Halloween vanished like a ghost for us a while back. At a certain age the magic is lost, or the rich old bat calls us too big and denies us candy. We’ve learned that there are no monsters under our beds or in our closets, unless you live with the Manson’s. The scary things are now the NRA, WMDs, touchy-feely priests, vampirefreaks.com, and strippers at the dive Club 505; sorry ladies, I’ll see you on payday.

Halloween doesn’t trick us anymore and has lost its bite, unless you go to pagan rituals in forests and basements where you’ll find our political representatives, no cameras allowed.
Costume parties are lame unless you can actually get all of those pins to stick in your head like that Hellraiser cue ball.

Here are some options for adult Halloween activities that you don’t have to bob for.

* Answer trick-or-treaters at your door as a cannibal. Put chicken skin on your face, have ketchup smeared down your white shirt, and hold raw beef in your hands.
* You can play Doom, Resident Evil, or Barbies.
* Break a hole in your windshield, stick a dressed up blow up doll through the hole, and drive around honking your horn.
* Rent “Evil Dead,” “Dead Alive,” or “Dead Poet’s Society.”
* Fake a heart attack at a Halloween party (use Alka Seltzer).
* Buy a fifth of old Jack, drink it down, and viola you’re a drunk.
* Raid a Halloween party dressed as a police officer with your gun drawn.
* With a partner commit staged murder in a theatre.
* Fill trick-or-treaters’ bags with spaghetti.
* Dress up as a dog and go to town on your neighbor’s yard.
* Wear a baby doll on your back in a crowded area and fall down backwards.
* Go to the McDonald’s dressed up as a terrorist with your squirt gun.
* Call McGruff from someone else’s house and laugh as they take your friend’s drugs away.
* Find a news crew broadcasting live, put jelly on a rubber chicken, and fake slit the lady broadcaster’s throat.
* Walk around as Cobain, with a shotgun in your mouth and wearing a Foo Fighters shirt.
* Dress as the hunchback and whenever someone asks a question, say, “I have a hunch.”
* Grow a beard and put watches in envelopes and try to hand them out.
* Put money in your pants, be Oprah, and have a way to shoot the money out your butt.
* Carry toilet paper and eggs and tell the cops you dressed as a delinquent.
* Place a pickle on your chin, and say, “Hey, I’m mister pickle man, give me some candy.”
* Be a magician with a dead rabbit.
* Hollow out a chainsaw to wear on your hand like in “Army of Darkness.”

Halloween is a pointless holiday unless you are short, have a grocery bag, and are wearing a white sheet with eyeholes cut out. You could be a mummy wrapped in toilet paper, but bring an umbrella. So, as adults, just go to the store, fill your cart with candy, spin around in place, throw up, eat more candy, and pass out without brushing your teeth.

There’s nothing like nocturnal nostalgia.