Haunt Theory: Leaves

It's amazing the amount of time throughout the year I spend worrying about leaves. The weeks before Halloween are particularly stressful. Studying the trees and whining about how they aren't dropping their leaves quick enough. Or worrying about those giant wind/rain storms in the Fall that seem to make leaves magically disappear all at once.

In the years I lived in an apartment, I'd actually resort to stealing bags of leaves left at the curb of homes with leafy properties. I'm sure the homeowners wouldn't mind, but it always felt wrong and I always ended up taking them after the sun had gone down. Last year I troubled a coworker for her leaves - showing up at her house on a Saturday to rake up delightfully-huge leaves from massive elm trees in her backyard. I joked that I'd return them after Halloween (and I totally should have done that).

Initially used just to cover the bases of my groundbreakers, the leaves would eventually blow across the path leading up to the porch. The atmosphere achieved was pretty remarkable. Not only did it look neat and creepy, but the sound of the crunching leaves was as important as any prop or pumpkin. Since then, I cover the walkway entirely with leaves. There are moments when a scared child hesitates at the end of the walk looking up into the darkness at a motionless Michael Myers. They pause and then slowly approach me for their candy. They shuffle through the leaves. That old parchment scraping sound is pretty fantastic.

Hardly any leaves remain in this shot taken at the end of a long night.