As a kid, I had a love/hate relationship with Halloween. I loved the candy. I loved dressing up in glitter and make-up. (Eyeshadow was a BIG deal for this young lady.)  But I was a scaredy cat by nature. And trick-or-treating in my suburban New Jersey neighborhood always proved to have a few scares.

In my New Jersey town, the schoolkids would trick-or-treat on the residential streets near the lake. My mother would drive us to a friend’s home where we would gather with all the raisins, turtles and chubby faced dolls. We would collect candy from decorated homes and then conduct the Great Halloween Trade. After the rules were established (THREE Hershey’s kisses for every ONE Reese’s peanut butter cup), we would barter with each other until we were content with our cornucopia of candy.  We would pack up our bags and head home on a sugar high.

But, the scariest monent of Halloween was not knocking on the door of the “haunted house” down the street, not wondering whom was hiding behind that green goblin costume, not fretting over which big sibling would sneak the “jumbo size” Snickers out of our pillowcase. Instead, the scariest thing about Halloween was heading home.

We lived on a dead-end road off the highway with no neighbors. We lived in the woods, which by day were whimsical and inspiring. And by night, terryfying. Every year on Halloween, the car ride down the road back to our house began the fright of the year.  As my mother parked the car in front of our house, we would start to hear the music.

The screeching organ notes actually sounded like dying heartbeats. The melody sounded like the soundtrack to a horror movie. And as we exited the car and approached the house, the music would grow louder.

Inside the house, the lights had been turned off. There were no candles burning, no glow from the television. Just pure blackness…with the front door wide open.

“You go first, Mom,” my sister and I would whisper, trembling.

Mom would walk slowly toward the front door as we gripped to her legs. Our pale white knuckles squeezed her thighs tightly as glitter from our costumes rubbed off on her jeans.

At the door, the music would be deafening. “The dirge of death,” as we would later call the tune. The song would echo through our haunted house, causing bone-tingling fear. There were pipes and organs and creepy wind sounds.

“Go ahead, kids,” my mom would say as she held back. “I’m sure I just left the radio on.”

Our tiny tap-shoe feet would slowly step through the front door.

“BOO!”

Gasps and screams would follow.

After our hearts resumed beating, Dad would step from behind the front door, and smile.  “Gotcha,” he would say nonchalantly as he turned on the lights.

“Da-ad,” we would roll our eyes, never admitting our fear.

Every year of my childhood, my father blasted Elton John’s Funeral For A Friend to scare us on Halloween. And every year, it worked. We didn’t know it was an Elton John song. We only knew that the sound of those beginning organ notes scared the glitter out of us.

It never got old for my father to scare us. And although one would think that we would have learned our lesson the first time around (or at least the second or third),  there was always that chance that a ghost-monster-vampire actually was in our house. And so the tradition continued, year after year until we outgrew trick or treating. And to this day, it’s one of my fondest holiday memories.

I have a one year old son now. And he’s too young to scare on Halloween. But when he turns six or seven, I have a feeling that Funeral for a Friend might just make a comeback.