This is one of my favorite times of year. The air is deliciously crisp, the foliage colorful and corduroy is making a comeback in a big way. Don’t you just love fall?

If only it lasted for more than 20 minutes.

Before you know it, winter will be here and snow will be flying. Sorry, but we all know it’s the truth.

But at the moment I don’t care about all that, because Halloween is almost here!

I love Halloween. It has none of the stress of other holidays, but oh what a sugar rush. I can taste that candy corn already!

There’s preparation that goes into the event to be sure – what to dress up as, what kind of Halloween candy to buy – but it’s all in good fun. To help you get in the spirit, you need only visit your local merchants, who have decked out their window displays with ghoulishly good decorations. TV programming takes on a decidedly spooky flair, and you can catch just about any horror movie in re-runs. For those with a literary bent, there are scores of urban fantasy novels, ripe with vampires, werewolves and other things that do more than go bump in the night.

(It’s amusing, don’t you think, that the entire month of October we embrace all the beasties and monsters we spend the rest of the year writing off as folklore and superstition.)

Before long pumpkins will be adorning every stoop, and you won’t be able to turn on the radio without hearing “Thriller” or “Monster Mash.” I can’t wait!

Here at The Evening Sun, we pride ourselves in putting the ghastly and ghoulish into this time of year. And this year, we’re really going all out.

Our little fright fest kicked off a couple of weeks ago when we started promoting Ghastly Ghost Stories, our annual Halloween fiction contest. I’ll have the pleasure of judging the “frightful” competition again. So, please, feel free to scare me silly.