Let It Grow
By Tammy Thornton
‘Tis the scary season of witches, spiders, and shaking in your boots. However, if you hear something go bump in the night and find goodies at your door, have no fear—you’ve just been ghosted! At our house, that abrupt knock and ghost on your door is cause for celebration.
If you haven’t heard of “ghosting” or “booing”, then you probably don’t have young children. Here’s how it works: Someone from the “ghosting house” gets things started. They bring a bag or bucket of Halloween goodies such as candy, fake spiders, toy vampire teeth, or decorations, and leave it at some unsuspecting house where kids live. The fun part is that it must be done anonymously. You sneak up to the house in the dark of the evening, tape an official ghost on their door, leave your basket of fun, knock loudly, and run like mad, hoping they don’t hear your heart beating. Once your house has been ghosted, you have 24 hours to pick up a ghost and instruction sheet from the ghosting house, so that you can ghost someone new. The fun starts October 1 and ends on Halloween. By mid-October, you’ll see half of the doors in your town covered in ghosts. In recent years, the ghost host family allows those who got missed to request ghosting via social media to make sure their child doesn’t get skipped.
Though many towns in our area take part in ghosting or booing, the tradition was started locally 19 years ago by a Linwood mom named Cindy Smith. The OG mom (Original Ghosting mom) had heard about the ghosting idea from a friend whose relative was living near Chicago, and thought it would be a fun tradition to start in Linwood. Little did she know, the game would still be going almost 20 years later. She has since moved out of the city, but still enjoys seeing ghosts around the neighborhood whenever she visits in October. You may hear of variations of the ghosting idea in other towns both locally and throughout the country, but Smith set it up to have one house provide the ghosts to anyone that wanted to participate. The ghosting torch (broomstick?) has been passed down through the years. The current ghosting house has been doing it for five years. Last year, they gave out nearly 500 ghosts! In recent years, ghosts have been recycled to save paper. You can tell the age of these generational ghosts by how many hearts are on them. Once Halloween is over, you return the ghosts to the ghosting house to keep the fun going for next year. Keeping 500 ghosts in your house? Now that’s scary!
Tammy Thornton is a mom of four, a substitute teacher, and a Sunday school teacher. She is passionate about gardening and cooking, and loves the beach.
