Knott’s Halloween Haunt

Happy Halloween
I don’t like Halloween.  To me it is just a dark portal I must go through to get to the good holidays where you get turkey and presents.  To prove I have always felt this way I present the following excerpt from Letter’s to David, a soon to be finished play I have been working on for only twenty years.
Written by DeAnne to David
October 1990
The entire month of October I am starring in the role of Magician’s Assistant #3 in a tacky magic show at Knott’s Berry Farm’s Halloween Haunt. The magician is a 22- year -old kid and unfortunately, for him, assistants numbers one and two are old like me and almost as bitter. I’m pretty sure we are terrorizing him but at least now he has learned things like “never give me a fucking note on stage”.  These lessons we are teaching him will last a lifetime.  He really should be thanking us.  In the opening number I am revealed out of a box dressed like something out of the Thriller video.  The problem is I have a wee bit of clausterphobia so I always leave the fake door in the back of the box where we are hidden cracked just a little. So far, no one has noticed.  After the three of us “ghouls” are revealed we then proceed to do the “funk dance number”. It’s pretty sad because I am not usually funky and am even less so in a rubber head. I HATE being dressed as a ghoul. I find it repulsive. I don’t want to be ugly. I was always a princess or a ballerina for Halloween except for 1967 when I was Davy Jones from the Monkees .  At any rate, for the rest of the show I lucked out and I just go change into a tight black dress and point at stuff pretending to like magic.  Poor Linda has to wear a lovely costume with knives and blood oozing out of her head and Renee has to wear an ugly witch costume before they change into their black dresses and join me in the land of Ta Da! Last night when The Kid was sawing Linda in half something went wrong and he just waved his arms madly over the box as if he were casting a spell and then walked off leaving Linda, in half, alone on stage smiling at the audience until the curtain closed on her head.  It was the best ever.  The worst part of this whole thing is I have to walk through the park to get to and from the theater where I try to dodge the 500 people Knott’s hired to dress like gross, mutilated, bleeding, oozing, deformed zombies …many of whom do not need make-up.  It really bothers me. Wasn’t anyone else a princess?                       (end of letter)


2006 Don and the cutest duck ever.

This makes the twenty-third Halloween I have had to suffer through since I wrote that letter and since Addie is only eight I guess I have a few more.  Right now said eight-year-old is yelling at me to come curl her hair. Tonight she is going to be an Arch Angel.  Not regular old cherubim or seraphim but Arch Angel with a tiara.  No halo for her. No kidding.