Writing for Fun
October 2018
The Experiment - Jeanette Rothwell
It has been about 60 years since I started to haunt this lovely old house and in recent times I see the village become very active in late October for something they call Halloween. It seems to be rather a silly thing to do as they are all pretending that they are either ghosts, or pranksters, painting their faces, wearing strange costumes and children expecting villagers to give them sweets. The idea seems to be that ghosts and other spectres don’t exist and they just dress up and make believe. Well, we do exist and I think it is time to change that belief and so I have decided to try an experiment. I don’t want to scare the children, as I love them all, but some of the adults definitely need a fright! There are lots of spiders in the cellar of this house and I am sure they would like to take a trip to the village green on Halloween night. The nearby Windmill is haunted by a lady who was declared to be a witch and I am sure she would like to come out of retirement. She has a black cat, also a ghost, and I think the broomstick might come in handy on the night.
The villagers will light a bonfire and I can conjure up a gale to blow it out whenever they re-light it. The spiders will make their presence known, but only to the adults. The witch will swoop over the party, I will also emanate into a green glow and make howling noises loud enough to be heard above their strange music.
The Jack-o-lanterns candles will go out, the apple bobbing will be impossible to secure an apple, any pranks will go wrong. Some believe that Halloween could be dedicated to remembering the dead. Well, nobody is going to remember me after all this time so I am not worried about that. Some martyrs can also be remembered on that night but I don’t recall any martyrs in this area and I am sure if there were, they would agree with me that our experiment would be a good way of making the villagers believe in our presence.
All the above were put in place for the night. I must say I found emanating into a green glow was very hard work, I must be a bit rusty, and making howling noises was quite an effort. The last time I did all that was when I got rid of the Nanny who had been employed to look after the children and that was about 10 years ago. Things have been relatively quiet since then.
I did visit the local church graveyard and spoke to a few occupants. Some were happy to have a peaceful evening, but others thought it would be fun to join in so I had about six other ghosts also come out of retirement and dance around the village green to the rock music being played. The villagers couldn’t believe their eyes and weren’t sure what to do. In the end they stopped dancing and just stared in disbelief which made the ghosts dance even more madly.
The one thing that did go wrong, as far as I was concerned, was that one group sat around the bonfire telling horror stories and when I appeared to them, they were delighted as it gave credence to their story. They obviously believed in ghosts and weren’t phased by our activities.
Apparently there had been plans for some families to get together and watch horror films but after the activities on the village green, their enthusiasm waned and the families retired to their respective houses to watch Disney films.
The children, on the whole, enjoyed the experience, it was the adults who screeched when the spiders crawled over them, and there was a shout of fear when our witch swooped down from the windmill, on her broomstick, with the cat meowing very loudly. She said afterwards that she had never had such fun.
When the children went around the houses with their ‘trick or treating’, the adults positively threw the sweets at them rather than venture out, except one grumpy old man, who shouted at them and as I had invited the other ghosts to join me, they managed to make his drains smell and fill his house with weird noises.
On the whole, it was a very satisfactory experiment. Perhaps next year the villagers will be a little more careful with their plans for Halloween and remember that there is more to Halloween than painting their faces and carving pumpkins.