Written by William Taub and directed by Timothy Bond

Mickey is alone putting on makeup and adjusting her Witch costume for Halloween night. She listens to the radio as she twirls around as a unknown figure watches her, the figure’s hand pressed against the glass.

Mickey goes to the changing screen and it falls revealing a mummified figure. She angrily shrieks at her cousin, Ryan. “Ryan, this time you’ve gone too far.” Ryan rushes in dressed in a ren faire type costume. The hat has a backwards attached the back with a feather on top. Ryan sarcastically throws a barb back to his cousin “Hey, when I said you could bring a date to the party butt..”

Ryan starts laughing, basking in his park and reveals the mummified figure to be his friend, Larry who is in pre-med.

Ryan tries to make the case to his cousin that having a Halloween party is good promotion for the store that previously loomed in fear due to Uncle Lewis’s prior ownership. “It puts gas in the curse mobile” Ryan tries to dissuade Mickey from worrying telling her that the vault that holds the cursed objects are off-limits.

 As they make their downstairs to the centre of the party, Jack Marshak is in the background, entertaining two women dressed as Houdini.

Larry and a unknown party guest ignore the sign barring the basement off limits. Larry turns the power off hoping to frighten everyone. The power goes off just as Jack is beginning a tarot card reading and pulls the card of Death. The crowd jumps.

Jack is quick with a joke to the anxious crowd “That’s why I prefer magic, technology is so undependable.

Larry and his friend, find a glowing crystal ball and decide to call up spirits. “Let’s call up, Elvis” Larry exclaims to his friend. As Larry challenges the spirits to answer, the ball turns to a bright green scaring both of them. They run upstairs almost knocking over Ryan who came down to fix the power. Ryan chides them for not listening to him about the sign and sends them upstairs.

The glow starts to expel glowing fog and starts the shake the building’s foundation prompting everyone to flee.

Jack goes downstairs to retrieve the ball and asks Ryan to draw a pentacle around the nearby desk. “Those friends of yours that played around with my ball, threw out a psychic line and hooked something” he glares at Ryan exasperated. Mickey and Ryan stare back at him in confusion “There are people who think Halloween is a kid’s game but it is the one night a year where spirits of the dead can roam the Earth with freedom.”

Jack is a perfect vehicle for the show’s exposition but Wiggins delivers the lines with such conviction it feels effortless

Jack goes outside to clear his head afer the incantation and runs into a young girl who appears lost. The girl leads Jack

The mist rises up and flows up the staircase

After Jack realizes the little girl is leading them in circles, he stops and informs her “This little trick or treat game is over.” The girl looks surprised and tries to convince him, he agrees only for her to trick him and trap him behind a gate in an alley. The girl transforms into a creature and expresses her disappointment that he was so easily tricked. Jack realizes that Lewis is behind the scheme.

Uncle Lewis pleads with Ryan “I couldn’t hurt you if I tried” Lewis tries to convince Mickey and Ryan that he has come to make amends and tells them of his wife’s murder.

The music is a tense ambience as Lewis lead the two to his wife’s bead were her dead body law. The composer does a wonderful job with the hauting score.

Lewis tells them that the amulet of Zoar, one of the cursed objects in the vault, can help free her trapped spirit. Lewis suggests that it will both end the curse on the objects and his wife.

Jack laughs at his misfortune behind the gate “Well done, Marshak, you really walked into this one” he says talking to himself A car stops and two men step out and approach the imprisoned Marshak. “What is this road show at the bird man of Alcatraz” The man muses to his companion and Jack.

Unclew Lewis now alive again thanks to the cursed amulet meets the creature outside and they get into a hearse and dive away.  

Jack mocks the two men

Mickey reads in n a book, that Uncle Lewis needs a body to inhabit before sunrise in order to escape Hell.

The creature whose name is revealed to be Greta is with Lewis at a nearby mortuary looking for a recently deceased body to inhabit.

Lewis stumbles on blind luck when a man delivering a body from the Metro Hospital is ambushed by Lewis and is knocked over by a large crate.

Greta puts both Ryan and Mickey under a trance and seals them in coffins

The writing does not age well as both Jack and Ryan refer to Greta in derogatory manners calling her both a dwarf and midget due to her stature. The series was a product of its time despite the thirty year old episode, this does not age like fine wine grinding to a hault under a modern lens.

After he frees Ryan and Mickey, Jack tells them Greta is actually a demon and suggest that they might have a chance to stop Lewis if they can slow him down and distract him before the spell is finished.

Ryan and Mickey turn the power off tricking Lewis that it is not yet dawn, they reveal they tricked up by opening the curtains causing him to evaporate into nothingness.

“Ill say this the man can make an exit” Jack quips as he tries to gather his strength back. I’m glad that even almost being sent to hell, Jack Marshack can deliver a one liner like the best of them.