Doodlebob takes Boardman, Ohio

Normally our whole family dresses up for Halloween. Where possible, we've tried to theme our costumes in some way. On multiple occasions this has required me to dress up as one of Spider-Man's nemeses.

Though I had planned to be Aunt Gladys from Weapons this year, I ended up not dressing up. With our Chief Decorating Officer operating well below 100% this year, we fell behind. So I undertook a day-of scramble to finish getting the decorations up before trick-or-treaters arrived. By the time all of that was done, I didn't feel like rushing into costume and makeup. Plus, on a trial trick-or-treating run earlier that week, Hugo's Doodlebob costume – while an incredible work of ingenuity on the part of my wife and child – made it difficult to communicate with him and hindered his mobility to the point that he required a candy bag caddy.

But I'm glad it worked out, because it freed me up to bring my camera and capture the hilarious juxtaposition of Doodlebob standing next to various spooky characters.

I honestly thought this would be a pretty niche reference, but the entire night passersby regaled us with cheers of "Doodlebob!" Even the teenagers – their own costumes soaked in so many layers of irony that my 40-year-old eyes could not perceive them – were impressed. One girl dressed as Hermione Granger said "Doodlebob" with an unmistakable mixture of admiration and jealousy. Not everyone got it, though. The guy down the street who recently posted on Facebook that he doesn't want to renew the levy funding Hugo's elementary school thought Hugo was a refrigerator.

The pack of children Hugo and I attached ourselves to took an extremely chaotic route through the neighborhood. So once Hugo's bag was full, we broke off and cut across yards to get back home. A real pro, such as myself, would have arranged a perfect loop that delivered us straight to our doorstep at 7 p.m. sharp. But I guess this is just the price I pay for being so averse to confrontation that I'm unwilling to question a 13-year-old's spatial reasoning.

One tradition we did get to continue this year was Hugo's annual practice of picking a costume early and slowly collecting regrets that he didn't pick something else. At eight years old, he's beginning to have friends who have seen proper horror movies; even though he's acutely aware he can't handle anything scarier than The Nightmare Before Christmas, he so desperately wants to be the kind of person who can handle them. So next year he wants to be a killer – [Lucille Bluth voice] his words.

To help him work up to it, I've resolved that we'll slowly build out a proper set of truly frightening Halloween decorations. This year's start was promising. I dug an actual grave and bought a bloody body bag. We put bloody handprints on the window leading up to our front door and lit that room with a strobe light. I was out with Hugo, but Annie reports that we successfully produced many jump-scares.

Here are a few photos of our decorations that I enjoyed.