Today's forecast: High 80°, with 75 percent chance of isolated zombies.

The Last Thing I Hear Every Halloween.

Every Halloween night, just before the clock strikes twelve, I always play this music. It's always the last thing I hear before the magic of the season vanishes like the flame of an extinguished jack o' lantern.

For those of us who claim Oct. 31 as our favorite day of the year, this is always a melancholy moment. At such an hour, I am usually the only one awake, having promised myself to celebrate every last second of Halloween. I walk through the darkness to the window and look out upon the neighborhood. The streets are black and empty. Only dead leaves scratch along the sidewalk where masked-children roamed hours earlier. The houses along the street sit nervously in the shadows of the streetlamps and a red moon rises quietly behind a bank of clouds.

As the music plays, I imagine that from the corner of my eye, I see eerie shapes moving silently through the darkness. Skeletons creeping through the backyards as they quickly make their way back to the graveyard before midnight. This is how Halloween ends for me every year.

Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen,
Voices whisper in the trees, "Tonight is Halloween!"
~Dexter Kozen

Halloween Season 2013

The summer is dying.

Leaves of green glow with radiance, but the smell of death is in the air. The assassin rides by the cool winds of night. Darkness prowls the edges of each passing day - getting closer with each sunset.

The Halloween season is beginning...