Life In Death//October 157th, 2025

I live in a state of perpetual hunger. A constant craving for things that, for some, only exist once a year. 

It gets difficult, living in that constant state of starvation. 

But I've learned to search for scraps, everywhere I go. 

When I visit Sleepy Hollow, though, that is when I truly feast.

A long four months went by between visits, this time. All the way from my actual celebration of Halloween, from October 29th through the morning of November 1st, until March 6th. 

Winter was cold, and brought sickness...It wasn't easy to be away for so long.

But, at last, there was a day with a favorable temperature, and so it was time to return to the one true home of my heart, under a gloomy sky, on the most autumnal pre-spring day one could ask for. 

 

It felt like a gift from the universe, almost like a do-over of Halloween. Halloween had been so hot, like an August day. It was fun, sure, one of my best if I'm honest, but the fact that it felt like summer did put a damper on things. 

Is it strange to say a cemetery can feel alive? Probably. And alive with dead leaves? That's probably even stranger. But that's exactly what it was. 

Alive, the way autumn is alive.

Alive, the way I am only alive in autumn.

The sky was gray, the air chillier than I initially expected, with a light wind. The cemetery full of leaves now brown, resting after their big show in October, yet eagerly awaiting a gust of wind that might make them dance for a worthy soul. Bring them back to life briefly, remind them of what they once were. Remind me it wasn't a dream.

They crunched beneath my feet, and the air had such a familiar smell...For a moment I could swear I was there. I was back again. I'd found the portal back to Halloween, and nothing else existed. 

My newfound pumpkin and I walked the grounds, feeling like royalty; like the sole inhabitants of a universe that no one else could find. Maybe they could, if they knew how to look, but...

The Great Pumpkin only makes himself known to the truest of believers. Halloween itself is no different. 

As I left the cemetery grounds, I heard the wind whisper, 

Happy Eternal Halloween.

And though it pained me to leave, as it always does, I left feeling satisfied, as if I'd consumed the most extravagant autumnal feast.

And as the evening went on, I kept forgetting that it wasn't really autumn yet. I caught myself waiting for skeletons and ghosts, and pumpkins, real pumpkins, to begin appearing on lawns. 

It pained me to remember that we are just standing at edge of excessive sunshine and misery, about to fall in, about to spend the next six months fighting our way out...

But hope is alive, in the dead of the cemetery.