Halloween 2K26 - My Final Costume

Halloween was always a thrill when I was a kid. My family moved around a lot, which meant there were always new neighborhoods to explore, new houses to visit, and different little Halloween attractions to discover. I loved figuring out what I was going to dress up as each year and was constantly trying to top whatever costume I had worn the year before.

Then seventh grade arrived, and suddenly Halloween seemed childish. I was heavily into horror movies by that point, and walking door to door asking strangers for candy felt immature compared to staying home and watching people get slaughtered on VHS. So that year, my little brother went trick-or-treating without me while I stayed home and marathoned horror movies. A new Halloween tradition was born.

From eighth through tenth grade, I spent every Halloween parked in front of the television watching scary movies. I had no desire to dress up, go trick-or-treating, or participate in anything remotely social. Give me a stack of VHS tapes and some snacks and I was perfectly happy. Then, during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, something happened that changed everything: I got my hands on a dark blue jumpsuit.

How I acquired that jumpsuit is actually a bit of a horror story itself. My grandmother had adopted my stepmother’s dog after she married my father. His name was Rewis, and he was a very old cocker spaniel who loved spending time outdoors. My grandmother lived way out in the North Carolina countryside, so it was the perfect place for him to enjoy his final years. Rewis took full advantage of the freedom. He would disappear for a day or two at a time, wandering around the property and surrounding woods, but he always came back eventually, tail wagging like nothing had happened.

One summer day, I noticed a horrible odor inside my grandmother’s house. Her home was an old, very small concrete house filled with decades of accumulated stuff. Seeing the occasional mouse wasn’t unusual. Every once in a while, you might even encounter a snake. So when the smell started, I assumed something had gotten caught in one of the traps. I checked them all and found nothing. My next guess was that a mouse had died inside a wall or underneath some pile of dusty junk that hadn’t been touched since the 1960s.

For three days, we fought the smell with several cans of Glade and enough candles to turn the house into a Yankee Candle showroom. Then it occurred to me that we hadn’t seen Rewis since the smell started.

I went outside and pulled open the crawlspace door. The smell that rolled out from underneath that house was unlike anything I had ever smelled before, and thankfully anything I have smelled since. The North Carolina summer heat had taken an already terrible situation and transformed it into something truly horrific. I could see the outline of Rewis lying on his side about halfway underneath the house.

My grandmother didn’t want me ruining my clothes crawling under there. Luckily, the previous year a worker who had jacked up part of her floor had left an old dark blue jumpsuit behind on the porch. I put it on, zipped it up, and looked down at myself. I looked just like Michael Myers.

Without going into too many details, getting Rewis out from underneath that house was a massive undertaking involving crawling on my stomach, maggots, a partially decomposed dog, and a garden hoe. That’s probably enough detail. It is Halloween season, but I don’t want to completely ruin your appetite.

The important part of this story is that I now owned a dark blue jumpsuit.

A year or so earlier, when I was fourteen, I had bought a Michael Myers mask. I kept it displayed on an old Styrofoam head that sat on my bookshelf. Before Michael arrived, the head had been decorated to look like Head, the mannequin carried around by professional wrestler Al Snow. Eventually, I decided that Michael Myers deserved the real estate more than Al Snow’s Styrofoam companion. So every night, Michael Myers sat on my bookshelf and watched me sleep. Healthy teenage behavior.

As Halloween approached during my junior year, something finally clicked. I had a good Michael Myers mask, a perfect dark blue jumpsuit, and, just to make the whole thing even better, there was a sign in our front yard that said MYERS’ HOUSE. At that point, not dressing up as Michael Myers almost felt disrespectful.

My best friend Anthony agreed to join me on Halloween night. I had no intention of collecting candy. For one thing, I still considered myself too old for trick-or-treating. More importantly, carrying around a plastic pumpkin or pillowcase full of candy would completely ruin the look. I had a very specific plan: I wanted to walk slowly through the neighborhood, not talking, not running, just Michael Myers silently wandering the streets of suburban Memphis.

Anthony ruined that almost immediately.

He had no interest in wearing a costume, so he went as himself. Unfortunately, “himself” meant loud, hyperactive, and incredibly annoying. My mysterious evening of terror had quickly become one badass Michael Myers and his obnoxious teenage sidekick.

We still had a great time. We wandered around the neighborhood talking, laughing, and occasionally trying to scare people. Anthony also decided that despite being a teenager with absolutely no costume, he was going to attempt to score some candy.

At one house, an older gentleman neither of us knew decided he was going to make Anthony earn it. He refused to hand over any candy unless Anthony performed a trick. So there we were, standing in some stranger’s driveway while Anthony desperately cycled through every joke, trick, and impression he knew. Nothing impressed this guy. Anthony kept trying, and the man kept rejecting him. I’ve never seen anyone work so hard for a fun-size bag of M&M’s.

The entire ordeal lasted nearly twenty minutes before the man finally handed over the candy. I’m pretty sure Anthony didn’t actually impress him. I think the guy simply decided that twenty minutes of entertainment was worth a miniature bag of chocolate.

At the next house, Anthony tried his luck again. This one belonged to a girl who rode our school bus. She opened the door, immediately chastised him for trying to trick-or-treat without wearing a costume, and then began pelting him with pieces of taffy. I stood at the end of the driveway dressed as Michael Myers, desperately trying not to collapse from laughter.

Of course, Anthony wasn’t the only one who embarrassed himself that night.

One of our neighbors called me over and introduced me to the people who were about to move into the house next door. His cousin had bought the place and planned to move in the following month. I walked over and introduced myself to the couple. They were extremely friendly, excited about moving into the neighborhood, and seemed to be enjoying Halloween night.

By this point, I’d been wearing the Michael Myers costume for about an hour and had almost forgotten I had it on. That’s important, because I noticed their infant sitting nearby in a stroller and decided to walk over and say hello.

To a baby.

While dressed as Michael Myers.

The transformation was immediate. One second, the baby was perfectly happy. The next, the child was screaming like someone had just opened the gates of Hell. The screaming got the attention of his three-year-old brother, who came running over to see what was wrong. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me, and I watched his expression change in real time from curiosity to something that could only be described as, “Oh my God, I’m going to die.”

I immediately felt terrible. It’s one thing to emotionally scar your own younger siblings. That’s practically part of the job description. It’s another thing to traumatize two innocent children you’ve known for approximately three minutes.

I reached behind my head to pull off the mask and show them that I wasn’t actually Michael Myers. That’s when things got worse. It was a warm, humid Memphis night, and after an hour inside a jumpsuit and latex mask, my face was soaked with sweat. The mask had practically suctioned itself to my head. I pulled at it, but nothing happened. I pulled harder. Still nothing.

Meanwhile, the baby was screaming. His brother was screaming. I could hear adults approaching from behind me. For the first and only time that Halloween night, I was genuinely scared.

I barely knew these people. From their perspective, some high school kid dressed as Michael Myers had wandered over and intentionally terrified their children. I finally wrestled the mask off, smearing the black makeup around my eyes across my face and into my mouth in the process.

I was afraid to look up. I had no idea what expression I was going to see on the faces of my future neighbors. Anger? Horror? Immediate plans to put their house back on the market?

Instead, they were smiling. Actually, they were trying not to laugh.

Apparently, watching me panic while desperately attempting to remove a Michael Myers mask that had become fused to my sweaty face was enough to make it obvious that none of this had been intentional. I apologized repeatedly, but they told me everything was fine. They were already calming down the kids and explaining that I was just a teenager wearing a costume.

I managed to bribe the three-year-old with some of the candy Anthony had collected, and slowly the universe returned to normal. Anthony, meanwhile, had fallen onto the ground laughing. Literally. He had watched this entire disaster unfold and apparently found my desperate mask-removal dance to be the funniest thing he had ever witnessed.

We decided we had experienced enough excitement for one Halloween and headed back to my house to watch Halloween. Anthony had never seen it before. Technically, he watched the entire movie that night. Realistically, I still don’t think he’s ever seen Halloween. He spent most of the ninety-minute runtime laughing about what had happened and reenacting the ridiculous dance I’d performed while trying to peel that sweaty Michael Myers mask off my face.

That was the last Halloween I ever really participated in. I’ve never been much of a party guy, so I haven’t had many reasons to dress up as an adult, and I don’t have kids to take trick-or-treating. Most of my Halloweens since then have returned to the tradition I started back in seventh grade: horror movies, something good to eat, and a quiet night at home.

And I’m actually okay with that being my final Halloween. I got one last night of walking around the neighborhood with my best friend, dressed as one of my favorite horror villains. We laughed, scared some people, embarrassed ourselves, watched Halloween, and accidentally created a story that we’ve been able to joke about ever since.

There are worse ways to say goodbye to childhood, and you really can’t ask for much more than that.