The Halloween Party and Pastor Jimmy Thompson

When I was a kid in rural South Carolina in the 1950s, Halloween wasn’t considered too evil, as I remember. I don’t recall much being said about it being a bad thing. During my childhood days, my church wasn’t big on bashing the occasion.

All I knew back then about Halloween was that you dressed up like somethin’ and went to houses to get goodies—we wanted candy and not just apples. Living on Groce Meadow Road near the Mountain View area of Greenville, S.C., my younger sister, Shirley, and I only got to say “Trick or treat” at the doors of a few houses.  Walking on a country road on Halloween night was scary in itself.

I recall learning this song in third or fourth grade at Mountain View Elementary School: “Hallowe-ee-een, the witch is riding high / Have you see-ee-een her shadow in the sky? / So beware, don’t you dare to even boast / Or a ghost to your dismay / Will hear you say that you don’t care / Say a prayer / Or it may come and pull your hair.”

We heard that song on a school record player. I sort of knew there weren’t any real ghosts around Mountain View, so that little ditty didn’t frighten me much. My family attended Gum Springs Pentecostal Holiness Church, and I’d heard about a witch trying to call up Samuel the Prophet after he died. King Saul requested that the witch get in touch with Samuel, and both he and she were scared silly when Samuel actually appeared. At least that’s the way I understood that Old Testament story, which led me to believe that seeing a ghost would be a very rare experience. I learned at church that “a great gulf” was “fixed between the living and the dead,”  and my family told me that ghosts weren’t real.

I heard lots of preaching about the Holy Ghost but not much talk about Halloween-type ghosts. Church folk now tend to talk about the “Holy Spirit” instead of the “Holy Ghost.” I reckon “Holy Spirit” sounds more comforting than “Holy Ghost,” which comes from the King James translation. 

The first Halloween carnival I attended was staged at Fairview Elementary School, near Greer, S.C., when I was in sixth grade. My sister and I were new to the school because our family had moved that summer from Mountain View to “Burgess Hill,” located in the suburbanized outskirts of Greer. Fairview School had a Halloween fundraiser. I bought a ticket to visit one scary room at the carnival.

An older girl in charge of that room blindfolded me and led me to “exhibits.”

“OK,” she said, “Put your hand in here to feel a dead person’s brains.”

She guided my hand into a container. I felt some cold, slushy stuff that seemed to have cooked macaroni in it. A chill went up my spine. The power of suggestion was working on me.

She led me a few more steps.

“Now, these are the dead person’s eyeballs,” she said.

Again, the solution my hand touched was cold, and I felt “eyeballs” that must have been grapes. Before I left that room, somebody jumped out of nowhere and scared me.

Trick-or-treating over the years on Burgess Hill yielded some good eats. Word got around about which houses had the best treats. One lady up on the hill served candy-apples. 

I had my driver’s license by the time Faith Temple, the church my family attended, held a Halloween party for the church’s youth at the Greer home of Josie and Bruce Foster. (They might have called it a “costume party” rather than a Halloween party; I don’t remember.) Randolph and Hendrix were the Foster’s sons. Recognition was to be given to the person who could best hide his identity at the party.

At home, before that party, I dressed up as an old lady. I had a rubber mask that was made to look like the face of a weathered old sailor with a hooked nose. In the rubber mouth of that mask hung a half-smoked rubber cigarette. A little red color on the end of that cigarette made it appear real. The half-smoked replica of that cigarette hung from one side of a sagging mouth. The mask had no simulated facial hair, so its image could pass for either a man or woman. I put a kerchief over my head and tied it underneath the mask. I wore a shawl over some kind of old dress that went to the floor. I was over 6-foot, 2-inches tall, but when I arrived at the Foster’s home, I exited my car and walked bent-over (I think I had a walking stick) to the door of their basement, where the party had already begun.

Pastor James H. “Jimmy” Thompson, always supportive of our church youth, was there, and he kept on following me and trying to guess who I was. All the costumed people except me were identified before the evening drew to a close. But I guarded my identity. People asked me questions, and I replied in a disguised voice. Pastor Jimmy, especially, continued following me, trying to figure out who I was.

Finally, after winning recognition for being the unidentified costumed person, I stretched to my full height and took off my mask. Pastor Jimmy said he failed to identify me because I stayed bent over the whole night.

I miss those old days – back in the days when I didn’t know too much about Halloween.