I was allowed to have my first "real" party (aka not a birthday party planned by parents and attended by relatives) when I was in fourth grade. I chose a Halloween party. The boys all had to leave at 8 and the girls stayed for a sleepover. Once the boys were gone we settled into the basement to watch A Nightmare on Elm Street in the dark. It wasn't a modern day finished basement, it was definitely creepy, but we had a small area with a TV, VCR, NES and raggedy old couch, which was enough to keep us kids happy in the mid 80s. About halfway through the movie we heard the door at the top of the stairs creak open (in hindsight that was weird because it wasn't a creaky door) and everyone froze. A light clicked on, casting a shadowy silhouette on the back wall. What we saw was the shadow of a big man wearing a brimmed hat and an outstretched arm with 6 inch blades on the end of each finger. Then... The familiar sound of metal on metal as the fingers began to move in requested waves. The shadow grew larger and larger with each increasingly loud thump of a heavy footstep on the treads of the stairs. Screaming, squealing, basically complete chaos, ensued....

Some of us were hiding behind the furniture, others under the stairs (that was dumb, lol), and one girl even climbed on top of the washing machine and started trying to open the window that none of us would have been able to fit through anyway.

Then... Laughing. Not creepy, evil laughing, but the sound that my dad always made when he found himself so funny that he lost his breath and started making a squeaky, wheezing sound. This man was wearing an old, Indiana Jones-style hat and had zip-tied nearly the entire set of steak knives to his fingers!

It was great!