After two deaths make headlines on Chestnut Street, Meadow Jackson, the building manager at The Abbey: Senior Living, sees an opportunity to build community by hosting an open house Halloween event. The residents decorate the lobby and first floor and set up trick-or-treating stations and games for guests to enjoy. While a few cranks hide out on the second floor (off-limits because not everyone’s up for a party), Sister Bernadette Ohlson dresses up like her namesake, Saint Bernadette, a French peasant, and hands out candy to trick-or-treaters near the main entrance. Everyone’s in costume and the open house is a hit. People are all talking about one particular room filled with creepy old dolls and a gruesome surprise, which sends a chill down everyone’s spine, even Bernie’s!
When I started writing Dropped Like a Bad Habit, I couldn’t resist including a Halloween party. My middle son is an October baby, and his birthday parties always had a Halloween theme. Kids love an excuse to wear costumes and over the years we kept adding to the experience, resulting in bins and bins of spooky decorations that I later used to decorate my classroom at our local high school. The ghosts and ghouls and gravestones and cobwebs were always a big hit, and best of all was the cauldron for candy that slapped a bony hand down on anyone trying to sneak a piece!
The best party we ever threw for Brent pulled out ALL the stops. Our basement became a haunted house with a fog machine (which forced us to disable all the smoke detectors in the house) and eerie music playing. Rats, snakes, and spiders lurked along the baseboards. Ravens, bats, and ghosts swung from the ceiling. A few well-placed zombies and witches added to the…charm. I even dug up some twisted and gnarly root vegetables and put them in mason jars with dry ice for a mad scientist effect. The kids played relay games, reassembled a skeleton’s bones, raced to wrap each other up as mummies using toilet paper, and we capped off the event with Zombie Soccer in the back yard.
I recycled some of my Halloween party ideas for the open house event at The Abbey: Senior Living, but I added an even bigger fright for Chestnut Street. Find buy links to here grab your copy of Dropped Like a Bad Habit and discover what shocking surprise awaited Bernie and her neighbors!
Have you had a memorable Halloween party experience? I’d love to hear about it!
About the author
Melissa Westemeier grew up around the edge of nerd culture, but marriage and motherhood with three sons immersed her in it. She’s fluent in Marvel, DC, Dr. Who, Star Wars, Godzilla, and more thanks to their influence. Her fiction work includes rom-com and a trilogy loosely based on her experience tending bar on the Wolf River in Wisconsin. She’s thrilled to realize her childhood dream of writing murder mysteries. Her books blend her humor and appreciation for nerd culture while tackling serious themes and unpacking the puzzle of whodunnit (and how and why!). In her spare time, Melissa needs to be outside or near a window. Her passions include hiking, swimming, biking, reading, and fantasizing about her next vacation destination.
