Favorite Halloween Decoration

Years before I ever became a home haunter, years before I even knew that Halloween forums existed, years before I was even concious of my Halloween obsession, I was obsessed with Halloween. I remember my parents or grandparents strolling up and down the isles of decorations at K-Mart, letting me take it all in. I have the best memories of our paper Halloween decorations that my Mom would put up in our house every year. I remember breathing in the smell of old paper, when we'd open the boxes that my dad pulled from the depths of the mysterious attic. A few of my favorite paper decorations included: A jointed skeleton like this guy, that we always hung on the front window or glass door.

There was this collection, which I always loved the colors of.

There was also this collection, in which the flaming, florecent colored skull always frightened and fascinated me... how did his eyeballs stay in the sockets!?!

Then these guys would have to be my 2nd favorite... glowing ghosts! So creepy and awesome... just because they glowed.

But the one that always stuck with me, was one that I just had to have when I was about 5 years old. My kindergarden teach decorated the classroom for Halloween and when I got home, I INSISTED that we find this paper skeleton decoration that she had. I don't know how long it took my mom or grandmother or both to figure out which skeleton decoration I was jabbering about. But I remember being very persistant about finding it and we did :)

Much to my delight, the skeleton stayed with my family for many, many years! He survived my years of dancing school, when I'd come home and stick my foil star stickers that I had earned for being a good ballerina, on his hands and feet, years of crazy cats playing with and ultimatly ripping off his appendages, and having said appendages taped and stapled back on. Actually, we kept that skeleton for 20 years. Up until hurricane Katrina swallowed him up, along with all of our other decorations, in 2005. To this day, this has been one of my all time favorite Halloween decorations. I think because it was simple, creepy and quirky, because it was the first Halloween decoration that I became obsessed with and because it displayed the signs of years of love, all over it's honey comb, paper body. Luckily, there is the fabulous web store, Retroween (http://www.retroween.com/) where I have been able to purchase a few of my favorites that I had lost, like the glowing ghosts and the jointed skeleton. They've never had my honeycomb skellie, but every now and again, I see one pop up on Ebay. I really need to just order one! So, what's you favorite Halloween decoration?