Haunted by the Past: A Halloween Memory I’ll Never Forget

Halloween was supposed to be a time for magic, excitement, and a little bit of mystery. As a kid, I wanted nothing more than to dress up as something magical, like a witch, and fully embrace the wonder of the holiday. But the Mormon family that adopted me had other ideas. They didn’t think Halloween was evil, not in the traditional sense. They even participated in their version of it—a church event called "trunk-or-treat," where families decorated their cars and passed out candy in the parking lot. It was safe, controlled, and sanitized for their comfort.

But when it came to anything involving witches or magic, that was where they drew the line. They already knew about my natural gifts and interests in the occult. They knew I had something in me they couldn’t explain, something they feared. To them, it was evil. To them, I was evil.

So, every Halloween, when I wanted to dress up as something magical, like a witch, they shot me down. They’d say witches were wrong, that dabbling in magic would corrupt me further. But I didn’t let them stop me from finding my own fun. They thought I was doing innocent trick-or-treating with my friends for that hour before sunset—the little bit of freedom I was allowed to have. But they didn’t know the truth. Behind their backs, my friends and I had our own Halloween traditions.

We weren’t content with just collecting candy. We wanted to feel the real magic of the night. We’d sneak off, far from the trunk-or-treats and neighborhood streets, and dive into what we thought was real witchcraft—spells, Ouija boards, and ghost hunting. We were just kids, barely understanding what we were messing with, but that was part of the thrill.

One Halloween, when I was about 14, we took it further than usual. After sneaking away from the group, we headed to the local graveyard. It was exactly the kind of place you’d expect to find spirits, and we were determined to have our own supernatural experience. We carried a Ouija board with us and tried to make contact with whatever might be lurking there. It was exciting and a little scary, but we were used to the adrenaline rush by then.

As we wandered through the graveyard, we stumbled upon an old, neglected gravestone. That’s where I saw it—an old, tarnished necklace draped over the stone. Without thinking twice, I picked it up. It felt heavy in my hand, like it had some history behind it, but I didn’t care. I shoved it in my pocket and kept walking, thinking it was just a cool souvenir.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I had just invited something dark into my life.

It wasn’t long after that night that things started going wrong. Weird, unexplainable things. My friends and I started having nightmares—terrifying ones that we couldn’t shake. We got sick, all of us at the same time. Fevers, chills, headaches—it was like something had cursed us. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, with the feeling that something was watching me from the corner of my room. Every night, I’d hear whispers, see shadows moving out of the corner of my eye.

But it didn’t stop there. I began to feel like I was drowning in bad luck. Everything that could go wrong, did. I fell behind in school, got into trouble for things that didn’t make sense, and my relationships with my friends got tense. They were going through the same thing—each of us haunted by something we couldn’t explain. Eventually, one of my friends got into a serious accident, and that’s when we all knew this was more than just a series of coincidences.

We realized we needed to go back. Months later, we returned to that same graveyard, and I placed the necklace back on the gravestone. But it didn’t matter—the damage had already been done.

That Halloween still haunts me to this day. It wasn’t just the necklace or the ghosts we thought we had summoned. It was the feeling of being trapped—both by the family who saw me as evil for embracing my natural gifts, and by my own choices that led to months of nightmares and fear.

Looking back now, it’s easy to see the lesson in it all. Life is too short to let other people tell you who you are or what’s right for you. I spent too many years living under someone else’s rules, letting them decide what I was allowed to do, what I was allowed to believe in. And yeah, I made mistakes. That night was reckless, and I paid for it. But it also taught me something important: don’t let fear or control tie you down. Because before you know it, you’ll be older, wondering why you didn’t let yourself live.

So, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: you’ve got to embrace who you are, even the parts that others might not understand. Don’t let them scare you into being something you’re not. Life is full of real dangers, but living under someone else’s thumb is the scariest one of all.