- By Times’ Junior Journalist Alina Jiang
Every Halloween, residents in Four Trees in Cockle Bay have hosted a festival with haunted houses, wild decorations and handing out candy to everyone.
The people who live there are very generous giving out candy. As soon as I stepped out of the car, people hustled past me.
Dressed up in all sorts of funny costumes – witches, wizards, people suited up in dinosaur costumes, etc!
Walking down the hill, we entered the road outside the first house. Cobwebs were scattered across the fences with little baby doll heads hanging from a string.
The queue to get inside was ginormous! We waited about 30 minutes until finally we got to the front of the line.
In front of me stood a purple candy dispenser box, taller than my height with two buttons – trick or treat. My cousin went first, pressing the treat button then getting three candies.
As soon as he left, I thought ‘what would happen if you pressed trick?’ I pressed the trick button and an eerie laughter danced through the air, a skeleton hand sprung the candy dispenser hole and as soon as I reached for it, it went back into the hole.
Finally, after seconds of preparing, it sprung out again, I wrestled with the hand and finally I let go, and the hand came back out palm open with one candy inside.
The second house was giving out candy from buckets. There was a nice little kid dressed up as Spider-Man and handing out candy from a small plastic bag with his mum.
I thanked the kid and his parents then headed downhill where I found the third house, a haunted one.
As soon as I stepped in, I found skeletons dangling from the wires beside me. There were machines automatically banging on the wall when people walked by and I got terrified when I got banged.
Soon we entered area one, aliens and zombies stood decorated on the ground.
Finally, the light shone ahead and I ran out of the house – wow, that was fun.
The rest of the day zoomed past me. We saw a big marshmallow standing in front of the Ghostbusters, an FBI truck which was just a customised van, a skeleton bathing in red water and lots more decorations!
Going uphill there was another haunted house which was just terrifying. I got jump-scared at every corner and the decorations were unpleasant to be around and just scary.
Eventually after knocking on all the houses and taking a long journey back to the car I took a sigh of relief. That was fun. And scary.
Happy Halloween!
- Alina Jiang is in Year 6 at Owairoa Primary School
