It’s been four years since the real spooky demon of Covid shut down all the festivals of the day. And we put away, somewhere in the basement, the battery-operated jack-o’-lanterns.

We, of a certain age, are left with the very distant memories of the war years and its many Halloweens.

The Irish, you know, invented Halloween with bonfires, and before pumpkins, carved gourds with features.

I don’t remember when pumpkins emerged, but then pumpkin coffee ale and lattes were born.

Even today, the Boston Irish will raise their own dead to have a pint. Yes, they will. You can Google it.

We all have our memories of those ghostly nights when you dressed up your kids and walked them in cold nights, some rainy, some unusually warm, and even the Halloween when it snowed.

Memories of Halloween can sometimes be stronger than Christmas.

Back in Fuchu, Japan, in 1953, when I had the little house in the village, the few members of the 6403 group (fueled on sake and Japanese beer) decided to have their own Halloween party.

Our costumes were khaki then, but a few of the nurses from the hospital base at Tachikawa showed up with some bizarre ideas. They’re mostly on the “other side” now.

There were no cameras at the time, no iPhones to record the event, and I’m sure most of that Korean war gang are long gone.

The best memory I can drag up is one of the Hollywood Gay community’s big Halloween best costume balls.

It was super competitive, and four of my actor friends, straight and gay, decided to enter and drew me in.

Our theme focused on the four characters from “Wizard of Oz.”

I made the scarecrow; Bob Eisen, who worked in the wardrobe Department at Warner Bros., got the tin man because he “borrowed” one from his job.

His brother Vic’s girlfriend, Maya, made him a wonderful cowardly lion garb and she got stuck with playing Dorothy. We got applause … and lost.

Our last Halloween party in L.A. was a sad one. She, always a teacher, cooked up a great costume for Miss Haversham from “Great Expectations.” I think I was Dracula. No one took pictures.

Memories old and fragile, came up at dinner this week as the celebration approached, on how we missed her students, who kept coming to the door, and how we filled their various bags, from Shaw’s, T.J.Maxx, laundry bags, even boxes, with our collection, leftover candy corn, Tootsie Rolls and Jelly Beans.

It all ended the following year when our Halloween streets emptied out as Mr. Covid replaced Dracula.

Since then, this hallowed old night featured watching seven seasons of “Halloween” with Jamie Lee Curtis.

The sound of those joyous evenings on Burleigh Street here in Waterville, with screams up and down the block, are echoes now, and the goblins are all grown and in college.

The attached photo is of us in a long-ago Halloween in our salad days.

The costumes are those given us when the melodrama “Billy The Kid,” closed in New Jersey, and we went back to the Upper East Side of Manhattan for martinis and candy corn.

We wore them to a gala party given by the cast of a musical long forgotten.

The clothes are gone, our youth has fled, but Halloween is just outside your door. Boo!

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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