I'm not the only one who rates Hallowe'en highly. Stores start filling their shelves faster each year . . . loading up all the usual goodies—ghoulish heads, witch hats, ghost-face flashlights and, of course, no end of gruesomely gooey candies and chocolate bars to slip into the grasping hands of tiny trick-or-treaters. Of course, that's the way it's been for a long time across in Canada and the US, but here in the UK it wasn't always that way.

In fact, as recently (hah!) as when/was a fresh-faced youngster in short pants, Hallowe'en meant nothing at all for most Brits. I, however, was not what one might call typical of British childhood.

Being a "Fourth of July" arrival, I suppose it was inevitable that I would follow US traditions, a situation undoubtedly fuelled by my immersing myself in American TV shows and comic books, and, as time went by, in novels and stories written by American writers. So it stands to reason that references to Hallowe'en and Thanksgiving—plus other US holidays and traditions—figured heavily in my greedy intake of words. And it wasn't long before a few careful inquiries revealed the truth: Wow! monsters and ghouls and witches and werewolves, all coming together for one special night of unbridled mayhem! Count me in!

Thus I would spend many a smoky autumn evening with friends, wandering the woodland trails of the park a half-mile from my house in the sleepy Yorkshire suburb of Headingley, watching the skies for signs of airborne broomsticks and peering into the thick bushes and trees for just a glimpse of something white- or furry-faced, its teeth gleaming. Alas, I didn't see any, although I recall boasting—as did many of my contemporaries—of just such a sighting when school convened the next day.

The power of imagination was such that, at least in those simpler times, the other kids believed what I said just as unquestionably as I believed what they said. But my stories were always just a little bit denser and maybe just a little more graphic than those told by my friends, and I guess that was an early indication of what I'd end up doing for a living a few decades down the line.

Back then, of course, it was relatively easy to break through the thin veil of Universal Knowledge and Belief . . . and its detestable cousin, Common Sense: A lot of kids still believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy way up into their teens, so it was but a small step to accept that, on one special night of the year, the inhabitants of the local cemetery rolled back their soily covers and went for a walkabout, dark thoughts brooding in their worm-eaten heads.

It didn't matter that, back when they were alive, most of these folks were decent members of the community who would never have harmed so much as a hair on a kid's head. Nossir! Somewhere deep in the back of our minds, in that dusty rear room of the imagination where every creak signals something truly horrendous, it made a lot of sense that something had gotten to them on the Other Side . . . something that made every reanimated corpse a sworn enemy. We didn't mind that parents didn't seem to have the same concerns as we did: What did parents know, anyway? They didn't run everywhere—didn't run anywhere, in fact—and they didn't collect bubble gum cards, didn't laugh at the antics of Archie and Jughead . . . so it was perfectly reasonable to assume they'd got this wrong, too.

Now it's not so easy.

Kids these days take a lot of convincing about anything at all.

And so it was, one Hallowe'en—some twenty years ago, now—I hatched a plan to change all that . . . just for one night.

Nicky and I have two sons, Oliver and Timothy, twenty-nine and twenty-eight, respectively. (Oliver is an artist and Tim an actor, so you can see that, with me a writer, there was only Nicky bringing in any sensible money—she was a teacher before she "retired" to help with PS Publishing.) What they lack in loot they more than make up for in self-confidence . . . but it wasn't always that way. Back around the time I'm talking about here, they weren't quite so self-assured and worldly-wise.

We had always celebrated Hallowe'en (if "celebrated" is the correct word), even when it wasn't fashionable in Britain. There were a couple of stores that used to put out a few cheesy-looking cardboard masks and those slimy plastic spiders, but most stores were busy stocking up on Christmas cards—now, of course, the Christmas cards come out as soon as August comes to a close—but good props were hard to find. So we—or, rather, Nicky—used to construct black cloaks and hoods for Ollie and Tim, and send them out trick-or-treating (always hovering in the background to watch them in case the real kid-hurting monsters got to them), armed with plastic tubs to collect their spoils . . . most of which would come from the boys' Nanna—my own mother—who lived in the apartment at the top of our house.

But that had been when the children were really young. By the time adolescence showed signs of creeping up on our sons and the first flush of testosterone was beginning to pump, I felt we needed something better to capture their imaginations. Something more real.

On this particular Hallowe'en, we had friends staying over. The day itself fell on a Saturday, and it rolled on into a particularly Hallowe'eny night filled with mist and gloom and a damp cold that seeped through even the thickest clothing to eat right into the marrow of your bones.

Our houseguests were my oldest friend, Phil—we've been staunch pals since eight years old—and his wife, Yvonne and their two kids, Simon and Anna, both around the same age as our two. I'd spoken with Phil beforehand and hatched a fairly demonic plan—I tend to speak with Phil a lot: He's a doctor, and I always seek his advice when something I'm working on calls for an untimely demise or to describe any horrible side-effects of symptoms of a condition I want to put a character through. (It's a hard life being a god.)

Anyway, Phil had gone for it, and Yvonne too, though she was a little more circumspect.

And the other two adults in the scheme had also gone for it . . . and they'd gone for it in a big way.

Sam and Lucy have since moved south, but at the time they lived in Harrogate quite near to us. Sam was a big wheel in ICI and so, like me, with my corporate background in handling communications for the financial services industry, he was no stranger to the gentle arts of exaggeration and obfuscation that are so essential to boardroom survival. And Sam and Lucy have two boys, Johnny and Patrick, also around the same age as the other four.

The first part of the plan—there were two parts: one of them, the first one, for the consumption of everyone, and the other known only to the adults—was that we'd all gather Chez Crowther for a family meal plus spooky videos: But first, Phil, Sam and I would take the six kids up into the woods to look for witches and stuff.

There were, inevitably, lots of negative sounds from the kids, all of whom had long outgrown that stuff (hell, they were ten-years-old, or getting on that way) but, as the day went on and the sky darkened, they kind of warmed to the idea—like I said, it was starting to turn real nasty out there . . . so nasty it was like this was the Hallowe'en night of them all—the one night in the history of really horrible nights that, if something were to come lumbering out of the graveyard hell-bent on tearing a kid's head off, then it would be tonight. Thus, as the pre-arranged time came for our departure, the bravado-cum-bored-acceptance that had replaced the kids' initial negativity began to dilute a little.

So far, so good.

Phil and I left my house with our four kids in the back seat, little faces staring out of the windows at the drizzle and the mist, and watching every figure marching forward-bent against the elements to make sure they didn't turn and glare at them with red-rimmed eyes . . . or maybe reach out a clawed hand at the car door while we were waiting at the traffic signals.

We arrived at Sam's place to find Sam and Lucy embroiled in a bit of an argument—a very well rehearsed argument—with Patrick and Johnny watching with that nervousness all kids develop when they see their parents having a disagreement. Lucy was saying that she didn't want us to take the kids out. It's dangerous out there, she told him. Sam, a true thespian, scoffed

scoff scoff

at this and asked her to elaborate on what she was talking about. Lucy continued with last-minute preparations for the food she was going to take around to my house and wouldn't say any more except for a beautifully-delivered You know very well what I'm talking about.

That was all the kids wanted to hear—or rather all they didn't want to hear. Hell, if one of their own parents wouldn't verbalise the danger then it was clearly something out of the ordinary—it wasn't like being knocked down by a car if you didn't look when you crossed the busy road, or falling off a wall you insisted on walking or out of a tall tree you insisted on climbing; this was something else . . . something evil, something that existed in that shadowy area which adults couldn't even bring themselves to talk about in front of their kids. In short, it was creatures with partly-decomposed bodies who snuck into your house and lay under your bed until you needed to take a pee so badly you thought your bladder would explode, wart-faced old crones who made stews of kids' eyeballs, and long-toothed men in swirling cloaks who could drink your body dry of fluids in the time it took to click your fingers.

Then the telephone rang and, while all six of the kids watched (still coming to terms with Lucy's obvious concerns), Sam picked up the phone and, after a couple of minutes, launched into a blazing temper with whoever was on the other end of the line. It was Sam's boss (actually, it was Nicky, calling from my house), and the word was that Sam was needed right now to go through some reports that had to be amended for Monday morning's board meeting. Can't it wait until tomorrow? Sam asked. Apparently not. And even his explanation of the event we'd planned fell on the stony corporate ears of "the Boss". Sam slammed the phone on the cradle, explained that he'd have to go out for a couple of hours and get this sorted but he'd be back in time to eat. Phil and I would have to take all the kids by ourselves.

Sam left the house in a (sham) stinker of a bad mood, slamming the door so hard behind him that one of the inlaid glass panels cracked from top to bottom (believe me, DeNiro could learn a lot from Sam Hay). As Sam's car engine burst into life outside, Phil and I held a muted conversation with Lucy—muted but anxiously watched and listened to by our six charges—and then, putting on a brave face, we loaded them into the car and set off for the woods.

The second part of the plan was underway.

And Sam, complete with appropriate costume and props, was already a couple of miles ahead of us.

When we reached the pre-arranged pull-in—pre-arranged but, for the benefit of our passengers, apparently arbitrarily chosen on the spur of the moment—what had started out as the worst night of the year soon blossomed into the worst night since the last dinosaur had walked the planet.

The moon hid itself behind thick grey clouds scudding across the sky like stock car racers. Rain was coming down almost horizontally in the wind and somewhere off in the distance muted thunder rolled and crashed angrily while lightning forked to the ground . . . like it was looking for us.

The setting was perfect. Ours was the only car in the pull-in. Behind us, and stretching all the way to open fields, were the picturesque Harlow Car Gardens while, right in front of us, and stretching for more than a mile in any direction, was woodland, a thick and frequently impenetrable collection of fir trees whose centuries of fallen pine needles had turned the ground and the single overgrown path into a spongy blanket.

The kids were less than happy at the prospect of venturing into the woods. In fact, one or two of them were expressing serious concerns that whatever might be out there on this night of nights was more than likely a match for me and Phil. The fact is there are first-graders who could mug me or Phil with little or no effort and, listening to the thunder and staring into the pitch blackness, our well-rehearsed exchange that they just might be right was a little more heartfelt in the gloom and the rain than it had been that afternoon when we had planned the conversation. But fatherly bravado won the day and, all of us suitably (if reluctantly) decked out in coats and jackets, our hair slicked back by rain and our hands feeling like we'd got frostbite, we set off up the path to . . . The Old Clearing –

bom ba dom dom BOM!

– which, as we explained, had once been a Hallowe'en meeting place for the witches of Harrogate and nearby Knaresborough.

And wouldn't you know it, as we came within earshot of this clearing, we could hear hammering and a frantic muttering.

One or two of our charges wanted to go back—and Phil and I were in two minds whether to continue, wondering if what we were doing constituted mental abuse—but, thinking of the glorious charge of terror we all "enjoy" on the fairground roller-coaster, we pressed on, amidst frantic shushes and hissed instructions from the children. Dropping to our hands and knees, we crept up to a vantage-point where we could see into the clearing.

The sight was pretty impressive, I have to say.

There before us was a small cloaked figure (Sam would never have made it as a basketball player) hanging what appeared to be skulls by the light of a small lantern onto a makeshift trellis. The figure was muttering to itself, its tall conical hat sliding forward each time it stooped to retrieve one of the small skulls and proceeded to nail it into place. Then, suddenly, it stopped and looked around . . . looked in our direction, frowning.

I whispered to Phil that maybe we should head for home.

We stood up, ensuring that a twig was snapped in the process, and the cloaked figure screeched at the top of its voice and started running at us, its hammer at the ready.

Phil and I and the kids, all of us screaming in blind terror (and, I have to say at this point, not one of us putting it on), turned and ran like hell back down the trail . . . with the demonic creature in hot pursuit.

Back at the car, it was a very difficult job to calm the children and show that the figure was indeed none other than Sam, now chuckling to himself as he approached, removing his hat and pulling off quite the most evil-looking witch's face-mask I have ever seen.

After a violent but hysterical session of parent-beating—wholly deserved, I have to say (we would probably be locked up for such a stunt in these less understanding times)—we set off back for home, first dropping Sam at his carefully-concealed car so he could make his own way.

Watching the kids, in front of the reassuring glow of an open fire, telling the story to their mothers and Nanna (who, having wandered down from her apartment into the main house to welcome us all home, was clearly relieved that we hadn't been murdered by witches) was something to behold, their voices gaining in volume as each tried to out-do the others and explain just how horrible it truly was. And, perhaps best of all, there were also our own voices—Phil's, Sam's and mine—equally excited, trying to get across that magical feeling of stark terror, the feeling we tend to lose as the call of adulthood overtakes so many of us without our even realising that it has disappeared . . . and despite our personal promises to ourselves that it never will.

There followed a wonderful meal, some carefully-chosen black-and-white movies on video—THE THING and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, as I recall—and then the children went off to bed, exhausted but still excited . . . while the storm raged outside, seemingly trying to tear the house apart to get at the hoaxers within.

Needless to say, bedroom doors—our own included—were left ajar to admit as much light as possible from the corridor.

Over time, particularly since Ollie and Tim moved to London, the house assumed even greater proportions—exacerbated by the death of my mother (just a few weeks before I wrote the first version of this piece) following a brief but spunky fight against the real monster of the night—cancer.

Back in 2000 we moved from that house into a two-story apartment just a few hundred yards away. And then, in 2004, we moved away from Harrogate to the coast where we've got a house that's even bigger than the first one (so much for downsizing!) And still, every time Hallowe'en comes along and the air gets smoky, Nicky and I hollow out our pumpkin and light it, just for the two of us . . . and, although those spooky woods where the Harrogate witches met are now a long way away, we always take a walk outside and look up into the night sky, forever whittling at the imagination in an attempt to make something sharp and deliciously nasty out of it. After all, it's the exotic monsters that make us forget the real ones—and driving past the cemetery gates on the first morning in November and seeing the graves undisturbed for another year is still a good feeling. Long may it remain so.

See you in spring 2007, when Hallowe'en will come early to Toronto. And who knows what it will bring with it . . .