This installation of the Franklin Stove Blog is a departure from the usual format.

It’s fictional, based on accounts of actual events.

It might even be considered a ghost writ post.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

During the Alabama/Mississippi State game on October 22^nd I didn’t notice many fans wearing Halloween costumes. I guess because it was the Homecoming game and mums were the word? On the weekend before Halloween there was no game because the football team had an off-week.

One thing at the Homecoming game that jumped out at me wasn’t a skeleton. The Homecoming Queen’s escort during the halftime presentation of the Homecoming Court was another female. Maybe my eyes deceived me or have times have really changed since I was last alive in the stadium in 1968?

Of course I also got a reprieve from those Godawful red, flashing lights! For some reason the house lights remained blissfully white during most of the game. Don’t blame me. I haven’t figured out how to change the settings on the light board, even if I could.

After the Homecoming game there was this dude who was arrested for an “assault with bodily fluids” after he spit on these guys who he’d had an argument with. That makes me kinda glad I’m incorporeal!

I had been looking forward to, with my bird’s eye view from the stadium, checking out the sororities on Colonial Drive where Trick or Treat on Sorority Row had been scheduled. The event was cancelled due to the weather.

Participants had been told to not bring any props that resemble dangerous or deadly weapons.

But they were also asked to refrain from wearing masks! What’s a costume without a mask?

I got to thinking. Yeah, the kids would’ve still been cute in their costumes, particularly without any “dangerous or deadly weapons.”  But what was going on with the sorority members? How would the kids be protected?

Surely no bipolar girls would’ve been allowed to hand out candy. What about the state of mind of a girl who had just caught her boyfriend shagging her best friend at a swap? What about the serious alcoholics? They all must be alcoholics to some extent.  I don’t really understand the social dynamic, where most mixed events involve booze? For the Treat or Treat event were they going to screen out the girls who’ve recently had a traumatic personal experience? “Oh, honey, you’ve just had too hard a week to be handing out candy to a bunch of brats.”

Maybe I’m just too hard on the sorority girls? That’s my bad. I’m basically a loner. At least I was when I was still alive. Now I most certainly am. I wasn’t a joiner. I couldn’t even stay in any religious affiliation for long. To me sororities are like cults. They have their little secretive chants hand signs and rituals. They wear matching clothing. Yuk!

I was wondering if they would be handing out candy corn. As a kid. I once ate too much of the orange and yellow corn kernel shaped candy and was never able to eat it again. I always thought that the bevy of blonde sorority sisters kind of resembled the corn candy. Yellow on top.

There was a light fog on the morning of Halloween. Most of the rest of the day was fairly overcast. The skies cleared by the late afternoon but, during the morning in the dreary fog, I could imagine hearing the wailing of the Rolltards — as one person in the Founders Suites once had called them. Rolltards are the fans that find any loss by the team unbearable and are irreconcilably miserable when the Crimson Tide isn’t the national champion. But I’m sure any such voices were only the product of my imagination. I thought that Rolltards on Halloween might resemble pumpkins that had begun to deteriorate after being lit for too long.

Since there was nothing else to do on All Hallows Eve in the stadium, I just did my usual routine. I visited the Digital Media Center to see if there were any copies of the Crimson White lying around. I didn’t see a ton of Halloween decorations there. I looked down on Evergreen Cemetery just in case there were any spooks floating around. They must have all been resting in peace?

I don’t know what I was really expecting to see on Halloween. I guess I should be happy to have had another weekend without the stadium’s lightshow. No cheerleader was shouting, “Lights up, lights down!” I would imagine that, if there’d been a game on October 29^th in the stadium, I would have seen all kinds of zombies and monsters dancing while “Dixieland Delight” was blared over the stadiums’ speakers. That’s vomit territory for sure.

In Tutwiler Hall girls always decorated for Halloween and wore cool costumes. I miss that part of Halloween. They had a ghost right in their midst and most didn’t know it. Some may have sensed my presence, but certainly not my best friend forever Estelle. While she was still in the residence hall, I kept track of her but she never seemed to be aware of me. If I had ever been the Homecoming Queen, Estelle would surely have been my escort.

Unlike any Trick or Treat ghost costumes, my appearance is always pretty normal, that is if you think that that the crimson velvet dress I wore on Christmas Day was normal. That was what I wore in my last moment in a corporeal state before the gun went off. I’ll always be haunted by the question of just why that happened.