A little witch is reaching out to you.

Come closer.

It’s okay, children. You don’t have to be afraid of the middle-aged man dressed in a witch costume. It’s only for Halloween! Doesn’t that make it better? What are you going to be for Halloween this year?

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Like all little kids, I took refuge in the idea of magic.

I was just a little boy who preferred witchcraft. I wanted to join a coven, in fact. Then I found out they have to ask you to join. OK, fine. I’ll skip the coven. It sounds kind of cliquish anyway. But I still want to dress the part.

I discovered the book The Littlest Witch a few weeks before my 5th birthday, which is itself a few days before Halloween. After that I would check it out of the library every year from the Royal Oak Public Library and just savor the story of this small supernatural creature trying to make her way in the world like I was. She seemed a lot like me. My mom finally just bought me a copy. At left you can see I colored in this page.

My mom sewed me a witch costume at my request that year. And we bought a plastic witch hat and mask. I started wearing the dress a month before Halloween, and I would wear it at other times of year, too. I felt so powerful when dressed as a witch! I believed I could change the weather. When a thunderstorm would come, I would run out to the front yard in my witch costume, flapping my cape and casting spells skyward… spells to bring more thunderstorms, of course.

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My dad still sometimes refers to those days. If something weird comes on TV while we’re watching, he says, “Remember when you used to dress as a wizard [sic] for Halloween? And you’d run around the yard? The neighbors said they thought that was so cute,” he chuckles.

He’s just misremembering. I was a wizard one year when I was about 11. I feel like a sellout. I somehow got away with being a witch at ages 5, 6, and 7, but it would not have been okay in anyone’s eyes for an 11-year-old boy to “go as” a female figure for Halloween. I didn’t have the stones to ask my mom to sew me another, larger witch dress. I could tell something was wrong with the crossdressing thing. I had to bottle up my witchiness and save it for when it was safer, i.e., when I was an adult.

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I have dressed as a witch for Halloween every year for the last 10 years. Every year I have high hopes that people will like my witch costume, and every year they do not. But that’s okay, it’s for me.

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I don’t really “do drag” at any other time of the year, maybe throw on a wig here and there for fun, but I don’t desire to wear women’s clothes in the least except for my Halloween witch costume. Just so you know.

Last year I did three variations on a witch costume — I start dressing up about a week before All Hallows Eve — and got a little sick of the fuss myself, so for a party on the night of Halloween, I changed out of my witch dress and devised a “warlock” outfit instead. My mom emailed me later that week to ask what I had been for Halloween… Living thousands of miles away, I had not  been “out” to them as a once-a-year crossdresser, but I got my courage together and I said, “A witch for two nights, and a warlock for the third.”

She responded, “Oh! Send me a picture of the warlock costume!” : (

People don’t usually want to take pictures of me in my witch costumes. I have to force them, or take photographic matters into my own hands.

Would I want to be a witch permanently? Of course I would. But there’s any number of things I’d rather be. Rich. Famous. Heterosexual. Tall. Smart. Good-looking. My spells didn’t work.

Like Samantha on Bewitched, I’ve had to make do with mortal powers… it’s so boring.

To keep things zesty, I vary my witch costume every year.

But I always look simply beautiful. Never monstrous. And I’m sure I won’t look hideous even when I’m 89 and still dressing as a witch every October 31. In fact, it will probably work better! If I’m not too fat, that is.

→ READ AN INTERVIEW WITH SHRAKE ABOUT
HIS WITCH COSTUME TRADITION

Tags: Adrienne Adams, Bewitched, Halloween, Jeanne Massey, Male Witch, The Littlest Witch, Transvestism, Warlock, Witch Costume