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Things That Go Bump In The Night

On Samhain tiny goblins compete with tinier witches,
holding out their candy bags with pleading looks and twitches.
Trading in their own names like Sandy, John and Luke,
they go by their pseudonyms of Zombie, Ghoul and Spook.

They only have ’til midnight to cease their operation
of collecting candy, to their great consternation,
for it is at the midnight hour that real ghouls congregate
with witches, ghosts and zombies at the graveyard gate.

Old miners follow flume trails down looking for the gold
that seemed to evade them in the days of old.
Dead school marms lift their rulers looking for a kid to swat,
And zombies execute last haunts before their final rot.

Ghoulies swoop down from the trees and witches brew their brews,
vowing to force feed their glop to any kid they choose.
So best be in your beds before the midnight toll
lest you be absconded with by zombie or by troll!!!!!

Prompts for today are spook, twitch, *Samhain, *flume,  operation, pseudonym,

*Flumes were  wooden troughs elevated on trestles that ran down a mountainside to bring gold down from futher up the mountain.  They were also used in the transportation of logs in the logging industry. We used to hike up the flume trail at summer camp in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

*Our Halloween evolved as a combination of All Souls Day and Samhain, an early Gaelic and Celtic harvest festival which contained many of the elements that evolved into the custom of dressing up in costumes and trick-or-treating.