THOSE OLD haunted houses on the way home (Shutterstock).

In the opening of the greatest Halloween story ever, “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” Ray Bradbury writes, “First of all it was October, a rare month for boys … But one strange wild dark year, Halloween came early.”

I wouldn’t be honest if I said that October was better for kids than December … no pile of free candy can compete with an illuminated Christmas tree circled by gifts.

But October, with skies turning dark earlier and earlier … the air getting cooler .. shorts and T-shirts giving way to pants and maybe even jackets .. always seemed a little eerie. Of course in the (lovingly bland) world of ranch house suburbia in Orange County, the temptation to imagine something wicked – or at least spooky – around the neighborhood was hard to resist.

Along Nelson Avenue on the way to Evans Elementary School, there were a string of houses not built by some all-the-same developer. You could could say they were “custom-built” in the sense that way-back-when, people built their own houses

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They were two-story frame clapboard homes surrounded by plants and trees that had been growing since the Jazz Age. Of course, to us, that was a billion years ago.

What struck us small fry walking back and forth to school was we never saw anyone going in or out; no one in the yard and no lights on within at night.

Of course, we were rarely around after dark and just for a short period to and fro, but it was fun to imagine that the house (or houses) were haunted or – at the very least – harboring some dark secret.
I may admit to maybe having invented one of those tales. My peers were not impressed, but when a new kid came to school, my cohorts joined in in perpetrating the myth of midnight moans and such.

I still pass down that stretch of road now and then. Those houses are still there, still silent and mysterious. I especially like to drive by in October, which is, as you know, a rare month for boys.

Next column: Halloween in May.