re afraid of the dark. November and December are ghost story weather, it’s as simple as that.

So this year I’ve tried to view the passing of Halloween as the beginning of the ghost story season, and that’s already helped to make the days a little brighter gloomier, and the nights a little spookier, so we’re off to a good start.