While the DownToBuck residence doesn’t receive a ton of trick-or-treater traffic on Halloween night, I always try to make it worth the while of the costumed kiddos who do happen to show up. Not only do they get three piece of candy each, and not only do they get to peek into the life of YouTube’s most notable and acclaimed scrub-themed NBA highlight maker (you can see my “highlights den” from the doorway), and not only do I play spooky Halloween-themed music, but I tell the kiddos spooky stories as well.
I’m not really into “traditional” ghost stories. They’re fake and phony to me. The really frightening thing is what humanity itself is capable of. So I’m not telling kids about how my apartment is totally haunted by the spooky apparition of a girl who fell into the fireplace and burned to death. I’m not telling them that there’s a haunted swingset at the playground that will strangle them. I’m telling kids all about an NBA player who averaged seventeen points per game his rookie season and then was, for reasons unknown, basically blackballed from the league which he dominated at such an early age.
That story’s not only scary because it displays the injustice of the world, but it’s a real story. There’s no such thing as a real ghost story, just schizos telling what they think are real ghost stories. My story is true. Jahlil Okafor averaged seventeen points per game for the Sixers in his rookie year but, mysteriously, nobody wanted him after that.
I will say that my audience isn’t as frightened by my stories as I am. Kids these days just want to take their candy and run to the next house. They don’t want to hear bone-chilling tales of NBA players getting their careers deliberately ruined by shadowy cabals of front-office executives. By the time I finish the first story and start the second, about an NBA player whose knees are shredded pork at age 19, these kids are getting hustled out of my apartment by their parents.
I mean, I get it. If I’m a parent, I don’t want my kid hearing about the horrific things that happen in real life. In some ways, the gory and violent ghost stories are more wholesome than the insidious real-life tales that I tell.