Column by Sara Nelle Murphy. E-mail

The thrill of hitting up every house in the neighborhood and bragging about your sack full of candy, the excitement of dressing up and believing you actually were a Disney character. Poking around in the pumpkin patch, hoping to see “The Great Pumpkin” from Charlie Brown.

This is the Halloween of my youth, and I miss the magic. It seems that once I became too old to go door to door that the essence of Halloween changed. Instead of funny, silly, or scary costumes, the general standard, for girls at least, became sexy costumes. Instead of going door to door for candy, it became going from party to party.

It’s not that Halloween has lost its excitement; there is still plenty of fun to be had at any age. I still put a lot of creative effort into my costume, and I have taken my little brother around from door to door, trying to vicariously recapture the fun.

Now Halloween has become a night of mischief and mayhem. Lexington is a great place to be if you want to get some Halloween thrills. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” dance downtown offers a chance to step inside the famous music video and to witness a massive zombie party. The midnight showing of “Rocky Horror Picture Show” at the Kentucky Theatre gives you the license to dress as eccentrically as possible, with the only rule being that enough is never enough, and you can never be too over-the-top. So go crazy, but have some good, safe fun.

Halloween is the time to bring out the inner kid, and to get your grown up kicks too. And if you run into me, I’ll be happy to do the “Time Warp” again.