Getting into the Spirit

Photos and story by Amil Steiner/Forty-Niner On-line

It's that time of the year again - when America celebrates the dark side of its holiday season, Halloween.

Children masquerade as their favorite scary characters, traipsing merrily from house to house collecting treats to trade and eat.

Halloween is also the only opportunity for families to get pumpkins, carve funny or frightening faces into their facades and parade them about their front porches. But best of all, Halloween is the only holiday where people can dress up their houses in the most morbid fashion they can think of.

Stuffed, headless bodies lay limp in rocking chairs and hang from trees. Cotton spider webs shroud shrubbery in the hopes of snaring prey. Skeletons of wood and plastic appear to dance by way of gusts of wind.

Whether Halloween decorating is done as an outlet for creative energy which everyday life may suppress, a neighborhood competition or merely a chance to do something constructive with the family, it's an American tradition.