A thin moon leered over a field of whispering corn as we boarded the old tractor. No sooner had we settled against the wooden slats than the vicious revving of a chainsaw cut through the night. My daughter’s eyes widened. “What’s that?” she asked. Several other passengers looked our way. Oh no , I thought. We need to get off right now! What were we thinking? There are adults who find these things too scary! In submitting to my 4-year-old’s enthusiastic appeals to experience a haunted hayride I feared my husband and I had made a terrible mistake.

One couldn’t fault me for indulging my daughter. Whenever someone who’s acquainted with me discovers her love for all things spooky, their reaction is usually the same: “Well, that’s hardly surprising, considering what you write.”

“ What I w

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