When the weather chills and the leaves turn, my sister and I know that Halloween adventures lie just around the corner. For us, Halloween is not just a day, it’s a season. I always give her a unique Halloween gift. Sometimes it’s a macabre decoration or ghoulish ornament. But my favorite was the special gift I gave her when I first moved to Colorado seven years ago–at the stroke of midnight on Halloween night, I gave her a small, corked vial, filled with brick dust from the Lizzie Borden house.

Colorado has much to offer the Halloween aficionado. One year we hit the road for a Halloween tour of graveyards. We drove to Littleton to see the grave of Alfred Packer, the only man ever put on trial for cannibalism in the United States. We then headed up to Lafayette to visit the final (?) resting place of Todor Glava, the Lafayette Vampire. Yes, there’s a vampire buried in Colorado. A mysterious man with no friends or family, he arrived from Transylvania in the late 19th Century. It was said he never went out in the daytime; legend holds he was buried with a wooden stake through his heart.

Some of our adventures are literary. We went to the historic Byers Evans house for “An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe,” dramatic readings from the works of the morbid author. And one year we put on masks, climbed the fence of a secluded ranch house … but that story will have to wait; the statute-of-limitations has yet to run out.

Then there’s the annual stage production of “Night of the Living Dead” at the Bug Theater, a cool, bohemian theater in downtown Denver. Clever lines, clever staging. The most interesting stage effect: when someone leaves the house, you watch an old style, black and white movie of what they are doing outside. Then on the screen you watch them return to the house, and onstage they come walking through the door. Surreal.

One annual tradition we never miss is the Trick-or-Treat Street in Elizabeth, Colorado, where my sister owns her own gallery, selling her original artwork. The mainstreet area of Elizabeth is converted into a virtual Halloween town, with thousands of people of all ages in all manner of costumes, strolling up and down the street, in quest of candy and thrills. I always go as the Wizard of Oz—twice I’ve been asked for my autograph; one year I ran into Gandalf, who told me it’s always nice to meet a fellow wizard. A couple of times in the off-season, I’ve had people stop me on the street and say, “I know you–you’re the Wizard of Oz!”

And then there are my sister’s legendary Halloween parties, with great costumes, creepy foods–pudding graveyard’s, etc.– and fun games. (In my family, we don’t bob for apples, we eat donuts hanging from the ceiling.)

Halloween night itself, we stay up late watching horror movies—everything from the classic “Frankenstein/Wolfman” genre, to the old black and white sci-fi’s, to quirkier selections, like “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” and “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” as well as more modern classics, such as “Halloween.” We make fudge and popcorn, turn out the lights, and settle in for an evening of horror.

There’s a chill in the air tonight, the leaves are beginning to turn, and I have a roaring fire in my fireplace. I can feel the season of Halloween just around the corner.