The first spooky experience I had happened when I was a little girl. Like most kids, I used to explore our backyard in the hills near the Oakland Zoo, poking around and uncovering things. One day, when I was maybe eight years old, I turned over a flat piece of wood that looked like it could have been a piece from a fence.
To my horror, I’d opened a spider’s nest, and through the largest, whitest web I’d ever seen, teeny spiders emerged out of a hole in the center, fanning out in all directions over the wood. I screamed and ran inside my house.
That snapshot of hundreds of crawling baby spiders heading straight for my bedroom triggered a lifelong arachnophobia. After that day, I always lined the wall against my bed with pillows so that spiders couldn’t climb up into my bed while I slept.
Unleashing the spiders was the first time I discovered that the Hellmouth could open and release its evils on me. For those who aren’t fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Hellmouth is a hot spot for supernatural activity, a gateway for demons and other scary creatures. Before the spiders, I loved being scared. I was watching A Nightmare on Elm Street (on VHS!) at an age when most people would agree it wasn’t appropriate to do so, thanks to my grandma. I liked suspenseful music and cheesy gore. I loved vampires. And I liked the adrenaline rush of being scared — from a distance.
Halloween is my favorite holiday. That largely has to do with idyllic memories from when I was Little Bo-Peep growing up in big, spooky Oakland. Though decorated with cobwebs, those memories are sweet and innocent; I didn’t feel like Oakland was big or spooky when I was a little girl.
A visit to a local pumpkin patch was the official sign that Halloween had arrived. The one I remember most clearly was Lemos Farm in Half Moon Bay. Before the time of bouncy castles, my brothers and I would play in the hay, running around a maze of orange pumpkins. But carving the pumpkins at home, being silly, and helping my dad remove “the guts” was the best part. No one could see our jack-o’-lanterns from our house on the hill, but once our pumpkins were carved, I knew it was Halloween showtime (jazz fingers).
My crafty mom handmade many of our costumes; my earliest Kodak moment was when I was Little Bo-Peep. My brother, two years older, was the Incredible Hulk, and my oldest brother was a Viking. My mom wasn’t against buying costumes; she just loved to sew, so it was a creative outlet for her.
My mom also cut our hair, which wasn’t as impressive, but hey, no one’s perfect (except for her through my eyes). There were times when she took us to the costume store — not Amazon but an actual store where you could feel the stiff fabrics and see the fun patterns — but her costumes were special, stitched together with love.
My idyllic memories of Halloween in the Bay Area were shaken up on October 17, 1989, during the infamous Loma Prieta earthquake. I was 10 years old. At 5:04 p.m., I remember playing in my room at home when everything, including the carpet, started rocking.
My Care Bears were taking nosedives. I heard a deep rumbling and clattering shutters. When the rocking didn’t stop, I ran toward my oldest brother’s room, knowing that he was the only other person home. He was running toward me too, and we stopped in the middle of our house, standing and holding each other. There were no spiders, but this time a massive underground monster was after me—the Hellmouth had opened again.
When we watched the local news, images of collapsed sections of the Bay Bridge and the Nimitz Freeway stuck in my brain like strange scenes from a scary movie. But this was real life.
I’d had safety drills at school, and we should have crawled under a table or stood in a doorway, but by the time rational thought occurred, the 6.9 quake rocked to a stop. Save for a few broken dishes, my brother and I were fine, but what about the rest of us? My other brother was at his tutor’s house in Oakland. My mom was at the grocery store (she had the best story involving splattered ketchup and diving loaves of bread). My dad was out of town and had no idea what had happened.
There were no cell phones, but there was good ’ol TV. When we watched the local news, images of collapsed sections of the Bay Bridge and the Nimitz Freeway stuck in my brain like strange scenes from a scary movie. But this was real life. We desperately hoped that our mom wasn’t driving close by those freeways and reassured each other that she was okay. The phone lines were down. All we could do was wait to know that our family members were fine.
By the time my mom arrived home with my other brother, we’d cleaned up the house as if nothing had happened. We were glued to the TV all evening and went to sleep hoping that our dad would arrive back in the Bay safely. In the wake of the quake, 63 died, and 3,757 people were injured. The shocker disrupted the 1989 World Series. Fires, landslides, and other forms of damage spanned the greater Bay Area. Everyone who was there has a story to tell. It shook us all.
In October of ’91, the Hellmouth opened up again, and the Tunnel Fire caused evacuations in parts of Oakland. I was at a friend’s house when her mother came rushing in to tell us that we had to leave. My friend’s mom dropped me off at home — which was our next house on Skyline Boulevard — because we weren’t in an evacuation area. The smell of smoke was in the thick air.
Again, I turned on the boob tube to watch the tragedy unfold. My family was okay, but in the aftermath, friends’ houses and part of my school burned down. Since I was a self-consumed 11-year-old, I felt bad for people who lost their homes, glad that ours hadn’t burned down, and stoked that school was temporarily closed.
Our school ended up joining campuses with another school in Berkeley for a few months while repairs were made. The Halloween parade commenced, and there was more eye candy and double the amount of kids. It was all very exciting for a girl on the cusp of becoming an adolescent who pushed boundaries.
As I got older, I figured out that Oakland was much bigger than our house on the hill. Oakland wasn’t a perfect city; it had cracks and burns that I could feel and never forget. Eventually, I got too cool to trick-or-treat, and costumes seemed lame, though I got back into the Halloween spirit in my twenties. My love of scary movies has never waned.
I don’t live in Oakland anymore, but I’m close. Now, as I try to re-create an idyllic Halloween for my two-year-old werewolf son, the reality of earthquakes and fires that come with hot, dry Octobers creeps into consciousness. Leaves shimmer in the sun as the wind blows through them. Power outages are planned. Our emergency kits are packed. My anxiety level is higher than usual, but picturesque rolling brown hills in the distance calm me.
One night, just as I’m about to fall asleep, I’m jolted awake by a 4.5 quake that rocks my house. My heart jumps out of my chest. I sit up in bed, Exorcist-style, asking my husband to make sure our son is okay as I hold our French bulldog, squeezing him, hoping that this isn’t the Big One.
My son was fine. He slept through it, blissfully unaware that every October in the Bay Area, the Hellmouth could open again.
