“It’s as much fun to scare as to be scared.” — Vincent Price, a legendary actor, well known for playing spooky characters
A Remembrance of Halloweens Past by Doug Draper
Posted on Niagara At Large on the Eve of this Halloween, October 31st, 2025
Howells Pumpkin Farm, a Halloween favourite in the Short Hills of Thorold in Niagara. photo by Doug Draper
I imagine that like me, many of you e have childhood memories of places and people that gave you the creeps on Halloween.
I’m talking about places and people like an old abandoned house or a dark, deserted road or a grizzly old guy down the street whose front door always creaked like the lid of an unearthed coffin when he opened it or one of your grade school teachers who gave you a detention for nothing more than cheating on a math test or firing spitballs into classmates’ hair.
For the gang in the neigbhourhood in the west end of Welland where I grew up that place was a long, narrow gravel stone driveway, surrounded on each side with a row of gnarly trees that cast web of shadows on a moonlit night as it led you to an brick farm house surrounded by fields of browned out corn stalks rustling in the wind on a chilly October night.
Here come the flying monkeys, swooping down on the haunted forest of trees with their twisted branches on a dark, chilly night. image from The Wizard of Oz
Every Halloween, we would dress up in our costumes and gather at the entrance to that driveway, imaging flying monkeys from the Oz movie swooping down through the twisted branches of those trees as we made our way to the front door of that farm house where, I’m relieved to say, we were greeted by a friendly member of the Willson family, whose last name was the same as the street we lived on, and who rewarded us with treats that made all the shivering along the way worth it.
Willson’s farm house, as it looks today. Photo by Doug Draper
Today, the farm house is still there but the driveway, crooked trees and cornfields are gone- all replaced by paved roads and those typical mass-produced houses you can find in just about any low-density subdivision across the country. It is hard to imagine any trick-or-treaters have a spooky good time there now.
Boo hoo.
Just the same, I hope you have just as good a time remembering your favourite spooky people and places on this Halloween.
A nice, creepily carved pumpkin to you.
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Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
Finally, back at Howells Pumpkin Farm in the Short Hills, the burial of a famous composer is underway. photo by Doug Draper
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