Last week my daughter had a talent show at school. She had her song all picked out to sing (her most recent favorite Taylor Swift song,”You Belong With Me”) and she needed a costume. In the album insert, the photo behind the lyrics for this song has Taylor dressed in a Marching Band uniform sitting on the gym bleachers – to go along with the lyrics, “She wears high heels, I wear sneakers, she’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers.”
So, Marching Band uniform was the request.
Normally I would have made her a costume myself, but I didn’t have much time, with the other things going on in the schedule already. And by the time I gathered all the supplies, I figured it would be maybe just the same cost as renting a costume anyway. Thus began the search.
Do you know how hard it is to find costumes in May? Nobody is even thinking about costumes in May! There is apparently no costume rental shop locally either. So, I checked the thrift stores.
My favorite store, Value Village, has all their costume kind of stuff put away until Halloween time (at least until August – ha!), and I searched through the racks to find jackets that I might be able to convert into a marching band jacket. No luck.
I made a plea to my online friends on Facebook, “Anybody got a marching band uniform I can borrow?” The best we could come up with was the possibility of buying or renting one from an online costume store. Hmm…
The next option I tried was the online classifieds – sometimes you can find some cool stuff there if you just ask. I figured someone was BOUND to have an old high school marching band uniform laying around somewhere…UM… no luck there either. And I didn’t feel like paying the kind of money the online costume stores wanted for their costumes either.
However, on kijiji I did find a place nearby that had costumes for rent, only about 20 minutes drive from town! If they had what we needed, that would beat having to drive 2 1/2 hours to Calgary.
The place is called The Haunted Mansion, and we had to make an appointment to be able to go see the costumes. I kept my daughter home from school for a day so we could go see their stuff and make sure whatever they had would fit her.
We got to the house, and it really looked like a big scary mansion. When the lady of the house lead us inside, of course it’s a weird place inside, too. They have it set up for haunted house tours, so there are creatures and mannequins and stuff all around, and it was very dark. We trudged up to the ‘Wardrobe’ – a bedroom and large closet full of all kinds of costumes.
All kinds of costumes is really an understatement. They have old uniforms, fancy dresses, creature costumes, and everything in between, with almost any accessory you can imagine to go with them.
We built a costume for my daughter that she thought could work for her – sort of a ring master costume (for an adult, but it fit her and gave the desired effect) with a bright red military police hat, and black heeled boots should she decide to use them (though her song said “sneakers”).
The lady gave us a nice deal on the costume, saving us about $20 off of what the combined pieces would have cost us to rent. She really was very nice, and quite chatty. With 2 toddlers underfoot, I wondered if it was just because she enjoyed having adult conversation! While the printer whizzed out our paperwork, she informed us that the house is indeed haunted, and that she used to always think there was 1 ghost but had recently found out that there was another one, the ‘new’ one being that of a 16-year-old girl.
Well, my daughter and I didn’t feel at all threatened, but we didn’t feel like we needed to hang around or have a tour, either. So we signed our papers and headed down stairs from the Wardrobe. We noticed that we could see where we were walking even though the only lights turned on were in the Wardrobe, and it was very dark all around. We could see into other rooms, where the curtains were opened, and some were very nicely appointed rooms, with cushy vintage beds and beautiful velvety comforters and such. A few rooms were very lived-in rooms, with children’s toys and a tv in one. As we went down the stairs, we had to be careful not to touch the stove pipe coming up from the wood stove right by the stair case, which apparently heated the part of the house where they were staying.
We walked out past Frankenstein and a white wolf kind of creature with large teeth to the curtained entrance. Then we left the house, walking past the vintage hearse, and got in our car to go home.
My daughter was very pleased with her costume choice, so we talked about that on the way back to town, and we talked about the house too.
We both decided we were not exactly sure what to think. It was definitely odd. A beautiful woman, with young children, apparently living in and running the haunted house (she did mention her husband, too), leading tours of the house whenever a group comes by for one, hosting guests for a Bed & Breakfast, and recently venturing out into the teenager sleepver events (she was to have 10 16-year-old girls staying over one night last weekend), while also collecting and renting costumes out of the Wardrobe.
I’m not wanting to open up a can of worms with the whole haunting idea – it just happens to be part of the story. We believe in spirits (demons and angels) but I can’t find anything to prove to me, at least scripturally, that there would be ghosts separated from their human bodies. That’s not the point here, exactly – and I don’t think we need to try to prove any of the various points to each other… I’m not looking for that kind of contention, please….
The point is that it just seemed such an odd way to live, especially for me, who simply can not do without sunshine and light. I think the Spirit of Christ in us lit our path in the house, as I mentioned before, and kept us safe. If the darkness wasn’t enough, all of the images of dark things that were around would be overwhelming for me. I kept my eyes straight ahead for the most part, so I’m not even sure what all was around, except the aforementioned scary mannequins. It left an impression on both my daughter and I, but not a scary one – sort of a sad one, and it had me scratching my head a bit.
It turns out my daughter got a terrible cold (she was already coming down with it, but it got lots worse) so she couldn’t participate in her talent show – it’s hard to sing with no voice… Disappointing, yes (for both she and I), but she was OK with it. (And since we’d only paid $45 for the rental instead of $65, I didn’t feel quite so bad about her not getting to use the costume, too).
And when it came time to return the costume, the lady from the house was actually in town, so I didn’t have to go all the way back out to get it to her. I believe she said she was at her house in town… maybe they divide their time between the two places??? LOL! I have no idea.
I’m not judging or criticizing the situation at all. It’s just another thing that I found really weird.
And of course, in my book, it’s OK to be WEIRD!
She was a super nice lady, and very helpful. If we find ourselves in need of costumes in the future, we might visit her again.
Especially if it’s between January and August, when the usual places have their stuff put away. You just never know what you’re going to find when you go looking for costumes in May!
*** Join me in the weirdness… I KNOW you’ve encountered SOMETHING weird somewhere this week!! Leave me a comment and tell me all about it! ***
