A Frightening Feature: Mrs. Burton
The Halloween season is officially here! Bags of candy are being snatched off of shelves at stores, Amazon is flooding with parents searching for costumes, Target and Spirit Halloween are swamped with customers hunting down decorations for their lawn. One such customer is BHS teacher Mrs. Burton.

Mrs. Burton absolutely loves Halloween and everything surrounding it. With the 31st steadily approaching, I interviewed Mrs. Burton to learn more about her adoration for the scariest night of the year.

“I adore the fall”, Mrs. Burton says. The smell, the colors, the cool, crisp air…everything. And Halloween happens to be her favorite part of her favorite season. She loves the holiday because it’s a “little piece of normalcy for kids” after a rough few years; finally, kids are able to dress up and go trick-or-treating safely.

What would Halloween be without decorations? For Mrs. Burton, the decorating process takes a lot of precision and planning: she “does the inside stuff first. [She] can do that with her kids, so that makes it easier. [She] has to wait for [her] husband to do the outside, because the outside decorations require staking things in and getting on the roof.”

When asked about the coolest decorations she has, Burton had to think for a minute, but soon recalled her “twenty-five foot spider web that [her] husband has to get up on the ladder for and stake to the roof.” She comments fondly that “it takes up about half of our front lawn” but it’s worth it once “[she] gets to put giant spiders on it.”

Every year, Mrs. Burton buys some new decorations to add to her growing collection. Currently, “[She] has well over one hundred decorations. [She] has multiple big storage bins full of Halloween stuff.” More specifically, she adds that she “probably buys about ten new decorations every year…[this year she has] already bought three.”

To celebrate the spooky season, Mrs. Burton also has some traditions leading up to Halloween. In her household, every Friday is a new horror movie. From her favorite classic films like Day of the Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to really weird movies like Midsommar to her all-time favorite horror film The Conjuring, a Friday night in October is always some thrilling scary movie.

Every 31st, Burton hosts family and friends. She makes food and prepares the bags of candy. Her husband and the other dads take out the kids while the moms and grandmothers stay home to hand out sweets.

Another huge aspect of Halloween is costumes. As a Halloween enthusiast, Burton reminisces of her favorite costume with her husband, a Chicago business couple. She had the suits and stuff, but “[her] hair was hairsprayed to the side as though it was blowing in the wind. [She] had a briefcase with papers flying out of it. It was so cool.” Burton has also done a few fun costume themes with her entire family. “[Her] favorite one that [she’s] done with [her] whole family was Mario themed. [She] also did an Anna-Elsa theme with [her] daughter.”

To get those costumes, she looks everywhere for decorations and costumes every Halloween. “Decorations come from Target, Home Goods, Amazon, Big Lots…all over. Costumes? [She] ordered the Anna and Elsa costumes for [her] and [her] daughter on some random cosplay website, because it was the only legit Anna and Elsa costumes [she] could find. If [she] can make them or find them on some random website, [she] usually does that.”

Burton’s love for Halloween comes from significant life-changing experiences that have happened on October 31st. For example, “[She] actually met [her] husband at a Halloween party”. Halloween parties are a big part of Mrs. Burton’s Halloween traditions. “Every year, [she] has a big party with just friends, no kids, which is a big highlight of the season.”

This Halloween, Burton and her family have something really exciting planned. “My husband, and my son are doing a Stranger Things theme. My son is going to be Dustin, I’m going to be Max, and my husband is going to be Eleven. My husband has a shaved head, so that works out really well.”

We all hope to have a spooky season like Mrs. Burton’s. While not all of us are Halloween lovers like Mrs. Burton, we all can find something to enjoy during October. Happy Halloween!