This is Part 4 of Caro and Susan’s foray into the land of bookselling. Here are the earlier segments:
Shortly before the auction-where-we-bought-all-those-books, we got a phone call from T. You know T., the man who lured us into even thinking that starting a used book store was a spiffy idea? His message was, ‘since you practically, almost, have a store downtown how would you like to participate in the Retail Trades Haunted House?’ All proceeds go to promote the downtown businesses. Only six days in duration, only five or six hours each day! Plus setting it all up and taking it all down, of course. And he suggested that having a haunted book store as a way of pre-advertizing our soon-to-be business. He actually talked us into this.
Now the problem with that is I have never really seen the point of haunted houses, which is basically paying big bucks to get the crap scared out of you. And I’d never even actually been to one up to that point And six hours is a long time to do anything in a place that does not have a working bathroom (there was a blue potty-in-a-box outside) or heat. But T. is a silver tongued devil and he offered to help. So we spent most of September gathering props. Some of it was remarkably easy. We had the bookcase from the college auction, and the stools. We had material for curtains and swags. We hit eBay for various props. And we went through our cheepie books and pulled out everything with a black or red cover, or/and that had a dripping knife or a skeleton on the front. Gotta tell you, there are more of those than I ever imagined. Found a lovely tall book on plagues to feature on a book easel. We even had a spooky branch to cast ominous shadows on the wall.