When we returned from visiting my mom that Sunday evening, our front yard looked like a mess. What happened next would break our family apart before bringing us back together in the most unexpected way. But nothing could have prepared me for who we saw on that security footage.
Everyone in our neighborhood loves Halloween, but that night, when we pulled into the driveway, our house looked like a disaster. We live in a quiet suburban neighborhood, the kind where everyone waves when they drive by and kids ride their bikes until the streetlights come on. My husband Torin and I moved here about four years ago because it felt safe and friendly.
It’s the kind of place where we could raise our two little ones, Arden and Briar, who are seven and six, without always worrying about them. Both of them really love holidays, especially Halloween. Arden starts talking about costumes in August, and Briar right away follows her lead.
They spend weeks drawing what they call “scary” pictures to hang in the windows, though most of them end up looking more cute than scary. For us, decorating the house has become a special family tradition that we all look forward to every year. Every October, we turn the front yard into a little haunted playground.
We string fake cobwebs in the bushes, hang glowing ghosts from the trees, and line the walkway with carved pumpkins that the kids help make. Torin always handles the harder electrical work while I focus on setting everything just right. The kids run around excited, giving their ideas on where each decoration should go.
Last year, Arden said she wanted to make it “extra spooky” for all the trick-or-treaters. Briar right away agreed, nodding his head with that serious look he gets when he’s trying to act big. We spent the whole weekend working together as a family, painting skeletons on cardboard, hanging plastic bats from the porch, and even setting up a motion-sensor witch near the door that let out a scary scream when someone walked by.
“Mom, listen to this!” Arden would shout every time it went off, laughing hard. Briar would cover his ears, but he would laugh too. This year, we’d done it all again.
The yard looked really good, and our neighbors told us that several times. Mrs. Liora from next door even said it was the best-decorated house on the block.
A few days before Halloween, we decided to visit my mom’s house for the weekend. She lives about three hours away, and we hadn’t seen her in months. It was just supposed to be a quick trip, nothing big.
The decorations were left up, glowing nicely in the night when we drove away on Friday evening. Everything looked magical under the streetlights. However, when we returned on Sunday night, everything had changed.
Our pumpkins were smashed into orange mush all over the driveway and walkway. The cobwebs were ripped down and thrown across the lawn. The string lights were torn apart, with broken bulbs shining on the ground like dangerous bits.
One of the ghosts was lying face-down in the mud like a fallen body, and the motion-sensor witch had been totally broken, its plastic pieces scattered everywhere. The yard that had looked magical just two days ago now looked like something out of a real scary movie. The kids started crying before we even got out of the car.
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