A dark day- a week later.

a view from my bedroom of the hordes of trick-or-treaters who
turn up every year for the haunted house across the street

Edward Gorey, my favorite to read on Halloween eve- not just
because he loves cats and books. Because he made things like this:

And from Lemony Snicket, on why we must face fear:

Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes,
follies and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all
stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in
the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women.