By Maria Trimarchi
It was a dark and stormy night when I began searching Tripod member pages for witches, ghosts, and virtual jack-o-lanterns — perhaps even dancing skeletons, if I was lucky. This may sound like an onerous task, but every year I find myself enraptured with Halloween — flying witches in all their glory — and was greedily looking forward to the terrors of haunted Web pages.
I was looking for exciting, exhilarating pages; I wanted guaranteed hair-raisers, I wanted good fright and frolic. I found a lot of clip art. Now, I'm not mocking clip art — it has a use, I think. If a page is going to catch my eye, it's not going to do it with a small, mundane pumpkin and a list of five links to other people's pages. On pages such as these, I feel like I'm being put on hold, only to be transferred to many other departments before I finally find what I want. The pages I liked made use of fun things, like downloadable Halloween midis, Halloween Web Rings, and Blood of Dracula fonts. Reading ghost stories with the wind howling and the theme from the Addams Family playing while images of ghosts fly across the screen is truly more captivating than 20 Ways to Confuse Trick or Treaters written in black text on a gray background.
Happiness for people like me is activities, like carving a virtual pumpkin. Creativity is what makes this holiday fun! Didn't you ever make your own costume? Think up a spooky story? We all sit around with friends and tell stories about Things that Go Bump in the Night — "real" ghost stories that make your imagination run wild and your eyes refuse to close for sleep. Some Tripod members are great storytellers:
visit the Deathlife Gravesite for a creepy read. Or, check out a member site that won the Powers Court Award for Bloody Design: remember the story of the night in July 1976 ... camping in North Lake, New York? Find it here, at the Monster Mash.
Looking past the clip art and pages sans content, it's much harder to find the really good holiday tribute pages. Katie Bear's Halloween Page has so much potential, but the images don't load for me (on Netscape or on Microsoft IE). Based solely on the variety of great ideas at this site, such as bobbing for apples and online fortune-telling, Katie Bear's page might have been my favorite Halloween site by a Tripod member, if it worked. Tripod member bdavis' Halloween page does work, and it's worth a look. Go there to find recipes for things like Pumpkin Spice cupcakes and Dead Man's Meatloaf, the story of Halloween, Trick or Treat safety tips, and more. It's here for a limited time (until November 1st), which makes sense since who wants a Halloween page in July?
In addition to the phantoms of the mind or creatures walking through the darkness, Tripod members' Halloween pages do celebrate the childish fun of the occasion. Perhaps you'd rather Adopt a Ghost for your own homepage than tell a scary story. Whichever side of Halloween you prefer, express it well, or the bogeyman will get you.
Maria Trimarchi is an assistant editor at Tripod.
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