The damage was never that great. One year, the big boys elevated a farm wagon, dragging it up the steps of the local high school. The morning after Halloween, the tongue of the wagon was hanging out the third-floor window of the science laboratory.

Most of the pranks were more trouble than they were worth. The weekly newspaper didn’t cover the weird tricks, not even writing a damage report for the Thursday afternoon edition. Some people claimed they got too much soap on their windows, but that was always a matter of opinion. We figured some people deserved it more than others.

Besides, it never occurred to any child in my hometown that we would be more frightening than the adult people we were trying to filch for candy. For instance, there was a rumor that old Roscoe Bean was a fearsome man who often chased after young children with his bullwhip.

Of course, those of you living in the golden years know that bullwhips are about 20 feet long and can be made to snap louder than most small pistols. We knew what Mr. Bean looked like: a tall, skinny man with a long, unkempt mustache and hair that fell all over his face. I had heard him whistling in his garden, but not a tune I could ever recognize. We thought he would be a handy man with a bullwhip.

So, as the Halloween evening was closing, I suggested to my pals that Roscoe Bean was our target — like it or not. The time had come to prove our manhood. We were 8 years old and ready. We crept up to the back door of the darkened Bean house and rapped three or four times. We could see the curtains were pulled back. The radio was playing somewhere inside.

We rapped again and suddenly out of the house like a mad demon came Roscoe Bean, lean, hard and on the run. We stood looking at him and screaming bloody murder. Then we ran faster than God had ever given us muscles to move. Out and across the street we ran and stopped in the Gaylord’s yard four houses down.

We were huffing and puffing more out of fear than exhaustion. Then we saw him come around the corner and hold up a whip. He shook it at us, as a demon would. Then he went back inside the gray house and left us alone in the silence of the night.

Roscoe Bean may have been the greatest danger to children during those Halloween evenings in my hometown. When I think about it now, I know he would not have hurt us. Bean just wanted some peace on those evenings, and when we disturbed the tranquility, he decided to scare us real good. In fact, we never tried to trick or treat Mr. Bean again.

Now, the sad reality is that there are all kinds of people who are eager to hurt children. That’s why it is so important to look at the theology of this day very closely. Because of all the religious holidays on our calendar, Halloween in the past few years has been the most sadly corrupted.

For Christians, the liturgical history of this celebration reaches into the darkest days of the faith, when the only hope in a society plagued by disease and death was to find a church and listen to the comforting words of Jesus Christ. The comfort was, simply, that life continues after death — not a bad comfort even for these mean times.

But what has happened to that message? It’s as if preachers are either tired of it or afraid they will frighten their parishioners if they start talking about death. Truthfully, our society is curious about death. Does anyone know anything about death? Is there an authority on death in our society who can speak about these dark subjects? The only experts I know are the clergy who stand before thousands every Sunday and talk, talk, talk. But they seldom speak of death and therefore words of comfort disappear.

This void exists in a time when we need comfort more than ever. Underlying the ghosts and ghouls is a genuine fear that the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket and we can’t do anything about it because we, ourselves, are morally dead. Our fear is that the world is a bit like that runaway airplane last week that careened through space until it got tired and crashed into the ground, killing everyone.

Speak to that, Halloween preachers!

Clark D. Morphew