How Valdese Avenue scared the skittles out of trickers and treaters

In the early 1990s, Valdese Avenue in Morganton was an alleyway of pure horror during Halloween.

From the time trick-or-treaters turned from White Street onto Valdese, it was monsters, goblins, smoke screens, piped-in dungeon sounds, pop-up skeletons, swinging ghosts in trees, bloody body parts, blinding strobes, and spooky stuff all the way to Forest Hill Cemetery.

From dusk until late, Valdese Avenue was jammed with car after car after car, blocking both ways of the two-lane street, unloading communities of wild costumed kids racing to front doors for treats.

By the end of their trek, the kids were lugging sacks loaded with seven or eight pounds, easy, of processed sugar. Nerd clusters, Warheads, Hershey’s, Twizzlers, Tootsie Rolls, KitKats, Twix, Skittles, Snickers.

Some homeowners, those with outspoken concern about global warming and endangered frogs, thought it’d be best to inject healthy snacks into the mix. Like, oh, an apple here and there. Or little boxes of raisins, which to me is damn near a vegetable.

Neighbors in this man-made event for children held unspoken battles of who could outdo who in the fight for fright. It worked.

I blame it all on the Bakers, who lived in the large brick house on the west end of Valdese Avenue. They started it.

Those guys had a literal House of Horrors factory in their garage and spent the previous 10 months constructing high-tech anatomical fright that’d scare a seasoned pathologist.

Like the remote-controlled dismembered human arm with dripping blood and twitchy fingers. Hanging right there on the front gate latch. The blood never stopped flowing. And the poor child wearing a Batman getup, who hadn’t even gotten off the sidewalk yet, had to deal with this nightmare and make a decision.

By the time Batman got to the Baker’s front door, he’d earned the reward because he had avoided the human arm, dodged a guillotined snapping dog head, jumped over attacking fanged Cobra snake heads, plowed through enough smoke to choke LA, and endured enough deafening acoustic horror to make Wolfman back down.

We lived a couple of houses down the street. And I was not to be outdone, not with four very young children who considered me King of the Universe and Better Than Anyone At Anything.

Our front door was a solid 50-foot walk, between thick bushes, from the sidewalk to the front porch. We could see them coming on Halloween, the sweet little kiddies in their cute little Fairy Godmother and Fireman outfits. With their suspicious parents on overwatch duty in the car eyeballing every step of the way.

It was a developmental journey for those strong youngsters. The walkway stayed dark. I hid speakers along the way. I had a wireless mike attached to my all-black outfit. As the child would walk by, I’d speak Count Draculaese and it’d boom out of the speaker.

The poor guy would jump and slow to a crawl, not even halfway to the prize. I conned one of my children to hide in a bush and shake it when the kid walked by. The kid would seriously twitch but proceed. Gingerly.

I hung a giant bedsheet across the front porch and projected onto it repeating video scenes from the most horrific, bloody Nightmare On (name your street) movie ever.

If the brave child, probably a fragile third and fourth grader, made it through all of that, had survived the Bakers, had godalmighty braved the walkway to our front porch with its own assault on sanity, then that Fairy Godmother or Fireman got a big prize.

Which they had to retrieve by reaching into a dark, deep box filled with slimy goop. AHH HAA HA ha haaaaa!

You’ve never seen Superman run so fast in the dark to get outta there. No speeding bullet could catch him.

With their protective overwatch, the kids advance on down to the Willis’ house where things were a bit more sane and sensible, and the treats were small bags of Vanilla Wafers. Or a tangerine. Take your pick.

No wonder scholastic test scores dropped.

As the evening wore on, the demographics of the trick-or-treaters changed. No longer Cinderellas and Spidermans. Now we were getting the buzzed-up high-schooler hoodlums, reeking of cigarettes and beer, hunting down free candy to undoubtedly feed The Munchies.

Those guys would strut up the walkway, totally unfazed — buzzed as they were — by the Halloween special effects. They’d patrol to the door and declare, “Trick or Treat.”

I was ready for them. I sat there on the stoop with several giant bowls of goodies from which I had been pulling sweet treats for Cinderellas’ and Spidermans’ candy bags all night.

These guys — some with mustaches! — didn’t even TRY to dress up. Oh, they might have worn some Heavy Metal or PunkAsk-ugly T-Shirt, but otherwise ...

“How old are you?” I’d say.

“Hey, man. Trick or Treat,” they’d say. “Whatcha got?”

“Trick or treat?” I’d say. “You a little outta your league with this?”

“Hell no, man,” they’d say. “We just trickin’ and treatin’ like everyone else. So whatcha got?”

I’d look at the dudes in street clothes and say, “Like the hoodlum look.”

They’d look at each other and one of them would turn to me and say, “Whatever. We worked hard on it.”

“All right, all right,” I’d say. “Stay safe and don’t get arrested. Again”

And one of them would say, “Okay.”

I’d reach into a bowl of goodies and throw sizable handfuls into each of their bags. The contributions landed with weight. The buzzed-up hoodlums nodded (as cooly as they could) in appreciation of the magnificent donation.

What they eventually discovered, probably by the time they were a mile and a half mile down the road and seeing double, was I had thrown into their paper bags handfuls of ice cubes, knowing that the ice would melt and turn to mush everything inside.

Eventually the Bakers moved out of town and with them went the alleyway of fright. Valdese Avenue quieted down for a decade or two.

Recently new families have moved in and with them the place is lighting up with Halloween decor. Nothing like the Giant Pumpkin on West Union Street, mind you, but enough inflatable horror to keep spirits up.

Maybe, just maybe, this new generation of Valdese Avenue parents will rise to the challenge and reclaim the street’s rightful title as Burke County’s Boulevard of Terror. If not, I still have my fog machine, the speakers, and a fresh bag of ice cubes.