Rain on a Halloween night may not be good for trick or treating, but it sure makes it spooky. It looks like we’ve got a pretty good chance of some precipitation for all the little goblins to contend with on Monday night, but hopefully that will just add to the mystique of the evening.

It brings back memories of the one time I ventured off to the mountains of Boone on a Halloween night when rain was part of the adventure. We took off from there to try to see the Brown Mountain Lights, and if you’ve ever tried driving those winding roads while the breeze is blowing leaves across the pavement and mist is coming down, you know that’s a white-knuckle experience in itself.

It surely was the scariest Halloween I ever had.

Later on, I realized that I haven’t gotten to enjoy as many of those annual fright nights as I would have liked, mostly because of the night owl work schedule at the Post. I have to treat Halloween like some people born on that rare Feb. 29 Leap Year date do and take advantage when I’m not putting out a newspaper.

That’s what makes it even more special for me, and this year it happens to fall on a Monday when I’m off duty, so rain or not, I’ll be ready.

The thrill now of course is watching all the youngsters come up in full costume to get a treat, and I do my best to hand out candy with cheer and a remark on each special outfit.

I may do a little light dressing up as I occasionally do, but nothing like my younger years when I would jump in full force. I can still remember my favorite Halloween costume when I borrowed a nightgown  and put on an old lady mask before going strolling down Franklin Street in Chapel Hill as a 6-foot-4 grandma.

I got plenty of hoots from that one. Of course, the kind of audience out on the streets in a college town gave plenty of vocal support to most anyone dressed for the occasion as the evening wore on.

Now back to the Brown Mountain Lights adventure, where it wasn’t just the rain, but the wind and dark of night that added to the creepy feeling as the leaves swirled around. If you were going to set up a scene for a horror movie, that was exactly the kind of night I’d choose — a perfect evening for ghouls and goblins to be out.

If you happened to read Sharon Randall’s column earlier this week on these pages, I couldn’t believe she scooped me on the idea for a pre-Halloween tale of her most scary such outing. But she was a little kid, while I was nearly a grown man, if you can claim to be such while still in a college student’s frame of mind.

I don’t ever remember being scared when we went out to seek candy as a youngster. But I’m sure there were plenty of other times when I was frightened.

Many people of my generation haven’t had to go through the fears of being involved in something like a world war. And some people say there are no atheists in foxholes during such conflict. I say there aren’t any of those when walking through the woods at night … without a flashlight. Barefoot.

One time I know I was afraid was when a buddy’s father jumped out at us from behind a tree, or from up in one, and he scared the you know what out of me.

It wasn’t even an October night when that one happened, and I let out a few choice words that I probably shouldn’t have — only to wish I could have pulled them back in when I realized it was an adult who had been the prankster. But it was too late. And the dad couldn’t stop laughing at the fright he’d put into us, or me particularly, so I guess there was no chance that my mouth was going to be washed out with soap.

I’m glad there were no moms around or I might not have been so lucky.

Paris Goodnight is editor of the Salisbury Post.