Scarier than thou

Imagine trick-or-treating at Martha Stewart’s fabled country house, with its winding lanes and perfectly manicured shrubberies. You’d have to be wearing the Most Adorable costume, carrying a Perfect Treat Sack fashioned from moiré silk or handmade paper. Oh, the pressure. Would Martha think your costume worthy?

But think of the goodies! Maybe pumpkin cookies, cut with copper cutters made by French artisans, and decorated by Martha herself. Not to mention the homemade candies, perhaps some updated snickerdoodles or caramel apples prepared with only the best heirloom variety apples, with twigs hand-gathered from the yard for sticks (recipe included). How very perfect.

But what about the tricks? That comes with Martha’s perfectly petrifying sound track. Creaking doors, howling ghosts, scary thunder, sounds personally selected by Martha and designed to scare you in just the right way, with perfect timing, to cover your Halloween experience from jack-o’-lantern spotting (and oh, Martha makes such jack-o’-lanterns!) to loot-sorting.

So let’s save the cheap shots for later, after the kids have gone to bed and the grown-ups are fighting over who gets the last Snickers. Of course, this CD isn’t possibly as scary as it could be. Just think of the horror film potential: A dark Halloween night, clouds fluttering over the moon, Martha in an antique lace witch costume, repeating the mantra “it’s a good thing” over and over. Now that’s scary.