I can't remember any serious harm being done by us prepubescent imps, but we sure caused those finicky old people a long nervous night. Our tricks were confined to aggravating door knocking, a little window soaping and an occasional tipped-over outhouse. The treats were mostly apples, licorice sticks and horehound drops. Some treats.

Then as we got older we went in for more elaborate affairs. In high school, one of our crowd would usually have a themed costume party where we bobbed for apples and drank enough cider to make us wish someone had not overturned the outhouse.

After my wife and I married, we continued to mark this ancient and spooky tradition by dressing up as Dracula and Vampira or Frankenstein and the Mummy to startle the trick-or-treat crowd who came by our house. When my daughter was small, she would regularly win the costume prizes at school and town events with the original ideas that sprang from my wife's ever-fertile imagination with a touch of my own flair for the dramatic.

In the process of this, we have become something of Halloween aficionados. We have dozens of masks and costumes accumulated over the years, some of which are into their third generation of use by our grandchildren. We can outfit something my wife designed called the Birdwoman of Alcatraz (never mind there were no women in Alcatraz, let alone one outfitted in yellow and aqua feathers with a huge orange beak). We can create an Uncle Sam, an Aunt Jemima, a Father Time and a Mother Nature. Not to mention a Sister Maria Theresa and a Dr. Joyce Brothers.

In addition, I can claim without fear of contradiction that we were in the forefront of the Halloween outdoor decoration movement. I say "we," but I mean "they." My wife and one of our friends, whose name is infamous in the local lore of Halloween costumery and decor, have done most of the work on the annual displays around our home.

One particularly inspiring Halloween saw us dressed as Igor, Dr. Frankenstein's assistant, and a hideous witch while our friends were Frankenstein's monster and his bride as we waited to scare the daylights out of the young visitors seeking candy treats. A tape recording played the eerie sounds of screams and squeaking doors while "lightning" -- created with one of those disco-style strobes -- flashed and thunder rolled. Ghosts traveled on pulleys across the lawn and realistic tombstones created from white-painted boards were scattered about.

While the scenes have toned down at our house in recent years, our daughter has taken up the tradition. This year her yard displays dozens of ghosts, jack'o'lanterns, scarecrows and lighted pumpkin totem poles along with spider webs, skeletons, spiders and black cats.

And these days, such elaborate scenes are fairly common, with stores promoting sales of realistic monster replicas and lighted ceramic ghoulish figures. What was, back in the days of my youth, a simple prank-filled night has become a month-or-more-long commercial exploitation which is supplanted quickly by the start of the Christmas sales season. In fact, the Christmas trees and Santas sometimes compete for store exhibition space with the goblins and vampires.

As the Church Lady would say, "Could it be....SATAN."

That was my daughter's immediate reaction when I suggested on one of those beautiful fall days recently that I take my grandkids and great niece and nephew to Luray Caverns.

"Yes, I am," I responded, but went on to explain that granddaughter Ashley bugs me every time we pass by the world-famous attraction on errands heading out the US 211 Bypass west of town. "I've never seen the Caverns," she would say with a tiny whine in her voice. "My mom and dad say they will take me, but they never do."

"Well, they're really busy," I sympathized. "I'll take you some day when we have time."

So, on this day, I said I would take them all to see the Caverns if their respective parents consented. My daughter wisely talked me out of taking the two younger boys, ages 2 and 4, because they would need their afternoon naps. So that gave me only three 6-8 year olds to supervise, well within my boundaries of tolerance. I must have been out of my mind.

When I went to the office to obtain tickets, I told the trio to stand near the wall and hold a place in line. I returned just moments later to find no kids and 20 or so more people in line. Frantic, I tossed about the possibility that they had sneaked into the Caverns entrance and were now straggling in a dark labyrinth hundreds of feet below the earth. However, I was simultaneously relieved and furious to see the three youngsters emerging from the restroom area. "I HAD to go," they chorused in unison. I gave them the short lecture on always telling where you're going, not to go alone to any public bathroom, etc., etc.

They nodded and smiled and we finally trailed behind a large group of tourists into the depths of the Caverns. A pleasant and knowledgeable young woman led our tour, explaining in her opening spiel how the Caverns were discovered in 1878 by three local men. As we continued through the smooth, but sometimes steep passageways, she provided additional details of the geology and mythology surrounding the magnificent brown, white, golden yellow and burnished orange formations which line nearly every inch of the caverns' ceiling and floors.

The kids, despite their early elementary age, were fascinated. When she explained that we would soon be at the deepest part, Ashley inhaled sharply. "How deep are we?" she whispered to me. "Oh, several hundred feet, I think," I told her. She looked skeptical. Soon she, Chelsie and Tyler had sidled up to the front of the group and when the guide took a breather, Ashley asked loudly, "How deep are we?" The guide answered with more precision than my guess, but I wasn't that far off.

This was probably my 10th or 12th trip through Luray Caverns and I found it almost as interesting and awe-inspiring as I did when I first visited way back in the 1950s. The sparkling underground lake which mirrors a stalactite-studded ceiling, the delicate stony folds of Saracen's Tent, the Great Stalacpipe Organ, yes, even the touristy "fried eggs sunny side up," still capture my imagination and cause me to think of how it must have been by the light of primitive torches.

As we exited from our underground adventure, the three children ran far ahead of me up the long stairway. When I reached the guide, the last person to get to the top, she smiled and said, "Are they your grandchildren?" To avoid explaining the complications of our blood relation, I said, "Yes, they are. They loved the visit." The guide snickered, "Yes, I know. They told me they were glad you lost your mind!"