Brains! (A Look Back at My Halloween Adventures: Part 1)

As much as I hate January and February, I concede that these months are slightly useful. The “deep mid-winter” is when I make most of my jewelry, attempt to finish all of the partially-read books in my house, and take a closer look my photos from trips taken in warmer months. Tonight’s forecast of a cold, icy weekend has inspired me to look back over my attempts to give myself chills while taking pictures last autumn.

My favorite spooky event from 2011 actually happened the weekend after Halloween. I travelled to Fredericksburg, VA to see my nephew Lucas and his father Andrew, and to complete a ghost walk with my sisters Anne and Liz. The ghost walk staged by students at the University of Mary Washington (UMW) isn’t just your run-of-the-mill tourist gimmick. Why not, you might ask? Well, because we Gaffron Girls said so! Anne and Liz took the tour in 2010, and talked about it for the next year. Anne even went onto the official tour website and posted that it was the best ghost walk that she had ever taken. The 2011 tour was my first, and I admit that I was scared so badly that afterward I jumped and screamed when a little dog barked at me on our walk back to the car.

The costumed young woman in the first photo was actually one of the UMW ghost walk volunteers.  She and her UMW classmates dressed up and acted out elaborately scripted scenes from Fredericksburg ghost stories.

(My sisters and I took the UMW ghost walk on Friday night. We came back into town on Saturday afternoon with Lucas for a completely different event, the Fredericksburg Zombie Walk – more on that later. The actors from the UMW ghost walks were staging themselves for their Saturday night walks at the same time that the Zombie Walk was going on, so I was able to get a daylight picture of the UMW ghost.)

The tour took us past this cemetery.

The tour also took us directly across the street to the home of George Washington’s sister, Betsy Lewis.

Obviously, both of these pictures were taken in the Saturday afternoon sun; it was a lot scarier when we walked past them on a dark Friday night.

The Fredericksburg Zombie Walk for 2011 was a new event that raised canned goods and other food pantry donations in addition to the Living Dead. It gave me a good opportunity to practice my photography. Several obliging zombies stopped their quest for brains to pose for my camera.

The clown was very accommodating about letting me get her shot. Unfortunately, I’m not satisfied with the time that it took me to get her framed.

The “Free Hugs” zombie had a great deal of interest in making sure that I got his mug. Therefore, I feel especially bad that I cut off his feet in my best shot of him. I chewed myself out for this before I showed it to Jonathan.

Finally, I wish that I had worked to take images of the spectators.  I hope that I can join my sisters in Fredericksburg next November and try out some of my ideas for next year’s zombie album.