Welcome to The Moth Podcast, I'm Sarah Austin-Geness, executive producer of The Moth and your host

for this episode. Halloween is a time for a lot of things. It's a time for candy, scary movies,

and spooky lawn decorations. It's a time for kids trick-or-treating door-to-door and adults going

to parties in perhaps hastily thrown together costumes. If you're in New Orleans, you may be headed

to The Witch's Ball, or maybe you're happy to just stay at home and hand out candy.

Halloween can also be a time of exploration or declaration, adorning yourself in a way to

better show the world who you really are. In this episode, we've got two stories about Halloween

that bite a little deeper than plastic vampire fangs. First up is Sophia Tomarkin. She told

this at a Philadelphia story slam where the theme of the night was appropriately spooky. Here's

Sophia live at The Moth. So, born in a Soviet Union, Soviet Union was criticized for many things.

I personally criticized it for the lack of sweets, candy, and bubblegum. So when I arrived in 1989

in November, I was really amazed how every office we went to had balls of candy with amazing

wrappers. And every time I asked, what's going on? Why? There's candies everywhere. I was told

it's Halloween. So I'm thinking, is this a person that just runs around and distributes candies?

It's like Santa Claus. I don't know what everybody's saying. Then somebody had pity on me and

explained that there's a holiday in America where you're given candy. I mean, this is like

better than winning a million dollars today, for sure. So I'm thinking when is this going to happen?

So it's in November. So there's a October 31st. Are you kidding me? I have to wait 11 month,

the deprived child from Soviet Union. Can't they give it to me now? No, apparently it's only one day.

So I say, okay, how do I go about it? So I'm explained. You have to have a costume. That's a problem.

And you have to have a special word that you say. So we don't speak English. So somebody

explains to me, you have to say trick or treat. Well, I don't know what anyone's saying. So I thought,

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