The Graveyard Man

When my kids were younger, we just didn't have the money for those chintzy pre-packaged halloween costumes that seemed to call to children from the store shelves. When my son Charles really wanted one of these costumes, we had to use our creativity to come up with a costume for him that would be suitably gross enough for a seven or eight-year-old boy.

I found some very old all black clothes, a sweatshirt and sweatpants if i remember correctly, (we were from the Chicago area, so it was necessary to bundle him up...halloween weather could be rather cool), and he had one of those ski-masks that have only the eyes and the nose cut out, I took some fake autumn leaves from the craft store and hot glued them all over the clothes and the face mask very randomly, then we put him in the clothes and stuffed them up a little bit (he was so skinny!) and covered any exposed skin areas like his hands with dark make-up, so he would look like he came straight out of the ground...which he did and which all his friends thought was waaaay cool, he even got extra candy at some houses because of his crazy costume.

We still laugh about that costume today, even though he is now eighteen and an uncle to my twin grandsons Elijah and Izaiah, who he will probably be outfitting in something similar this halloween!