The Cherry Ames Page: Spooks and Pumpkins

Home

Book
Summaries

All About
Cherry

Collecting

Site Index

Resources

Nurse T-shirts and Sweatshirts

ChoiceShirts

Spooks and Pumpkins: Halloween

The person on the spiral stairway, climbing up, would appear any minute. She became icy cold with unreasonable fear.

Her eye caught a glimmer of light outside the door.

"Who's there?" Cherry demanded sharply.

--From Cherry Ames, Island Nurse, p. 125

Pumpkins, cider, murder games, and a few ghosties are all part of Cherry Ames's Halloween celebrations.

Halloween in Hilton

In Hilton, before Cherry started nursing school, one Halloween she and Charlie and their friends rang doorbells all over town and handed pumpkin faces to all the neighbors, who good-humoredly gave them "apples to bob, corn to pop, and Mrs. Pritchard had provided a feast of homemade pumpkin pie and cider" (Student Nurse, p. 7).

A later Halloween celebration is just as small-town idyllic. After catching the thief, saving her patients, and generally fixing everyone's problems during her triumphant return to Spencer Hospital (At Spencer), Cherry relaxes at a Halloween house party at home in Hilton with old pals Gwen Jones and Josie Franklin, and new pals Alan Dodd and David Lane. Of course, Cherry's family--Mom, Dad, and brother Charlie--are on hand, as well as neighbors Dr. Joe and Midge Fortune.

Thinking about having a Halloween party? Click here to find useful party planning tips, recipes, and more!

As Cherry and the Spencer contingent drive up on a perfect autumn night, beneath an orange harvest moon, they're greeted by a huge jack-o'-lantern in the front window, swirling red and gold leaves dancing across the lawn, and a tall, moaning, shrouded apparition rising from behind a clump of dahlias--Midge, decked out in sheets and teetering on stilts.

Mom's prepared roasted turkey and pumpkin pie, and after supper, the group divides up to play "murder"--a Halloween tradition for Midge--with Cherry, David, and Josie versus Gwen, Charlie, and Midge (Alan, sleepy from overeating, is the corpse). Cherry's side wins, of course. After dancing for an hour, the Halloween revelers all settle in the Ameses' cozy living room, drinking apple cider (homemade, naturally), popping corn in the fireplace, and discussing how Cherry neatly wrapped up the mystery at Spencer Hospital.

Halloween Emergency

Cherry spends one Halloween nursing Midge through a bout of food poisoning.

While rushing around to get ready for a Halloween party she was hosting later that evening for her high school friends, Midge grabbed some spoiled food from the refrigerator. Soon afterward, she began to feel dizzy and weak.

Since her father was working at Hilton Hospital, Midge called Cherry, who found poor Midge "trying to imitate the whale getting rid of Jonah" (Cherry Ames' Book of First Aid and Home Nursing, pp. 125-26). Cherry quickly called another doctor, and Midge had to have her stomach pumped. But the party went on anyway, though Midge couldn't attend.

Ghosts and Goblins

While Cherry is working for Dr. Clemuel Brown in the Hudson Valley (Country Doctor's Nurse), she is smack-dab in the middle of the land of Ichabod Crane, the Headless Horseman, and assorted delectable ghosties and goblins of legend.

Before Halloween, her old friend Dr. Lex Upham takes her on a tour of Sleepy Hollow country, and local mayoral hopeful Harry Jenner regales her with stories of ghost ships and eerie apparitions arising out of the mists, to Cherry's delight.

But, alas, when Halloween arrives, instead of waiting to see the ghost of Jeremiah Dobb at Dobbs Ferry, or trying to catch a glimpse of Henry Hudson's ghost ship sailing down the river in the moonlight, conscientious Nurse Cherry spends the holiday working late on billing statements to be sent out to Dr. Clem's patients in the morning and getting ready for an important rendezvous the next day.