FEATURE
Ghost Town
WWW.BENDSOURCE.COM / OCTOBER 29, 2020 / BEND’S INDEPENDENT VOICE
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A few creative ideas that may just save your neighborhood Halloween By Nicole Vulcan
Mike Manser
So, those on the fence about handing out candy through a 6-foot PVC “broom” or through other socially distanced methods can be fairly certain it’s not going to cause a super-spreader Halloween event.
H
alloween is an ideal holiday for creative escapists. Becoming someone else by way of an amalgam of makeup, costume wizardry and ideally, some well-devised back story and character development? Clutch. But then, enter COVID and Halloween; images of a gang of tiny hands inside the same candy bowl seeming, if not totally off-limits, then certainly strange to witness in this year of widespread social distancing. With warmer temps on tap for Halloween weekend, and outside activities in which one can maintain “6 feet of distance from others” still allowed, I set about to find ways to spread the spooky joy of Halloween in my neighborhood. Here’s how I (and some others) got creative, piqued the interest of the neighbors and tried to save Halloween. And if you’re reading this early enough in the week this paper hit stands, you could do the same.
Candy delivery service
The Tunnel of Doom
A PVC pipe with a broom head affixed to the end makes for a simple, socially distant candy-delivery device.
In northeast Bend, Mike Manser is putting What we know about COVID’s forth a solid COVID-era effort to share the Halspread on surfaces loween love. Manser assembled a candy delivery vessel made from a piece of PVC pipe, measuring the required 6 feet or more, affixed to his doorway. It was one million years ago (read: it was late The setup is complete with a courtesy fence that May) when the Centers for Disease Control and Preencourages kids to get close, but not too close. vention revised its guidance around the virus’ transThe Pandemic witch’s broom mission on surfaces, stating that COVID-19 spreads I had some 1.5-inch-diameter PVC pipe from “less commonly” through contact with surfaces. my summer garden hoop house In a July paper in the medNicole Vulcan on hand (pro tip: get a bigger ical journal The Lancet, titled, diameter if you’re buying it for “Exaggerated risk of transcandy), so to that, I affixed an mission of COVID-19 by old costume witch’s broom to fomites,” virologist Emanone end, and dressed the 6-foot uel Goldman wrote, “In length of the broom up with my opinion, the chance of cloth. One could easily do a transmission through inansimilar thing and turn the pipe imate surfaces is very small, into a wizard's staff, a merand only in instances where man’s triton or even one giant an infected person coughs sword. I selected PVC pipe that or sneezes on the surface, was not very wide, and through and someone else touches which only narrower candies that surface soon after the would fit. As a result, my trick cough or sneeze (within 1–2 or treaters are getting only Jolh).” Fomites, for those conly Ranchers and Tootsie Rolls. Barbie dolls from another era are hung upside fused, “are objects or mateAll I gotta says is, be glad you’re down in the Scare Tunnel’s Jungle Room. That rials which are likely to carry old-school Barbie waist-to-hip ratio?! Terrifying. trick or treating at all, kids. infection.”
Having recently purchased my first home in Bend, bought during the height of angst around the pandemic, I felt it was my civic duty to 1. Vote in this election and 2., Create a spectacle of Halloween fun that could be enjoyed by neighbor kids in this time of isolation. Inviting kids into the house or garage to walk through an indoor haunted house was the wrong move—so my teen and I opted to build a giant monstrosity of black plastic and purple lighting in the front yard. If only my own teen and her friends enjoy it, it’s been 100% worth it. We started with a basic structure, gleaning a wooden arbor headed for the dump from a local Facebook gardening group to serve as the “doorway.” A big tent with openings on both ends or one of those garage-style enclosures could easily suffice, too. From the arbor we affixed, with the help of a LOT of zip ties, several pieces of PVC pipe from the arbor to the eaves of the house. Over top we laid a giant piece of black plastic sheeting (to be used later to kill the abundant crab grass in the back yard) and affixed it with clamps to the PVC, achieving a tunnel-like look—while also mystifying the neighbors about what type of “home improvement” I may be doing in the midst of freezing temps. We used sheets to separate the tunnel into three “rooms,” each with its own spooky theme. Bloodied Barbies and jungle grass, gleaned from my teen daughter’s collection and from willow branches in the yard, became the Jungle of Doom room. Moving farther into the tunnel is a room with a life-size Grim Reaper, where leaves fall down on the visitor. And finally, in the third room, a maze of glow sticks seems fairly innocuous, until a hand (a fake one, on another piece of PVC pipe) reaches in to poke at the visitor. All of this is set to a soundtrack of scary sounds gleaned from YouTube. All told, the costs have amounted to buying the giant piece of plastic, which will have a second life later on. We placed high value on gathering items from around the house, and we already have a collection of costumes and masks and scary stuff that punches higher than a two-person household should, so
