Halloween in the 80s and 90s was a glorious circus of chaos and sugar. A night when the suburban streets came alive under the orange glow of porch lights and the sound of cackling kids in plastic masks that smelled like melted crayons. It wasn’t about safety manuals or Pinterest-perfect costumes; it was raw, improvised madness. You threw on a cape, smeared your face with whatever paint was left from last year, and hit the streets like a pack of sugar-starved wolves. Every house was lit up like a carnival ride, every front yard a shrine to mischief. Skeletons dangling from trees, fog machines coughing out ghostly vapor, and someone’s dad dressed as a werewolf guarding the candy bowl like it was gold bullion.

Now? Drive down the same streets, and it feels like the soul’s been siphoned out. Dark porches. Dead lawns. The occasional motion sensor witch croaking out the last gasps of a holiday gone half-comatose. Maybe it’s fear, or maybe it’s apathy, people too wrapped in their glowing rectangles to hang a cobweb or carve a jack-o-lantern. Trick-or-treating’s become a rare ritual, like spotting a payphone or hearing dial-up internet. You see a few kids here and there, but it’s nothing like the roving mobs of the past. Back then, you had to guard your stash, trade Snickers like currency, and defend your honor in candy-based negotiations. It was glorious anarchy in miniature form.

But there’s a faint pulse again. Small towns, tight communities, places where the streetlights still hum and neighbors know each other’s names. You can feel it creeping back. People are starting to hang decorations again, to let the weirdness breathe. Maybe it’s nostalgia, or maybe it’s defiance against the sterile, digital quiet that’s taken over. Either way, Halloween still has fangs. You just have to look for the glow in the fog, the flicker of a candle in a crooked pumpkin grin. Somewhere out there, the spirit of it all, the mischief, the madness, the beautiful weirdness is clawing its way back from the grave.