A few days ago, I took a walk around my neighborhood. It would be an understatement to say that I saw it as if for the first time. I didn’t recognize a lot of the stately two-story bricks or porch-fronted frame houses that I would typically see every time I walked to my health club. Many of the houses on my block were in disguise.

My neighbors, it seems, have come down with a bad case of Halloween fever. I’m delighted.

Not even two blocks away, there’s a new McMansion that has a purple spider crawling up its face. These days, I walk to the store or library in a slightly amped up state of awareness, almost anticipation. Who knows what new graveyard got constructed on someone’s front lawn last night, or what shape of green-eyed gremlin is hanging from the gable of the house on the corner?

There is yellow crime scene tape aplenty, cordoning off bungalows and two flats, printed with appropriate warnings like “Beware — Haunted House,” or “Do not enter, unless you DARE.” Between Melrose and School Street, we have a great assortment of pumpkins; some carved into jack-o-lanterns, others looking like innocent refugees from Cinderella, and several of the blow-up variety that can practically fill a porch. All this wonderland of frightfulness has been wrapped in miles and miles of white “web” material, stretched between fence posts and trees.

When I walk down the street, I know there’s going to be a surprise every thirty feet. Some are spooky; others more clever. Some are glaringly in your face, and other displays you have to look for.

On the side of a nearby house, where the reddish brick meets the sidewalk, two skinny legs, in white and magenta striped leggings and blocky black shoes, stick out as if the body they’re attached to was lost under the structure. I can almost hear the witch from the Wizard of Oz cackle, “Now be gone — before someone drops a house on you, too!”

So much creativity and the spirit of play are infused in my neighborhood’s haunted houses. A lot of time, a lot of planning, and probably a good measure of give and take between family members over where to hang the bats – so many people have made my short errands more like adventures for me.

I love the feeling that I don’t know what I’ll see next. And, all this stuff has brought the neighbors out. I haven’t talked with so many of my neighbors since our block party two months ago. And everyone is excited too. We all want to share our discoveries.

“Did you see Pete and Kathy’s house?” Tom and Marilyn asked me, eager to endorse another neighbor’s handiwork. “Great witch. You’ve got to see it!”

Seeing so many grown-ups act like children is no small thing.