Fright Night at Franklin Farms
The original scheme for Halloween '99 was to dress up my brother Bart's house in downtown Herndon and scare the little kiddies from there. But several things conspired to change our plans. Most importantly, Bart informed us that last year he only got three trick-or-treaters and, as far as I was concerned, that simply wouldn't do. You see, by scaring in volume, we are able to keep costs down and pass the savings on to you...the consumer.

Our second choice was my parents' house, but again, the lack-o'-kiddies issue reared its ugly head and we were on to a search for site "C."

Just then, Bart's girlfriend Dana (a newly-minted lawyer) came to the rescue with an offer to use her parents' house, in a neighborhood populated almost exclusively by kiddies with nervous disorders. Ok, so I'm kidding about the last part, but as far as I know, several of them may have awakened the next morning to find they had developed one.

Our cast consisted of "T", Bart, Will, Jason, Da Schwartz, and myself. The support crew consisted of Dana, her parents, and my mom, who took over the care and feeding of the cast. We hung a very large black light over the door, for atmosphere. Then put a CD of scary sound effects, turned up to "11", in the garage.

Building the dummy We then built a dummy and placed it on a bench next to the front door. Will and the dummy.Will then put on a costume which covered every inch of visible skin and sat next to said dummy. The idea being, that without severe risk to life and limb, there was no possible way to tell which one was, in a manner of speaking, the dummy.

The bowl of candy And, as if that wasn't enough, we didn't have no pansy mom, handing out candy for free at the door either. If you wanted candy, by cracky, you had to approach the dummy and reach into the bowl of goodies he was holding in his lap with his skeletal hands.

So, ya got yer candy, and you think hey, this was a breeze, now all I gotta do is walk back down the driveway, and I'm home free. Well, think again there Chester! Laaz and his "Fright Club" might just have a thing or two to say about that.

Wanna see the results?

Collage This is a collage of some of the best facial reactions we were able to elicit.
Slide Show
Part One
Slide Show
Part Two
Coming Soon!

Tri-Llama Productions