TheTerror and Torture of Halloween in Draper Utah

We didn't have extravagant plans for our first Halloween together, but what happened that night was more than unexpected. And for every one's sake, especially our own, we hope that it never happens again.

We had kicked off the our celebration of the haunting holiday innocently enough, by hosting the Second Annual Scary Dinner at the Groves home. This tradition of having a Sunday Family Dinner that resembles an array of weird, creepy and disgusting courses in an incredibly well balanced meal got it's start from a similar event Mike and his roommates would organize "back in the college days". It was well attended with witches, vampires, street punks, greasers, and one particularly strange and indescribable creature. We all at our fill of dead rats (calzones stuffed with sausage and cheese), Werewolf bellybuttons (meatballs), cat guts (baked potatoes), and chicken feet (yeah they really were chicken feet) finished with eyeballs for dessert (cupcakes with lifesavers). Check out the pictures, I'm still learning how to insert them the way I want.

But that was Sunday. Halloween was on Wednesday. Shaina spent the day at her office where the only hint that it was even a holiday was the pumpkin cookies in the breakroom and Shaina's black nail polish. The rest was business as usual. Mike's day at the office did include costumes, a pumpkin contest, and employee's kid's doing some cubicle trick or treating.

When they both got home they were looking forward to fighting off the cold October weather with a warm meal, a good movie, and the usual Halloween festivities.

Maybe it's because Draper is fairly young as far as Salt Lake City suburbs go. Maybe it's because a lot of the people moving into the new developments are out of state transplants, and those Californians are just used to doing things differently. It probably has nothing to do with the fact that the state penitentiary is just a short mile or two up the road, but that's something to think about anyway. Whatever the reason, Halloween this year was different than any other Halloween we have experienced.

Instead of the sweet youngsters knocking on doors asking for candy all night, we heard silence in the streets.

Instead of a spine-chilling thriller to watch in between candy distributing, the only thing we found to watch was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the original movie. (Which neither of us had seen before, now we remember why).

We should have known that something with the main character named Buffy was going to be bad. But we didn't expect the scariest part of a vampire movie to be the 80's formal dresses or Luke Perry's acting.

So this message goes out as a warning to all, that others might not suffer the same fate we did:

- Don't expect kids to come trick or treating to a bunch of cheap apartments when the surrounding neighborhoods are full of really big houses that probably give out full size candy bars.

- Don't rely on cable tv to provide the best selection of movies all the time. Plan ahead. Go to Blockbuster.

And most important of all:

- If you are living in the above mentioned cheap apartments and if you foolishly think that one or two trick or treaters might possibly come to your door, don't ever, ever buy the 5lb bag of your own favorite candy to hand out. It will only lead to genuine terror when you try to put on a pair of jeans the next weekend and real torture in the gym for the next month.