"Come with me All Hallow's Night, we'll frighten everyone in sight. Such pranks for nice are justified and fun and frolic amplified." - early 19th century postcard.

It's been years since it was safe to go out at night. Halloween has always been one of those holidays that leave a sort of spark in the air, a kind of dangerous electricity. That feeling existed only on Halloween in the way that ghosts or vampires might. One night of mayhem, a holiday that celebrated the very essence of chaos.

But now, everyone has lost sight of that feeling - of the adrenaline that courses through your body when someone taps your shoulder in a haunted house; of the reckless screams into the night, high on sugar and out of breath as you run down the hills in your neighborhood. Costumes made from paper-thin fabric. Shivering into the night air, each breath a ghost in your face. The air always sharp by the end of October, like breathing really deeply in a freezer. Kicking piles of wet, decaying leaves that look like soggy cornflakes. Little children weaving through bushes and dodging adults in a race to the candy wrapped finish line. What's different now?

One of my friends has some sort of hang up about Halloween that will most likely be cleared up only through some heavy therapy. She was attacked by a group of miscreants wielding coconuts. You might laugh at the image of innocent children fleeing from a group of masked marauders, coconuts firmly planted in their teenage palms, but I beg of you to remember only one thing. Coconuts are really hard.

When did kids go from passing around a bowl of peeled grapes to breaking store windows? From performing séances in the local cemetery to desecrating graves??? Even kids, especially kids, know when and where that invisible line is. When I was young, egging someone was straddling the line. Now the line has shifted so far, even the adults can't find it. The end of October no longer signals a break from the strictures of society for one short evening, but instead from the boundaries of rules and decency.

I mourn for you, Halloween.