Make it scary

Once a year around this time, something odd happens. Tranquil homes transform into frightening graveyards, torture chambers and ghastly scenes.
   To those who don’t understand, it seems odd to willingly leave the regular world and turn to a scary environment, but the decorations have purpose.
   “I think it’s just fun making the house scary. I love that type of stuff,” Odessan Alisha Shoemaker said.
   Shoemaker spent some time exploring the Spirit Halloween store last week, looking for something else she can put outside to put a fright in the heart of those who go by her home.
   “It seems to get bigger each year,” Shoemaker said. “I have had a spider stolen once, which is sad that people would do that, but it’s fun seeing how people react.”
   She said the display includes such unusual objects as skull lights, a crawling woman and killer clown. The goal: turn the yard into a truly scary display.
   “Decorating is so much fun. I love doing it and then scaring people. When we decorate, it’s like a different place,” her 8-year-old son, Kaden Shoemaker, said.
   Odessa resident Steven Fuentes agrees. He said his family has been decorating for Halloween for the past three years and really gets into the “spirit” of the season.
   “We have to go every year and add to it as much as possible. We have a tree with body parts hanging down, creepy babies, fog machines, even a cemetery with horsemen,” he said.
   Fuentes said he wants to eventually expand to have a scene for kids to walk through in the back yard, and for him, decorating is all about the kids.
   “We like to decorate for the kids. It can be too expensive to go to haunted houses, so we give them a bit of that at our home,” Fuentes said.
   He noted that people often drive by and either stop or slow down to look at the spooky display at night.
   “A lot of junior high kids walk home after school and say it’s really cool,” he said.
   He said his own children love getting to pick something special to add to the decorating collection and they tend to have their favorite objects.
   “My little one loves the moving ghost on the tree. It moves with noise, so he goes outside clapping to see it go,” Fuentes said.
   Spirit Halloween store manager Andy Sauceda said the store has expanded this year and gone to great lengths to highlight the popular decorations this year. Some of the big sellers are zombie babies, bubble fog machines, a creepy crawling lady and a life-size figure of film killer Michael Myers.
   “We’ve already sold out of him, and even the masks have been selling surprisingly well,” he said.
   Randy Lozano of Pecos visited the Spirit store to find additions to his family’s collection of decorations. He said he puts an eye and nose on a tree to make it look alive.
   “We make Halloween big,” he said.

HALLOWEEN HISTORY
   >> Halloween used to be called All Hallows Eve and was the day before All Saints’ Day, a Catholic holiday that included feasting to celebrate Christian saints.
   >> The Catholic holiday All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2 began to overshadow All Saints’ Day during medieval times and involved prayer for the dead. As part of the celebration, children would go door-to-door seeking alms to give to the poor in exchange for prayers for the dead.
   >> Halloween also falls right before an ancient non-Christian holiday called Samhain, and while not much is known about that holiday, it was celebrated at the end of summer. Despite allegations of such, any connection with Halloween can’t be proven, and it’s likely that fall just tends to include holidays about death as life symbolically ends as the growing season ends as well.
   >> Modern Halloween celebrations became common in the United States through the 19th and 20th centuries.
   Source: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/halloween1.html