Bradley Robertson

Around this time every year after all my outside Halloween decorations are up, and I am able to start putting up my inside decorations people start asking why I do it. Am I charging admission to see my display? Doesn't this take a lot of time? Are you a Satanist? The answers are no, yes, and no respectively. I could leave my answers there, but I feel each deserves a further explanation.

In regards to the first question one of the unspoken rules among home haunters is to never charge admission. While there are some haunters out there that ask for donations to help to defray costs, most that ask for donations are doing so to give to some sort of children's charity. When you start charging admission you become a commercial enterprise. As such you are subject to all sorts of nasty things such as having to abide by fire codes and having to pay royalties for any music you use in your haunt. That's not to say that your haunt shouldn't be as safe as possible. If children are touring your attraction it should be as safe as possible since it is on your property and you probably don't want to have to make a home owner's insurance claim. Again, this is another reason most people don't go commercial since home owner's insurance doesn't cover business activities and you would need to purchase more expensive business insurance.

As I admitted earlier, yes this is very time consuming. However, what hobby isn't? If you are dedicated to any hobby it tends to take up the majority of your free time. Every year when it starts approaching the end of September I start putting up my decorations. For the last couple of years I have worked on one project or another every weekend leading up to Halloween. Last year I also did some work on weekday evenings. This year I have also had to add Friday nights and even more weeknight evenings to mix. A major reason for this is that I have expanded the scope of my indoor decorations considerably. That's mainly because for the first time I am hosting a small Halloween party. People are already blown away by what I do in my front yard. People who decorate for Halloween in my area are scarce, and typically it is more cutesy than it is scary. While I do spend quite a bit of time decorating, my hope is the end result will be an event my guests won't soon forget and will look forward to it each year.

If you read this site or any of my holiday posts you know that I get equally excited when it comes to decorating for Christmas. So anyone asking the question if I am Satanist because I decorate for Halloween is simply ignorant. In all of its incarnations Halloween, Hallow'en, All Hallows Eve, or Samhein has never been about devil worship. I also think it is equally absurd to assume that because I decorate for Christmas that I am a Christian. Fifty years ago that might have been a safe assumption. Now, Christmas seems to be celebrated by plenty of non-Christians and the holiday has almost become a secular holiday. Every single one of my close Jewish friends experiences a visit from Santa. As a non-Christian that's a major part of Christmas as far as I'm concerned. My point is that the holidays you celebrate do not necessarily indicate your religious preferences.

Finally, the reason I do it has many answers. I do it because I grew up looking forward to when my mother would put up the cardboard cut-out Halloween decorations every Fall (this was before there was such a thing as vinyl window clings). When she stopped putting up those decorations I started decorating my room with scary pictures and listening to Halloween sound effect cassettes. I do it because I love seeing the look on the neighbor kids' faces when they notice that I have a new prop out. When I've done a good job their eyes light up as if it were Christmas morning. Then, they usually tell their friends and give them a guided tour of my haunt, pointing out each decoration and looking for the same reaction they had. In that same vein, I do it because I want kids to grow up realizing that there is nothing wrong with Halloween and that it should be celebrated. Most importantly, I do it because my hope is that other people will see my display and will be inspired to give more children something to look forward to for many generations to come.

This post was made from my BlackBerry 8330 .