Disturbia

If you are a child psychologist or work for Child Protective Services, let's just say that the following is a hypothetical description of Halloween decorating gone wrong, and that names and identities have been changed to protect the demented innocent.

Ever since we turned the calendar page to October, my kids have been obsessed with decorating for Halloween. I'd like to think that we generally fall somewhere between holly-hobby-wholesome and full blown psychosis. Neighborhood children need not be afraid to traverse our driveway, but they'd be well advised to keep their guards up.

This year's decorations started out innocently enough,

with lots of tissue ghosts and stretchy spiderwebs.

We pulled a few scary things out of the garage, like this guy

who eyeballs me through the kitchen window -

as if I needed another reason to avoid that room altogether.

And yes, the quart of fake blood was also soon summoned



and one day after we waited for over an hour in the pediatrician's exam room,

several inflated latex-free gloves were recruited

Then one day the sewing kit came out for some other reason,

and the decorations took a marked turn for the macabre

This is clearly the work of a zombie clown

who pulled an innocent cheerleader over to the dark side

Something tells me we will not be giving out a lot of candy this Halloween.

Would you let your innocent child enter this den of iniquity?

Happy Halloween!