What a horrible story. I find as I get older that Halloween's darker side just doesn't appeal to me anymore...too many associations with real life tragedies.
We had the opposite thing happen to us recently. My cousin and I were on our way to our grandfather's funeral and saw the neighbor's window covered with police tape and a "person" sprawled in a chair in the front yard. It scared us for a moment, especially in our emotional state, before we realized it was a Halloween decoration.
I miss the days when the scarier and gorier the better on Halloween, but now those things just turn me off.
