Monster Mash

Halloween is not a holiday commonly celebrated in Korea.  Few pumpkins dot the store shelves and even fewer costumes can be found on the racks.  Many hagwons (English academies), however, enjoy creating a cultural experience for the students by playing Halloween themed games and handing out candy. When our school announced our imminent participation this year - they had refrained from celebrating for the past 4 years - I was skeptical.  Halloween fell on a Friday, which also happened to be the last day in our session... test day. The initial plans for our celebrations throughout the day were grandiose. Between testing, the sugar-intoxicated children were to be corralled together and led through a homemade haunted house set up in an empty classroom. Once through, they were to be fed more candy, placed on a bus, and sent home to their unprepared parents.  Plans for the haunted house were unclear up to the 30th and I wasn't convinced our main attraction would materialize.  

It's not the first time I've been wrong.  On Thursday, the day before Halloween, boxes of decorations from previous years were pulled out of a storage room. Nearly 100 paper pumpkins, bats, witches, and skeletons dangled from strings on the ceiling while strands of glistening garland wove its way across the reception desk.  Odds and ends in the form of posters, plaques, webbing, and signs found a new home on every available inch of wall space. The building was transformed in less than a few hours into an orange and black wonderland. What was once an empty classroom was quickly remodeled into a dark haunted mansion.  Black paper covered the windows and a long, dark curtain created a terrifying walkway around the perimeter of the room.  Along the haunted path were placed six boxes. A hand-sized hole was cut into the top of each box, which contained different body parts: eyeballs made from peeled grapes, uncooked corn for teeth, plump sausages as fingers, skin torn from slightly oiled tortillas, half-thawed tofu brains, and something squishy liver.  The addition of spine-chilling music and an unknown monster lurking around completed our impressive renovation.  We liked it, but what would the kids think?

Bounding through the doors with sparkly costumes and peels of unadulterated bliss, the students admired our decorations and ogled at our apparel.  Their normal teachers had become Peter Pan, Minnie Mouse, witches, fairies, clowns, devils and mummies.  As a kid I remember nothing more satisfying than to see adults let down their guard in a Halloween costume. Despite their usually make-believe attire, it somehow made them more human.  

As a preface to the haunted house, teachers were given instructions on how to prepare the students (the first few classes of the day are full of younger students - some only six or seven).  

After the students take the test they will go to the haunted house.  Before entering, they must say, "Trick or Treat."  Make sure to tell them the haunted house is full of scary ghosts and monsters.  There are REAL eyeballs, teeth, fingers, skin, brains, and liver for them to touch.  It is very terrifying, but when they are finished they will receive delicious candy.   

I'm sure it doesn't take a genius to guess what happened.  Many students panicked - fearful of the pitch-black room and creepy music.  Nobody wanted to put their hands in the boxes, and when our boss, wearing a werewolf mask, started grabbing legs from behind a curtain everyone let out ear piercing screams.  Most of the younger kids lost control and emerged howling; spending the rest of class gasping for breaths between sobs.  The older students enjoyed the haunted house a bit more, some even requesting to brave it a second time. Except for terrifying the living daylights out of innocent children, our Halloween festivities were very successful and quite impressive.