Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - All Hallows Eve – Halloween

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

“Let me state the case for Hallowe’en”Today’s the day - Happy Hallowe’en! We’ve got a wonderful story exchange about an immigrant’s first experience of Trick or Treating. And we'll also play Stuart McLean's story about Sam and Stephanie's Halloween; it's a story about this magical evening, but it's also about growing up and finding independence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

from the apostrophe podcast network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. Happy. Happy Halloween, everyone. Or, as my dentist called it the other day, job security day. It's a break from reality and a chance to be silly and strange and to embrace the weirdness of life. Because, let's face it, it's pretty weird to see your boss dressed up as a pirate. That actually happened to me once. I'm not convinced that adults should dress up at all on Halloween.

I have seen things on Halloween that I really wish I could un-see. We're heading out tonight with the kids. They are at peak Halloween ages. They are six and eight years old. It's like the golden years of childhood. And for the first six years of their lives, we only trick or treated in our tiny little neighborhood. We live in a small town, but we live in a kind of a mini small town, a super tight-knit neighborhood inside our small town. And we know every single one of our neighbors. So Halloween was really fun, but the houses are far apart. where we live. It's not a conveyor belt of candy. It's like an expedition. You need headlamps and sturdy shoes. You probably need a car. Last year, Eloise was invited to trick or treat with her friend Charlotte in her neighborhood. Charlotte lives in a subdivision where all the houses are closer together. And it was clear within minutes, within seconds of arriving, that there will be no going back to the way we've done it before. No going back to the car. No going back to the happy with eight houses Halloween. It wasn't just the candy. In this neighborhood, almost every single house was

decorated for Halloween. And we're not just talking about pumpkins on the porch. We're talking about full-blown production, like smoke machines and adults dressed up in full costume and acting. We're talking about music. And at the end of the night, the local volunteer fire department showed up with all the fire trucks, and they turned on the sirens and the flashing lights, and they blasted music over their loud speakers and threw out candy in the streets. It was like being at a rave, but for six-year-olds. So we're going to celebrate today on the podcast, too. We've got a Dave and Morley story for you about Halloween, and I think it's one that really captures the magic and wonder of childhood and that sweet

moment of transition into independence. That's in the second half of the show. We're going to start with the story exchange. We receive some great Halloween stories at the story exchange. Here is one of them. This is a story sent in by listener Matthew Bromich of Ottawa, Ontario. My family is originally from the UK. When I was just nine months old, we moved to Kenya

where I spent my early childhood. On completion of my father's work contract in Kenya, it was time for us to move again. It was a toss-up between Australia, Canada, and the UK. Canada won out, and we moved to Calgary, Alberta. We arrived in Calgary in September 1978. I was four. The leaves had already changed, and it was getting cold. Indeed, very cold compared to the warmth of Nairobi,

Kenya. Our first night in Chile Calgary was spent at the Capri Motel, whose street sign ironically displayed a swaying palm tree. You have to realize that we were about as fresh off the boat as it is possible to be. We didn't fit in at all. My older brother and I both had squeaky English accents and had never seen snubbed. And then, on the last day of October, A knock came at our door. I can't remember who opened it. But to their surprise, they were met with shouts of trick-or-treat. The parent accompanying the children at the door

had to awkwardly explain to my parents the ritual of Halloween. It was not in those days celebrated in the UK. My mother recalls frantically rummaging in the kitchen for crackers and kit-cat bars to give the kids. And then they were left with the dilemma of what to do with us. We, of course, had observed the entire exchange, beginning with a shouting of trick or treat, and ending with the receiving of candy. It seemed like jolly good fun.

Yet we had no costumes. My father raced a Pinder's drugstore around the corner and returned with what was evidently the last two costumes in the store, the rejects if you will they were plastic clown face masks one with yellow and one with pink curly hair for anyone who's worn one you'll know the kind

of cheap plastic they'd be made of the kind that will crack if bent once too often kind that doesn't breathe at all and leaves your cheeks sweaty the kind where you can't actually see through both eyes at the same time we didn't mind

though, we hurried to put them on, and our mother buttoned up our coats. Not knowing what size of bag to equip us with, my mother, who didn't want us to appear greedy, gave us each a small paper bag, the kind of bag you might get when you purchase the smallest possible item at a convenience store, kind they might put a package of chewing gum into. With our clown masks impairing our vision, our heavy wool overcoats button to the top, and equipped with our tiny little paper bags, we set out into the night. Our immediate next-door neighbor was our first stop. Upon opening the door, she laughed at the sight of us. Then she grabbed a handful of candy and attempted to find a place to put it. With one single stop, our bags were already half full. She chuckled again

and told us to get a pillowcase. We returned home with our bags and explained the situation to our mother who absolutely refused to give us a pillowcase. No responsible parent would want their children to have that much candy, she said. So we settled on a grocery bag and set out again. It is the unique experiences in life,

the firsts that stand out and define the subsequent ones. And that first Halloween night was unforgettable for me. I think back to it with amusement every year at this time. That was Stuart McLean reading a story by Vinyl Cafe listener, Matthew Bromwich. And that was from the Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story, so stick around. Welcome back. Time for our second story now. This is Stuart McLean with Halloween. Well, of all the holidays that marked the slow pendulum swing of a year,

of all the smoky days of atonement and thanksgiving of confession and continuity, of all summonses that sound in the hearts of the sinners and the saints of the faithful and the faithless. None of them, not Christmas nor Ramadan, Yom Kippur nor Easter, resonate more in the souls of the innocent, which is to say in the souls of children, than the summons that is sounded at the end of every summer on all Saints Eve. All Hallows Eve. Let me state the case for Halloween. It has been since I was a boy, was before that and is still today a glorious day to be a child,

maybe the best of days. In its secular certainty, in its wicked and windy way, it might be one of the best days we'll ever know. Long, unencumbered by the weight of religion, it beckons both the believer and the non-believer into the church of gluttony, into the scriptures of trick or treat, into the holy land of sugar.

Like all holy quests, however, it's not an easy road. On Halloween, a child is required to leave safe things behind her to trade the comfort of day for the chaos of night. To enter a world where candles flicker, leaves blow, hobgoblins scurry, and children must be brave. A world where memory rules and memories are made. Ask Dave, for instance, if you were to take Dave and put him in a witness box and make him swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help him God, and duly sworn you were to ask him which

of all the holidays he recalls from his boyhood there would be no question no question at all it would be Nolo Contendary Halloween and of all the

Halloweens, of all the pumpkins in all of his life the one he remembers best is his first Halloween ever he's remembering it at the dining room table. His daughter Stephanie's come home for the weekend with her boyfriend Tommy.

Saturday night. Dinner is over. But no one has left the table. And he's well into it. Kindergarten. Big Narrows Elementary. In the town of Big Narrows, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, it could have been yesterday.

The school hallway transformed into a magical and bewitching place, black construction paper witches with stuck on autumn leaves, the most fantastic art he has ever seen, the exquisite and almost unbearable month-long build-up, and then the night itself, the school's Halloween party, the delicate terror of going to school after dark. Everyone's handed a bottle of pop at the door, which they dumped into a big soup pot to make a witch's brew. Cool, said Sam. Oh, it was very cool, said Dave. We were taken to the lunchroom, where they sat on the floor, the entire citizenry, and they watched the teachers

who were on the stage behind the backlit white sheet. All of them dressed as surgeons. And what were they doing? Pulling a string of sausages out of the principal's belly. After that, they were led one by one to the basement, into the terrifying haunted house that the grade sevens had built down there, down the janitor stairs, through the boiler room, along the narrow passage behind the furnace, past the flaking concrete foundation, all the spider's webs,

and finally, into the janitor's lunchroom, where they were blindfolded. Sightless, they stuck their hands in a, the pot of teachers' brains, the bowl of stomach guts, and the jar of eyeballs. After that, they were led to the janitor's desk where, lit by a single candle, they stood in front of the fossilized cat that Stephen Kerrigan's father had found in the grocery store wall when they expanded the butcher shop. That's the Halloween I remember, said Dave. Hands down. Of all the all his yesterdays and todays, that trip to the basement stands out more than any Easter

dinner, Thanksgiving supper, or Christmas morning, so help them God. But there have been others. Morley would tell you about the disasters. Tell one, said Sam. Well, for instance, the year your father waited until the last minute to get a pumpkin and when he finally went out, every place he went to was sold out. Sam turned to Tommy and said, He came home with a watermelon. And he spray painted the watermelon orange, said Marley. Then he sat at the kitchen table and carved it. Disaster averted.

Well, that wasn't even close to a disaster, said Dave. That wasn't even desperation. That was quick thinking. That's what that was. If it's disaster you want, said Dave, let me tell you about the Halloween I was 10. Well, that would be the October when 10-year-old Dave happened upon the stash of candy

his parents had bought weeks in advance of Halloween. Beginning of that October, Dave's parents, Charlie and Margaret, were swept up in an uncharacteristic spasm of organization. Who knows how these things happen? Recognizing the dangers of what they'd done, Margaret hid the candy in the woodshed cabinet. She was hiding it from her husband as much as from her son,

but it was her son who found it. The crime started out innocently with just one miniature Hershey bar, and can you blame him for that? And it was followed by just one more, and then God help him who among us would throw the first stone, one more after that. By the weekend, he'd eaten everything. everything said tommy every last piece said dave he ate at all said sam looking at tommy too afraid to say anything

dave left the empty paper bag for his mother to find which she did on hallowing night and when she did she summoned dave into the kitchen the courthouse of domestic discipline where he was summarily tried convicted and sentenced His punishment, he was sent out with a pillowcase to collect candy around the neighborhood and told to bring it home immediately so Margaret had something to hand out. You'll want to talk disaster, said Dave. But that wasn't the half of it. For that Halloween, the Halloween Dave was ten. The Halloween he ate his parents' stash and had to hand over all his candy.

in retribution. That Halloween was the Halloween Dave's sister Annie came home and dumped her bag of loot theatrically onto the living room floor, a full pillowcase, a chocolate bars and chips, licorice and popcorn, his little sister Annie, who was what? Was she six? Was she seven? Well, I'll tell you what she was, said Dave. She was standing in the living room, ankle deep in candy. And then she was sitting down in the middle of it, organizing it in a piles. And when she had finished that, she went upstairs and she got a pad of graph paper. And she counted out how much she had in each pile. And as she counted, she shaded in the boxes on her graph.

At the end of the night, she had an exact count of everything. She rationed it out, said Dave. So it lasted 365 days. As the months wore on, Annie's treasure trove became increasingly stale. But that was a minor annoyance, easily outweighed by her pride and the intense sense of satisfaction she got

eating her daily ration under her brother's nose. Don't even think of stealing any, she said. Waving her clipboard, Adam, I know exactly what I have here. She did share some of it. Before she had lugged her treasure upstairs that Halloween night to hide it in her room, she had done one last thing. She had meticulously removed all the items she considered undesirable. The apples.

The boxes of raisins. Those disgusting molasses kisses. And she had put them into a separate bag which, in a magnanimous gesture of, of faux generosity, she allowed Dave to pick from. She salted the bag with just enough real candy to keep him coming back, and she made him pick in front of their parents, demonstrating to the entire family that she understood what it meant to share.

You want to talk about a disaster, said Dave. That was a disaster. What about you, Mom? said Sam. Where do I begin, said Morley. Strangely, the world of dress-up has bedeviled Morley all her life. I say strangely because she does, after all, work in theater. You might think she'd be good at this. I'm not, said Morley.

I'm horrible at costumes. And she's right. She is horrible. Nevertheless, when Stephanie was old enough to go out, Morley decided it was her motherly Judy to make her daughter's costumes. Staff would begin talking about them in April. I want to be a unicorn Pegasus. I want to be a ballerina hippopotamus.

I want to be 101 Dalmatians. The costume was always a moving target. In the spring it changed by the week In the fall by the day in October It could change by the hour The art of hitting a bullseye Had less to do with aim Than with knowing when to pull the trigger

The year Steph was five 101 Dalmatian seemed to be Well if not close to the center At least close to the target Morley waited until the Monday Before Halloween however before she committed That afternoon she went to a sewing store on her lunch break and sorted through piles of patterns and fabric.

It took three days, but when she was done, she was sure she had made an awesome Dalmatian costume. It was awesome, said Morley. Maybe. But on Halloween night, when they got to the first house and the neighbor, who will remain nameless, opened her front door, she stared at Stephanie, who was standing there in all her Dalmatian splendor, and she blurted, wow, what a great cow costume.

Stephanie burst into tears and cried the rest of the night, talking about disasters. But these are the moments you remember. Tell the next year, said Sam. well it wasn't the next year said morley it was the year after the next year the year i was batman said stephanie to tommy and i was robin said sam it was the last time morley made their costumes that's for sure said morley and sure enough the very same neighbor is peering at them again let's see said the neighbor standing on her stoop smiling Batman and Robin, mouthed Morley, desperately at her neighbor over her children's heads.

Batman, mouthed Morley, pointing at Stephanie. Robin, she mouthed, resting her hand on Sam's shoulder. Let's see, said the neighbor, nodding triumphantly. You, she said, smiling at Stephanie, you are a rat. And you, she said, turning to Sam, you must be the exterminator. Sam's friend Murphy made their costumes the following year. No, he didn't, said Sam. I thought he did, said Dave.

Dave was confused. He was thinking of the famous double costume grift. Murphy didn't make the costumes, but the sting was Murphy's idea. It was brilliant, said Sam. Here's how it worked. They each went out early. Murphy and Sam, I mean, and they each worked the houses around their own homes, solo. After an hour, they went back home, emptied their bags, met in the schoolyard, switched costumes, and went back and made another pass.

It was double dipping, no doubt about it. More like reloading, said Sam. It was awesome. Stephanie developed her own traditions over the years. Most of them, offensive. On Halloween night, for instance, after she'd returned from her rounds, Stephanie would sit cross-legged in the middle of her pile, in the middle of the living room, and she would unwrap

each item she had collected, lick it, and then re-wrap it. It was a strategy designed to keep her brother away from her stuff. It took several hours, but when she was done, no one wanted to go near her stash, let alone eat it. Last year at this time, Dave confessed that it was him and not Sam who had been

pilfering her candy over the years. It was for your own good, he said. But of all the octobers, of all those years, there is one that stands out above the others. Tell that one, said Sam, looking at his sister. The first Halloween, Stephanie, went out alone. Tell it, said Sam. I went as a crayon, said Stephanie. The year before, said Sam, she went as a pea. Green pee, said Dave.

She wore a green cloth body, rounded out with wire, green tights, a green leafy headdress, and green face paint. Mommy? said Stephanie when she saw her costume for the first time? It's perfect. Well, that's because Morley didn't make it. Instead of making it herself, Morley had enlisted the help of a seamstress at the theater where she worked. And though it might have been great, it wasn't perfect. There's not a lot of turning room on a front porch

when you're wearing a large wire-trimmed green body. Stephanie spent that Halloween the year she was a green pea wiping out little pink princesses and fairies with every turn. She left a trail of scattered candy and whimpering kids behind her. The next year, the first year she went out by herself, the year she's telling them about, all she wanted was to be tall and thin. She made her own costume that year out of poster boards. I'm a crayon, she said. when she came downstairs, but she had miscalculated. She was such a tall crayon she couldn't fit under porch roofs. She had to crawl up to at least half of the houses she visited.

And if that wasn't bad enough, more than one father asked her if she was a stovepipe. It was the first Halloween I went by myself, said Stephanie. You went with Becky, said Sam. Without a parent, said Stephanie. They'd been out for about an hour when they started hearing the rumors about the cupcake house, a brick house with a big wraparound porch in the next neighborhood, where they were giving away cupcakes with buttercream icing topped with crushed smarties. Then they heard there was money baked into the batter.

Then someone said you got a can of pop with every cupcake. We have to find it, said Stafford. We aren't supposed to leave the neighborhood, said Becky. They haven't actually seen anyone with a cupcake, but other kids had, or said they had. Everyone was talking about it. Everyone had heard something. Where exactly they had to go wasn't exactly clear. They set off, nevertheless.

They crossed the street at the traffic light near the shoe store and into the next neighborhood where the houses were bigger and further apart and the streets were darker and the children seemed older they walked for a block and then another and Becky said I don't like this I have a feeling something bad is going to happen but they kept walking for a half hour more until it was getting late until a man walked out of the darkness toward them holding a small boy to his chest the boy was screaming and squirming and kicking his feet

I think he's kidnapping him said Becky we should get out of here and then a front door opened and across the street another man leaned over the pumpkin on his stoop and removed the lid and blew out the candle inside it he stepped back into his house and the porch light snapped off, and the blue smoke from the candle curled into the darkness.

Becky said, I think we should go back now. Stephanie said, we're not going back. Stephanie kept walking. Truth be told, she would have gone back, but she wasn't exactly sure where they were anymore. She wasn't sure how to go back. and that's when she saw it, the big house with the wraparound porch.

This is it, said Stephanie. It doesn't have a pumpkin, said Becky, or anything. But the porch light was on, and Stephanie was already heading up the walk. Becky was standing beside her on the porch when the old woman answered the door. The woman was wearing an apron. she was thin and stooped she had a bowl of hard candies on a chair by the door she held out the bowl and said help yourself as stephanie chose a candy the old woman said take more and then she said would you like to come in for a moment Becky gasped would you like a hot chocolate Becky stepped back but Stephanie said

yes and she dropped to all fours she was already crawling through the door Becky wasn't about to stay on the porch by herself so Becky went in too the lady took them into the kitchen and she sat them down she poured milk into a sauce pan

she said that she wanted to get to know the children in the neighborhood. She said she had decided that tonight was the best night of the year to do it. But you're the first ones who've come in, she said. The lady's name was Mrs. Gibson. They stayed maybe 15 minutes, and then they laughed. That is so crazy, said Sam. I wouldn't have gone in, not for a million bucks. I had a feeling, said Stephanie. I could tell. This happened.

The Halloween Stephanie was 12. In the years since, Stephanie has seen Mrs. Gibson from time to time, once in Dorothy Woodsworth's bookstore, once in the library, and a couple of times on the street. When they see each other, they always say, hello. Stephanie and Becky never got their cupcake, but Stephanie has always felt they did something good that night, something worthwhile by going in. It's the Halloween she remembers. She always will. A dark night leaves swirling in the street, the moon rising behind the bare limbs of the trees. She crossed the street at the shoe store and stepped into a world of mystery and wonder.

And she was never the same. When she came home, something had shifted. On a night made for children, she left her childhood behind. So here we are in another October. Let us carve pumpkins. let us light candles, let us cue the boys and cue the girls, soon the night of nights will be upon us. When it comes, let us cue the ghosts and cue the goblins, for when it does come, it is time for high adventure. That was the story we call Halloween.

We recorded that story in 2011 at the Burlington Performing Arts Center. All right, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with another David Morley story. No one saw the postcard for 40 years. not until Georgia was long, dead, and gone. No one saw it until a Friday night in 1981. Morley was pregnant, and Dave was fixing up the smallest of the three bedrooms on the second floor of their new house, getting it ready for the daughter, who he believed at the time was going to be a son.

Boy, they'd call Robert. On Monday morning, men were coming to sand the floors in this bedroom, so Dave was removing the baseboards on that Friday night so the men could do the job properly. It was after 10 at night and Dave was bent over and prying at a reluctant section of the baseboard when the postcard fell at his feet like a leaf in autumn.

The postcard had a picture of a British country pub on one side, a British pub on a winding country road, the Fraser Arms. On the other side in black ink, in a tight and controlled script, there were 44 words. My darling Georgia, it's a glorious day. Bill and I on weekend leave and here in Nottingham to visit Aunt B.

They say we'll be shipping off soon, finally getting our turn at the big show. Isn't it grand? Love your ginger. Dave took the card to Morley, who was downstairs watching Hill Street Blues. And when the commercials began, Dave showed her the card and they read it together, and they wondered together about Georgia and Ginger, who they could see by the address, had lived in their house at one time. And then Dave put the card on the coffee table

and his hand on his pregnant wife's belly. When it was time for bed, Dave took the postcard upstairs with him and put it in his bureau, in the cluttered drawer where he puts things that he doesn't want to throw out, small things that have no other place. There's something about the ghosts

who live in the house where you live. There is some kind of an inexpressible pull between the people who have lived and loved under the same roof as you have. The older you get and the longer you live in a place, the more the ghosts who live with you will call your name and the more you will hear them. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the apostrophe. Podcast Network. The recording engineer is Graveyard Greg DeClute. Theme music is by Demon Danny Michelle,

and the show is produced by Louise The Curse, Curtis, Greg, the ghost, DeClute, and me, Jess, Monster Mash Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now, my Spookies.