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It’s that time of year again when it’s time for the witches, goblins and scary monsters to take to the streets.

The little eyes sparkling as the costumes are put on, the trips around the neighbourhood to smiling neighbours’ homes, decorated with shining Halloween lanterns.

This year, why not raise the game and throw a few classic quotes into the mix.

By memorising and using the following examples, I’m sure your family and neighbours will remember it for years to come.

Okay let’s begin. Start by practising on your partner.

Its Halloween morning and you’ve’ just got up. Your other half announces that they have received a letter. Here’s your chance, start with a simple film quote:

“You got a letter? I got run over; Helen gets her hair chopped off. Julie gets a dead body in her trunk, and you got a letter?? Oh, that’s balanced.”

Whatever the reaction you get, ignore it and stay determined, and as you take your shower try not to let your mind dwell on the film “Psycho.”

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Now it’s that time when the little angels are putting on their costumes, full of excitement for the evening to come.

You want them to make a good a good impression and to return home with arms full of goodies.

Get them to memorise the following line which you insist they must use when the welcoming door is opened to them:

“I have come here to chew bubblegum or kick ass, and I’m all out of bubble gum.”

 That should work.

What about you? How should you answer the door for maximum effect, to the little faces full of anticipation, waiting outside your door?

 Suddenly throw open the door, and with sheer terror in your voice bellow:

 “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell
Be thy intents wicked or charitable?”

Oh joy. Look how they join in the fun, by screaming and running away.

The children have come home and its time for the party to begin.

What better way to open the proceedings by announcing to the assembly

“’Tis now the very witching time of night
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.”

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It’s a pity so many friends and neighbours had to leave early. But they all gave very sound reasons so that’s okay.

Now it time for your final quote .

You take the biggest  sharpest carving knife you can find and raising it high above the Halloween cake; you cry:

“Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry ‘Hold, hold!’ “

Oh. Everyone appears to have gone to bed. Oh well seems a shame to waste a good cake.

As you lie in bed with a comfortably full stomach, you smile to yourself, your mind running over what a great day you’ve had.

Your partner’s obviously enjoyed it because they have had such a good time they are too tired to talk to you and have their back to you. And okay the kids came home with tears on their cheeks because the neighbours slammed the door in their faces. But you made that right by giving them all the treats that you hadn’t had to give out.

Okay your family did behave a little oddly during the day, peering nervously around doors at you, but that’s just Halloween.

So the kids are now snug and safely tucked up in their beds.

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(What you don’t know  is that they have the covers pulled well up over their heads,

“Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head ;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.”)

And as you start to drift off into a self-satisfied sleep, try not to think of that line from “A Nightmare on Elm Street” – “Whatever you do don’t fall asleep”.

The author does not take any responsibility for what happens to anyone who follows this advice!

Quotations used:

“You got a letter?…..” Film: I Know What You Did Last Summer

“I have come here to chew bubblegum…” Film: They Live

  “By the pricking of my thumbs”,  “Angels and ministers…” and “’Tis now the very witching time of night”

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

“Come, thick night,….. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
“Like one, that on a lonesome road…” The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.