It is probably the most baffling thing to my high school best friend that we don’t celebrate Halloween. It is absolutely his favorite holiday. And he has been happily peppering Facebook with freaky clown pictures for the last couple of weeks.
We don’t have very strong religious feelings about it other than knowing that it is an incorporated pagan festival but we decided that we were celebrating it and not to God. So along with the other pagan festivals that Christianity adopted (Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day etc) we got rid of it. We don’t really miss it. We don’t really avoid it. We just don’t do it.
That is not to say that we don’t enjoy a good scare (Six Flags has a really fun Fright Fest this time of year) we just don’t celebrate Halloween with it’s costumes and pumpkins and tricks or treats. So it is a good thing we are going away this weekend to visit my niece because we live in a genuine ghost town: on All-Hallows-Eve there will be no door bell ringers, no tricks or treats here… just the empty shells and ghostly remnants of lives past. Besides our house the town is long gone and only the memory of where it was among a few tumbling remnants exists.
A huge rock that used to sit next to the Post Office:
The old school house which some history buff has been trying to keep standing is rotting in its corrugated skin :
Driving further up the valley toward the salt and sea, leaving our ghost town behind, you wonder how many more towns have died on this twisting stretch of highway. The fallen barns and ramshackle remains appear tucked back into the folds of the hills partially obscured by trees.
The tumbled remains of a home:
Lives passed and forgotten:
Sweet Little Wood 