Max Jungreis: Hey, folks—This is Max Jungreis, from the StoryCorps Podcast. 

Just wanna remind you that you can tell us your personal stories by calling our voicemail at 702 – 706- TALK. This week… tell us your favorite memory from Halloween…the spookier… the better. That’s 702 – 706 – T-A-L-K. 

Jasmyn Morris: So… we’ve been called StoryCorps for over 20 years… but I cannot tell you how many people actually struggle with our name.  

MONTAGE

Participant 1: I am recording with Story-Corpse in Mobile, Alabama.

Participant 2: I’m at the Story-Corpse (Laughs)

Participant 3: Story-Corpse…

Participant 4: Story-Corpse…

Participant 5: Story-Corpse (Laughs)

JM: I get it… that silent S on the end is tricky. But ‘Story Corpse’ is not really the vibe we want to bring. But you know…

[SPOOKY MUSIC STARTS]

JM: Lately the leaves have been turning… there are pumpkins on porches… plastic skeletons in front yards…

So maybe just for this week… we can take you into our tomb beneath the Library of Congress … where they say you can still hear the largest collection of recorded human voices… trapped in the walls.

[SPOOKY MUSIC]

In this episode… we’re digging up our favorite Halloween stories… to find the spookiest moments… hidden in ordinary lives…

Wesley Adams (WA):  Do you remember going out trick or treating? 

Kira Garcia (KG): Yeah, absolutely. Every year my dad would dress up as Jason Vorhees from Friday the 13th, and it was actually not that, like, child friendly. He actually had a functioning chainsaw. (Laughs) And he had, like, hash marks on it, like, for the number of people he had murdered. 

WA: Uh-huh. So the local children were terrified of your father? 

KG: Yeah. A little bit. I loved Halloween.

JM: I’m Jasmyn Morris. [SPOOKY SOUND EFFECT] From NPR…It’s the Story-Corpse podcast. [THUNDER SOUND EFFECT]

<THEME MUSIC OUT>

JM: Our first spooky story comes from Juliet Jegasothy… who immigrated to the US from Sri Lanka with her husband. 

She told her friend, Sheena Jacob, about her first Halloween here… something she wasn’t quite prepared for.

Juliet Jegasothy (JJ): We came to America in 1969. We were just newly married, and we came to Brooklyn, New York. And I was so terrified to even open the door because I had heard all these horror stories about crooks and gangsters and guns in New York. 

So there was this one evening that Brian was working in the night. And I was alone with the baby, and the doorbell started ringing. And then I go, and look through the peephole, and it was like a really scary person standing outside. 

So I didn’t open the door. I told my baby to be quiet and then again the doorbell rings, and again I look through the peephole, and I’m, like, really scared. And the third time it rang there were more than one person, and they were all looking really scary and screaming at me through the door. 

So, I called Brian on the phone, and I said, ‘There is something happening. There are some crooks or somebody trying to frighten me at the door.’ He said, ‘Don’t open the door. Don’t do anything. Don’t make any noise, be quiet.’ So I stayed in the bedroom. And this went on and on for almost an hour.

You know all the years I was growing up, I was the most, I think, wimpy person; I used to cry for everything. So by now, I’m, like, sweating and ready to die, almost. 

And then Brian calls around nine o’clock and he says, ”I think, there is something called Halloween going on today, and that’s what has been happening. And people are supposed to come and ring the doorbell.’ 

So that was an experience that I’ll never forget. And it turns out that my daughter loves Halloween.

<MUSIC>

Juliet Jegasothy with her friend Sheena Jacobs in Pittsburgh, Transylvania… I mean… Pennsylvania.

<MUSIC OUT>

And now for another Halloween tale…. That takes us from the haunted…. To the haunter… [SOUND EFFECT]

Halloween is Kate Heathcote’s favorite holiday. But her husband, David… who is from the UK… didn’t grow up celebrating it.

After they moved to the US together…. Kate wanted David to go all in. So she convinced him to take a job as a scare actor at a haunted house. 

David Heathcote (DH): I don’t think I realized just what I was signing myself up for. I had to go for an audition. So I’m like, ok, this is professional. They don’t take, you know, any Tom, Dick or Harry.

I remember turning up on my first day and, my goodness, I was a goblin monkey doorman. To be a goblin monkey, you have to start jumping around on the floor. And using muscles that I’d just never used before, pouncing. And people don’t get scared unless you fly at them. And then we added to that, you know, this loud pumping music, with strobe lights. 

Kate Heathcote (KH): I waited for you so long that first night because they closed down kind of late. You just kind of wandered out, like in shock. We got you in the car, you sat down. And I think the radio was on, you’re like, ‘No, no. Can it just be, can it just be quiet?’ 

DH: I could hardly talk. And I was dehydrated. And I cried a little bit.

KH: [laugh] I definitely told you, ‘You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to.’ 

DH: But I doubled down. 

I spent a lot of that month being Zombie Number One. And I remember this gaggle of school girls. And then you hear one of them say, ‘It’s all models in here, there’s no real people.’ And I launched myself out of my alcove. And the trouble is they’ve all linked arms, so they just go down in this mass. And there’s this mound of legs and arms and screams. And one of them said they’d wet themselves, and that is the ultimate win. 

KH: I realized that I had signed you up for something significantly harder than I ever anticipated. But you were willing to support me in what seemed like a crazy idea to you.

DH: Well actually, they did have person of the week and I won that certificate twice. And they gave me free tickets. And I wanted you to go with me, but you wouldn’t go through. [Laughs] 

KH: I’m a big wuss. I love Halloween, but I don’t like being scared. [Laughs] 

I guess I owe you a trip through it. 

DH: That sounds like a promise. Now I’ve gotcha. 

<MUSIC>

JM: That was David and Kate Heathcote in Denver, Colorado. 

Kate still hasn’t fulfilled that promise of going through the haunted house with her husband… and she says she has no plans to.

<MUSIC>

JM: After a short break… 

A Halloween trick gone terrifyingly wrong…

GR: I was scared. Visions of Leavenworth prison came into my head. I really thought that I had eaten my last piece of Halloween candy.

JM: Stay with us… if you dare. [SCARY SOUND EFFECT]

<MUSIC OUT>

<BREAK>

<MUSIC>

JM: Next… the spine chilling saga… of an All Hallow’s Eve spent far from home…. and a soldier who chose Trick over Treat… 

Army Specialist Garett Reppenhagen always loved Halloween. And at StoryCorps… he talked with his Army buddy Thom Cassidy…. about how he found a way to celebrate… even while on deployment to Iraq.

Garret Reppenhagen (GR): My sniper leader, Sergeant Richardson, he was a character. You know, he’s got a shaved head, ears sticking out of the side, mustache. Kind of a surly dude too. So I thought it’d be really funny if I dressed up like Sergeant Rich. And I had to steal his uniform with the rank and nameplate on it. 

The morning of Halloween, I bic’d my head, I shaved my mustache down to a perfect square. I had bubblegum in my cheek to make it look like I had chew in my mouth at all times. 

Thomas Cassidy (TC): (Laughs)

GR: And to get the ears right, I got some toothpicks, and I popped those suckers out. 

TC: (Laughs)

GR: And, uh, I headed to the chow hall for breakfast. 

You know, folks kind of see me, they’re chuckling, and I dig into my omelet. And the doors of the chow hall slam open, and in walks the sergeant major. 

TC: Uh-oh. 

GR: The command sergeant major, he’s the highest ranking dude on our entire base. He’s always kinda pissed, like he’s got this general aura of anger, but he’s not extra angry until he gets about like five feet from me. 

TC: Oh, and you pulled the okey-doke on him. 

GR: I think he was looking for Sergeant Richardson to talk to him about something, and I knew I was dead. And he says, ”Reppenhagen!” I popped up into the position of attention. My chair fell over. And he says, ”What the hell are you doing?” And I say, ”I’m eating breakfast, sergeant major.” He says, ”No, what are you doing with that?” And he’s pointing right at Sergeant Rich’s uniform and name plate. And I say, ”It’s Halloween, sergeant major.” 

TC: (Laughs)

GR: And he says “Throw your chow way. Go back to your bunk. And you’re not going to leave ‘til I come get you.” 

So I haul-butt back to my bunk, and I paced. In the United States Army, it is against the law to impersonate a non-commissioned officer.

TC: That’s true. (Laughs)

GR: So I was scared.

Hours later, a slamming fist hits my door. So I swallow hard, I swing open the door, and it is the sergeant major. And he says ”Reppenhagen, that’s the most fine Halloween costume I’ve ever seen in my life.” And he took a couple pictures and walked away.

I think in a lot of ways, we survived that deployment in Iraq by sharing humor with each other. Sergeant Rich never really forgave me, but I hope that he thinks about that and laughs sometimes.

We were doing an awful job in an awful time, and, uh, if I shed any joy to anybody on that base that day, then I think it was all worth it.

<MUSIC>

JM: Garett Reppenhagen with his friend… Thom Cassidy in Colorado. 

<MUSIC OUT>

<MUSIC>

JM: Our final tale of woe… comes from two sad children who grew up deprived of the joys Halloween can bring.

It was the 1950s… and Fritzi and Bobby Huber spent nine months out of the year traveling the country with their parents… who were circus performers. 

They lived in a 26-foot-long trailer. And while costumes were part of life in the circus… Fritzi and Bobby had never even heard of Halloween. 

Until one night… when they were traveling through the Midwest…

Bobby Huber (BH):  We were going through a small town. It was nearly dark and all these kids were running around, all dressed up like crazy. And we saw all these signs in windows saying, ‘Happy Halloween,’ and my sister and I both said, ‘Wow. What’s going on here with this?”

JM: As they drove out of town… Fritzi and Bobby asked what Halloween was. That’s when their parents decided to stop the trailer in a field… in the middle of nowhere… with no homes in sight.

<MUSIC OUT>  [SOUND EFFECT]

Fritzi Huber (FH): We pull over, as we normally would at the end of the day, and our parents decided that we should go out trick-or-treating. They gave us two pillowcases and I put on a cowboy hat. 

Bobby Huber (BH): I had my favorite blue jean jacket and my cowboy boots.

FH: When they sent us out, we just sort of laughed and went, ‘Ok, there’s no place to go. It’s all farm country.’ 

But the trailer had a – on one end – a front door. And if you went around the other side, there was a back door.  

BH: The first thing we did was go around to the back door, when they became, like, a young couple. Then we went to the front door, and they were, like, an old couple.

FH: And all night long our parents became other people. They would take parts of their costume that they wore in the act. She put on some crazy hat and came to the backdoor with her teeth blacked out. 

BH: Yeah [laughs]. And each one was a different accent.

FH: I think dad was French when he had the smoking jacket on. And what did they give us?

BH: Everything out of the cabinet. We had some canned food, apples…

FH: I imagine they were in there just asking each other, ‘Well, what else do we have to wear? I’m out of food, what’s in the refrigerator?’ 

I think they were unhappy that they ran out of things to give us. And finally, we get to the back door and this very old couple tells us our parents are probably worried, ‘You should go home now.’ 

BH: We went back to the front door and they were just sitting there, and went, ‘How was it? What did you get?’ So we came in and brought these heavy pillow sacks [laughs] and they started taking things out. And my mom started putting things in the cabinet and going, ‘Oh, this is just what we need.’ 

FH: ‘I was gonna have to go shopping. Look, the cabinets are empty.’ 

BH: [Laughs] And that was our first experience of Halloween.

FH: It was a really, really magical experience with our parents.

BH: I loved our growing up, our childhood. And we always thought we were wealthy, and we were, in a different way. 

We were millionaires.

<MUSIC>

JM: Bobby and Fritzi Huber in Wilmington, North Carolina. 

<MUSIC>

JM: That’s all for this episode of the Story-Corpse podcast. 

But we’re always listening. Our voicemail line is open for all eternity. This week… tell us your favorite story of Halloween… the spookier… the better. Leave us your answer in a voicemail at 702-706 T-A-L-K. 

The stories on this episode were produced by Michael Garofalo, Esther Honig, Annie Russell, and Sylvie Lubow. They were edited by Jud Esty-Kendall, and me.

Special thanks to Ben DeHaven, Hazel Diaz and Jhaleh Akhavan… and to StoryCorps facilitators Michael Ramberg, Tamekia Jackson, and Lea Zikmund.  

Max ‘‘The Ax’ Jungreis [SLICING SOUND EFFECT] is our Producer. Our Senior Producer is Jud “Blood” Esty-Kendall. Amy Drozdowska aka Amy “Dread-Death-Saw” is our Executive Producer. [CHAINSAW SOUND] Our Technical Director is Jarrett… Garrotte… Floyd. [SCREAM SOUND EFFECT] The evil genius behind our artwork is Liz McCarty. 

I’m your host and crypt keeper… Jasmyn Rigor-Morris. 

Happy Halloween… [THUNDER]