Several weeks ago I wrote about the fun of actually having time to plan ahead for our Spooky Story Hour. We have an event space upstairs from the store that really is perfect to turn into a  haunted room. I waxed rhapsodic about the joy of getting the cream of the crop Halloween decorations, and then I totally forgot to go shopping.
So, once again it was the day of the story hour and I was scrambling around town to find scary things. We actually had some decent things left over from last year so I didn’t need too much. I had some disembodied heads that lit up, and my personal favorite, a black sweatshirt filled with helium balloons suspended from the ceiling.
But you know what? The kids weren’t impressed by the decor. They just wanted to hear scary stories, and lots of them. We arrange the story hour (it’s actually two hours of stories) so that the young kids can hear less scary stories first, and then we work our way up in age and fright levels.  This year there were calendars listing that had the event starting at 4:30, not the real time of 4:00, so we had an influx of really little kids at

4:30.
I took the little ones downstairs and read about eight stories.The kids were all under four, so I tried not to read anything scary, but I inadvertently terrified a little boy when I read Where’s My Mummy? I had a very bad cold and I think my shockingly deep voice scared him more than the little mummy lost in the woods. It’s not fun to make a little kid cry.
Elizabeth entertained the older kids upstairs. After terrifying the toddler, I crept up the stairs and stealthily entered the room with a roar and a growl and scared the bejeepers out of the older kids. Now that was fun.
So for next year my goal is to make it fun and cozy for the younger kids and to absolutely scare the older kids who think they can’t be scared anymore. And I’ve got a whole year to plan.