The Year My Sister Scarred Me For Life On Halloween

For years I could not watch or read anything related to the Legend of Sleepy Hallow. This was partly because I am a wimp with scary stories and mostly because my sister traumatised me one Halloween as a child.

It happened one Halloween when I was growing up, I was still fairly small and we had finished the trick or treating part of the evening. A bit too much of the good candy had been eaten; the rest along with the crap candy was in a coffee tin in my closet. The good stuff would be gone within a week, the crap candy would stay in the coffee tin at the back of my closet until Easter when I would be forced to have a clean out by my mother.

So riding out the sugar high I was in the living room watching the cartoon Legend of Sleepy Hallow with my sister. Now as an adult I can point out that the ending of this cartoon made it quite clear it was a prank played on Ichabod Crane by the town bully, but as a small child that scene where Ichabod is chased by the headless horsemen who is holding a flaming Jack o’ Lantern as he chases the fleeing Ichabod...well it’s scary.

I may have cried

Now it’s also worth pointing out that as part of the Halloween decorations my parents had some fluffy stuffed Jack o’ Lanterns. It’s also worth noting that I wore glasses and am very near sighted...I think you can see where this is going.

Sometime in the night I woke from slightly freaky dreams to see this ghostly figure at the end of my bed, it was fuzzy and pale but I could see the orange grinning face where a head should be. I held my breath in terror when suddenly the figure threw its horrible orange leering head RIGHT AT ME. The scream I had felt frozen in my throat found voice and I screamed and screamed in the way only a younger sibling can.

During my screaming the ghostly figure had vanished and by the time my parents had got to my room I was sobbing and fumbling for my glasses. My parents comforted me telling me it was just a “Nightmare” probably brought on by the cartoon and deciding to bring one of the plushy pumpkins to bed. My sister, in an exquisite bit of acting, came yawning out of her room crankily asking what was going on and why did I wake her by screaming....wearing her long white nightgown.

It wasn’t until years later she admitted to coming in with her head under the nightgown to prank me, and you think I’d be angry but I’m not. As Halloween pranks go to pull on your kid sister it was a pretty good one and it gave me a pretty good story many Halloween’s later. Not being able to watch a Disney cartoon for 10 years is a small price to pay.

At least I didn’t wet the bed...