2001
After I finished college I moved down to Tennessee and got married in 2001. We moved into our house about 3 months before Halloween and I was really excited to have trick-or-treaters of my own. I thought that because we moved into a sub-division we would get tons of kids... It didn't work out that way. I think we got about 5. I had a costume on and everything. (wizard..) I got bored enough that I wandered into the rest of the subdivision to see what was going on. Our section was new, we were the 2nd people to move in, so no-one was going back there... but there were quite a few kids down by the houses that had been around for a couple of years. I had brought a bag of candy, so I went to a couple doors and rang the bell. "trick or treat" I would say, and handed them some candy. Evidentially none of them had heard of reverse trick-or-treating before, because I got lots of really wierd looks, and people were asking "who are you?" "where do you live?" "over where?" "what house?" apparrently it is taboo to knock on a strangers door and give them candy, but it is perfectly okay to knock on a strangers door and ask for some. talk about a double standard.

2002
I didn't do anything for 2002 really, at the time I had a 2nd job at the mall and had to work that evening. The wife says I put up a couple of felt posters w/ the neon colors and lit them up with a blacklight... but I don't remember.

2003
We didn't really do anything planned this year.. I had the scary sounds CD playing on the radio on the front porch and I lit up the posters with my blacklight again. I added a spider web made of neon-green kit string at the last minute, and was finishing it up in the dark. We got a few tots, bot not many... those who did come were very impressed by the spider web... it was glowing really bright and had a cool look to it. I took a picture of the scene but it didn't come out well due to the camera we had at the time...

2004
This was the first Halloween where I actually planned ahead. I tried to come up with the same style stuff we did at my house when I was a kid. I picked up some red felt, stuffed some clothes with extra clothes and newspaper and had a lawnmower running someone over. I even bought a string-mop to use as his hair. I found some x-mas candles and bought red bulbs for them.. I cut 80% of the housing off and replaced my jetta's headlight bulbs with the x-mas candles... I added one of those flat skeletons driving the car with a couple of the kids dolls tied on to the passenger seat, illuminated by the blacklight I had used previously. Instant haunted jetta. I also planned to make a much bigger and better spiderweb this year.. I bought two 48" blacklights and placed them in an extra fixture I had. I tried to find more green kite string but all I found was neon pink mason twine, and the web didn't turn out the way I thought it would, I was very disappointed with it. I brought home some windshield-washer jugs and added electrical tape faces to some, and cut-out faces and painted others. I even took some and spelled out C A N D Y on 5 of them and a 6th had an arrow on it. I placed these along the street on the hill that hides our corner from the rest of the subdivision, with some gravel and a tea-light in the bottom of them. I placed the others randomly around the yard... and I also picked up a broken witch girl prop from k-mart last minute on halloween day. They were pretty much wiped out, it was the only cool thing they had left and I got the lady to give me a deal on it since it was all out of the box and it's eyeballs were missing. I made some new ones out of styrofoam craft balls. The yard was a big hit this year, folks thought the lawnmower was really funny, and they liked the jug-o-lanterns as well. This was the official beginning of our yard haunting... the comments on the spiderweb of '03 made me want to dig in and one-up myself.