Year after year, new measures are introduced to keep registered sex offenders of all stripes from coming into contact with trick-or-treaters -- and yet there is zero evidence to support the legislative trend. In fact, the available data suggest it's a useless diversion of resources that creates a false sense of security. Just take a look at this absurdly misleading headline from a Fox News affiliate: "Police Work to Keep Halloween Free From Sexual Predators." (Because all sex offenders faithfully register and offenses are only committed by those with previous records?) Meanwhile, other outlets are playing up the danger: Albuquerque's KRQE advises readers to "beware of real monsters on Halloween," and talks to a 12-year-old girl who is "excited to go Trick-or-Treating" -- but only because her family has no idea that they live "in a neighborhood full of secrets." Dun-dun-dun.

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By the time I was a kid, in the 1980s, not much had changed.

In our town, Halloween was terrifying and thrilling, and there was a whiff of homicide. We’d travel by foot in the dark for miles, collecting candy, watching out for adults who seemed too eager to give us treats. At that time, rumors on the evening news said maniacs were injecting Almond Joys with rat poison, tucking razor blades inside candy apples before handing them out to children.

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It’s known as "Liber Linteus." It’s the longest Etruscan text ever found. It seems to be a ritual calendar of some sort, but no one really knows what it says. No one has spoken Etruscan for 20 centuries. Only a few fragments have been translated, like this one:

For the spirit of night, for the city, for the people everlasting.

You can see the "Liber Linteus" on display in a glass case in Zegreb. And quite near to it, you can also see that certain someone. You can see the unwrapped mummy that was once inside of it.

How was this treasure of Etruscan writing found? It sounds like something that happened in a frat house. The Croatian guy takes the Egyptian mummy home. He props it up in the corner. He shows it off to his friends when they come over. They make jokes about it. They rattle their drinks and point their cigars at it.

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Although tricks and treats have been part of Halloween tradition for ages, October 31st didn’t become a candy-centric holiday until the 1950s, when aggressive marketing campaigns began to tell Americans a different story about All Hallows’ Eve. And naturally, the story was about candy. Perhaps this is appropriate. Our larger story as a people is, in a sense, a story of candy.

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While severed body parts and corpses may not have a tourist-brochure ring, gore sells. Catholic churches have been collecting bodies and relics for pilgrims to visit for centuries. Little bits of the Buddha are scattered in shrines around the globe. Medical curiosities and oddities fill glass cases and jars in museum sideshows.

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The box wasn’t nearly large enough to contain so much money — it looked as if it might be a 4-by-6-inch index card box — but then again, how many times do you stumble across a box sitting in an open hole?

I crouched down, the late afternoon Friday sun hot on my neck. The box was not stone, as I had originally thought, but a heavy-duty black ridged cardboard. Hmm, I thought, perhaps someone’s family heirlooms?

On a grave not too far from where we stood, someone had left several pieces of costume jewelry atop one of the headstones. I lifted the heavy box out of its shallow hole. On one end, someone had typed a white label.

A man’s name. A place of residence. And the note: “Human remains. Cremated August 1, 2011.”

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As a mother of two, I've noticed a creeping austerity in our treats haul in recent years. Sure, we were used to the Bug Bites Endangered Species mini-chocolates that reliably cropped up from the more eco-friendly parents along the trick-or-treat route. But last Halloween, we seemed to score a record number of pencils, toy bugs and, unsubtly, toothbrushes. And the least enthusiastically embraced prize in my daughters' bags was a pamphlet explaining that deforestation from the palm oil in some candy brands is threatening to wipe out Southeast Asia's orangutan population. It was festooned with skulls and read: "DYING FOR A COOKIE?" Sorry, kids.

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Dad had gone to high school with (and had dated) the owner at the time, Dolly, who ran the place with her husband, Jack, who'd inherited the place from his father. Eating there was like going to a friend's house for a meal -- a German-influenced meal, that is. Which is not to say the food wasn't first-rate because it was, from fresh-caught trout and whitefish (it was on the Milwaukee River) to more traditional German dishes (veal Oscar and duck with cherries).

I had a sweet tooth back then (still do) and so would order some dish I couldn't or wouldn't finish in order to save room for one of Boder's delicious desserts. Among the highlights was schaum torte with strawberries.

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"Wha, wha, wha ... what's the matter?!" Groff asks.

"I just feel ... weird," Bagans mutters.

A hiss-like sound -- the noise heard just moments before -- is played back. It was all the proof the two ghost hunters needed.

"I said, 'use my energy,'" Groff says, his tone now professorial, "and then all of a sudden your energy was drawn from your body at the exact moment. And then -- at the same time -- I heard that weeeird voice."

Bagans struggles to lift his head. "It's using my energy," he whimpers.

"Exactly!"

Bagans and Groff are hosts of "Ghost Adventures," one of the most popular programs on the Travel Channel -- and one of about a dozen similar reality TV ghost-hunting shows on television today. Over the past decade the ghost-hunting genre as a whole, led by series like "Paranormal State," "Ghost Hunters" and "Psychic Kids: Paranormal Children," has become a virtual fixture on cable television. The shows follow a basic formula: Everyday Joes -- sometimes aided by a psychic, sometimes not -- travel to supposedly haunted locations, wait for the sun to go down, and spend the night freaking each other out. It may seem hilariously contrived, but it's some of the most popular stuff on TV today.

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While this may sound sinister or downright peculiar, let me assure you that Felix holds a cherished position in our family. He's a silent but reliable teacher and a master at imparting lessons of impermanence -- someone who is just plain good to have hanging around.

Felix -- affectionately named by my grandfather, George Becker Sr. -- was born around 1900 and was about 17 years old when he died. His cause of death is unknown, though my grandmother always maintained he had been struck by a Model T Ford.

Just how did we come to possess the remains of Felix?

My grandfather was a young boy when his father was thrown from a horse-drawn wagon after a practical joker startled the horse. He suffered a traumatic head injury that kept him from meaningful employment for the rest of his life. Coming from a family in which industriousness was the paramount virtue, my grandfather studied hard and eventually borrowed money and played semi-pro football in order to attend Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia. Around 1925 in a gross anatomy seminar, he and his classmates were issued human skeletons to use as study aides.

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About 10 years ago, I was lying in the bedroom of my house in Cheyenne, Wyo., an old place that used to be workmen's lodging down by the Union Pacific railroad station. I wasn't in a deep sleep, more like that murky in-between state as slumber comes in for a landing. I opened my eyes halfway. In the doorway of the bedroom, a young man stood staring at me. Was he 15? Was he 20? Dressed in work clothes from the 1930s, of humble posture, he was there -- I will never forget those eyes -- yet I could see straight through him. Frightened to my core, I sat up, screaming until my boyfriend shook me. "What? What?"

"There was a boy over there! He was standing right there."

"No one else is here but us," he told me. "You were dreaming."

But I wasn't. The shock and fear left me shaking, but most disturbing was the physical sensation. I hadn't just seen this ghost boy; I had felt him. Sorrow, loss, loneliness. It was as if he was saying, I'm lost. Help me. I need to be seen.

I kept the bathroom light on all night for a month, maybe more, my eyes trained on that doorway. If I was going up the stairs in the dark, I would climb quickly, two steps at a time, as if someone, or something, was chasing me.

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There were the usual women's history nominees: Rosie the Riveter, Frida Kahlo, Bella Abzug, Marie Curie and Amelia Earhart. All nice suggestions, but a tad too earnest. I was hoping more for smart concept costumes. One friend wrote, "Power suit + heels + briefcase ... and you're costumed as Affordable Childcare?" A guy friend brilliantly, although impractically, suggested:

How about you dress as 10,000 years of agrarian culture where the indeterminacy of paternity (as opposed to the certainty of maternity) combined with the inheritance of possessions through direct lineage has caused the continued, often draconian oppression of female sexuality? It's amazing what you can do with a bit of paper-mache --

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Charlotte was a freelance writer and a lover of Mexican culture, its folk art in particular. She was the one who suggested we vacation in Mexico City. We knew a couple of folks down there, including our glamorous friend Dave, who ran the Latin American bureau for a major daily newspaper and -- get this -- had a maid.

We spent much of the week wandering the lovely shaded streets of his neighborhood and debating whether any physical record of our copulation would be detected by the aforementioned maid. (I, being male, argued no.) But Charlotte was determined to escape the city and Dave said we were in luck because we'd arrived in time for Day of the Dead -- Dia de los Muertos, at the start of November -- and did we want to travel north to Michoacán, which just happened to be the capital of Mexican folk art?

So up we went with Dave at the wheel. Our destination was a small city called Patzcuaro, ground zero for Day of the Dead celebrations. Charlotte and I stayed in a room in a private dwelling -- more of a cell, really -- that smelled of kerosene and things decomposed. Charlotte's reaction was a familiar blend of disappointment and suppressed rage.

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Perhaps it would have made more sense if it had started right after my roommate moved out, but it didn't. It took a few months for the man to begin making his nocturnal visits. Besides, I had already lived in the small apartment for over a year, and I was used to sleeping alone and being on my own, and more important, I liked to sleep. I have always found sleep, with its comfy mattresses and fluffy pillows and warm cozy blankets and dim lighting and hushed tones, luxurious. I liked being in bed, liked sleeping. That's why I was always late for work.

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"Do you know what a blue moon is?" Skip asked me.

I did not.

This was the third consecutive year Skip had dressed like a hobo. It seemed to my 10-year-old self that he had gone from winning first place in the Cub Scouts Halloween party, dressed as a glamorous girl in a blond wig with a black cigarette holder clenched between his teeth, to losing all interest in dressing up. All teenagers did, I assumed. Among the devils and witches, cowboys and astronauts, mingled teenage boys dressed as hobos and girls in their real cheerleader outfits.

"A blue moon," Skip explained, "is the second full moon in a month. See, most months there's only one full moon."

My mother beamed at him. To her, Skip was the smartest, most handsome boy in town. Maybe even in the whole world. Her love for him was evident and enormous, and it always made me feel unimportant.

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But there I was, at the store as a professional, when ... holy sweet Jesus, there's a bag of Reese's the size of my torso! Soon, the candy was just flying off the shelf into my basket, and the damage at the checkout wasn't pretty: eight pounds of the stuff, and, as I said, I was trembling for my first taste of Snickers.

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My usual plan is to remove the excess loot from my kids' pumpkins when they are sleeping. The best thing to do then, healthwise, would probably be to throw it away. But even though candy has no nutritional value, I still can't bring myself to discard it. So I recycle it: I bring it to work, where it somehow magically disappears within minutes. 

Recycling is one of the new "three Rs," which have traditionally referred to "Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic." These days, it carries an additional meaning-- "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." Kids in Northern California and in other eco-conscious cities and towns are becoming environmentally literate even before they learn to read.

I didn't get the head start that my kids have, but I am getting my eco-education just by living in San Francisco. I just wish it could be more fun.

Now that Halloween is approaching, I'd like to apply the waste-sorting lessons I have learned to creatively reusing Halloween candy. I'm talking about compost.

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Ingredients

• 2¼ cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• ¾ cup light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup coarsely chopped Halloween chocolate candy (I used 3 mini 0.5-ounce Heath bars and 11 Hershey's miniatures -- Hershey bar, Special Dark, Krackel)
• 2 tablespoons coffee grounds, for the true spirit of compost
• ¾ cup salty snacks, coarsely crushed (I used equal parts potato chips and pretzels)

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While I'm familiar with the sight and smell of chocolate in its processed form, the botanical form was a mystery until a recent visit to the Atlanta Botanical Garden's exhibit "Chocolate: From Seed to Sweet." Through a series of interactive outdoor exhibits, my girls and I learned the process from the bloom on the cacao tree to the chocolate bars in the girls' plastic orange pumpkins.

Walking through the outdoor exhibition, we learned about the mustard yellow seed pods of the cacao trees. The farmers harvest the seed pods, then grind them into chocolate liquor, which is then separated into cacao butter and powder. The exhibit stations are designed for children to roast, winnow, grind, mix and mold the cacao beans. And I learned this interesting fact: Cacao (ca-COW) refers to the tree and beans inside the seed pods; cocoa refers to the byproducts of the cocoa bean, cocoa butter and cocoa powder. And here's another factoid - each cacao pod is about the size of a pineapple and holds enough seeds to make about seven milk chocolate or two dark chocolate bars.

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Antebellum New Orleans society was rich, glamorous and decadent in the 1830s. Lavish parties and balls filled "The Season," many hosted by the elegant and influential LaLauries, Leonard Louis, a physician from France, and his well-connected Louisiana-born wife, Delphine. The LaLauries entertained sumptuously and frequently. Invitations to their parties were highly prized, guests in their finery were no doubt treated to fine music, lively dancing and glorious food. Their every want was catered to by the solicitous hosts and their well-trained staff of slaves.

On April 10, 1834, flames broke out in the detached kitchen of the house on the corner of Royal and Governor Nichols. An old cook started the fire that afternoon while her mistress was out. Neighbors and friends quickly gathered to help Madame LaLaurie rescue her valuable possessions, but then the terrible rumors started immediately -- the old slave woman was chained to the stove and had intentionally set the fire so she would die in flames rather than face punishment at the hands of her mistress. Slaves were found chained in their quarters, unable to escape the burning building -- starving and horribly mutilated by the monstrous Madame LaLaurie.

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