It’s November, is it too late to visit a haunted house?

You love horror. You can watch the movies all year long. You are tired of battling with crowds and the Johnny-come-lately folks who only seem to discover the horror genre for a few weeks each year.

They are not true believers.

They don’t appreciate the tingle of fear that a great haunted house can bring: the surge of adrenaline and anticipation that comes from just marking the date on your calendar, and scheduling a night out with friends to scare yourselves silly.

They don’t know how you look ahead to each moment of haunted trails and houses – even those you have visited once or more times before. Even the ones you have visited this season.

You KNOW what is around the corner and yet something about how they pull it off really appeals to you. You are ready to be scared and still it gets you every time.

Is the season over?

The sad answer is, probably yes. It’s not your fault, though.

These haunted trails and haunted houses are incredibly hard to put on. They are very time-intensive, and the enthusiastic folks who work at them are working there partly for their own love of a scare and also for a smaller cut of the door than you might imagine.

Makeup artists, parking lot attendants, ticket takers, monsters, lighting artists … it takes a lot of people, time, and energy to put on a really good show night after night through October and leading up to All Hallow’s Eve and All Souls Day.

But something magical and almost mystical happens in November. The mood seems to shift from fall to winter, almost as if by formal agreement. The horror has had its peak and its moment, and now it is time for family and friends. It’s time for Thanksgiving, and preparations for Christmas.

Yes, it is even time for Mariah Carey to Sing “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

But that is okay. You still have the movies. You still have your friends.

And you still have next October, when the fun can all start again, with new attractions from your favorite haunted trails and houses.

Photo by Nathan Wright on Unsplash