Taking Delight in Fright

Note: Back in 2015 when I was still living in California, my parents used to get the Los Angeles Times delivered daily to our house (remember those days?!). That October in the Weekend section, they asked readers to send in their thoughts about what Halloween meant to them along and to submit a photo of themselves too. I didn’t want to pass up this opportunity, similar to the year before when my Christmas piece appeared in a local Pennsylvania newspaper, so I wrote a few lines about Halloween and sent it in. To my surprise, again, they printed my piece along with the photo I had sent of me with my “ghoul friend” (a jack-o-lantern headed lady) at Disneyland!

Here below is my Halloween piece printed in full in the Weekend section of the Los Angeles Times on October 23, 2015. Debbie Zucco wrote the foreword that introduced everyone’s pieces under Reporter’s Notebook which was titled “Taking delight in fright”.

From Cameron Yanoscik of Seal Beach:

“I love Halloween. There is a deep-seated magic that surrounds this holiday, which has very ancient roots, as I have discovered from the Celtic festival of the dead known as Samhain to its many influences over the centuries.

“Everything about this time of year is special to me, from choosing a costume to don, picking the perfect pumpkin from the patch, watching a few favorite Halloween flicks and trick-or-treating. There is more to this holiday than meets the eye - and it is this mystery that makes it so wonderful.”