Meeting Matilda...it's Halloween.

One of my fondest memories as a kid was Halloween. My mother loved Halloween. For whatever reason it was right up her alley. When I was in 2nd or 3rd grade she volunteered for the first time to put on the haunted house for the school Halloween carnival. It was on the stage in the cafeteria. She hung huge sheets of black plastic creating a maze winding through the stage. The hardwood floors created the necessary creaks along the way and we were set for scare. She would create scenes along the way that would scare, creep and make you jump. No blood and guts, nothing gooey or gross – just creepy and scary.

Early on she created Matilda. I do believe I still have parts of Matilda in a storage box somewhere in the attic. Matilda was a skeleton sculpted from paper mache and baked in the oven. The mache would peel and you’d have the illusion of peeling skin – very lifelike. She had a skeleton face, long white hair, boney fingers and sat in a white wedding dress, yes splattered with red paint. Matilda would simply sit in a rocking chair, slowly rocking back and forth. In her lap was a skeleton baby that would occasionally light up. View that as you shuffle along a cold, creaking, dark hallway and when the baby lit up – you’d jump a foot or two – if not the dark cloaked figure in the corner reaching out and slightly touching you would certainly give you a scream and a scare. Mom loved Halloween and she was good at it!

The haunted houses got more creative and more interesting during my elementary school years. I always think of my mom as very creative, very artsy, incredibly bright and enthusiastically eccentric. After quite a few years of haunted houses, I moved on the Jr. High and she lost her venue for her Halloween antics. So they moved to our house. We lived on Indian Rock Road in Vista and every Halloween, all the scare would come out of the garage and take form in our yard, cast along the cactus garden, peeking from the bushes and hanging from the trees. The soundtrack from the haunted house would blast out the front bedroom window so that anyone in the neighborhood knew without a doubt, we had candy if you could handle a little scare.

Years later, after my mother had passed away and I was running her bookstore, I would take a couple rooms of the store and turn them into a mini haunted house each October. It made me think of mom, was wildly creative and even gave Matilda a chance to come out of the attic for a yearly visit. Even today, Halloween will always remind me of mom, bring a smile to my face and cause me to peek out the window to see if there is a full moon or any black cats wandering across the driveway.