Halloween is the most magical time of the year to be in New Orleans. By late October, the weather is finally feeling brisk, houses are decorated spectacularly with skeletons and cobwebs, and an enchanting mood sets over the city. Everything feels just a little more dreamlike.

For a few years, I spent my Halloweens visiting a group of friends in New Orleans in their magnificent Victorian-style home on St. Charles Avenue. The house was lavender-colored with huge ceilings, dazzling chandeliers, black wrought-iron lined balconies, and a ghost who, on occasion, left kisses on the downstairs hallway mirror. It was in this larger-than-life house that some of my favorite memories were made, dancing barefoot throughout the night in the hazy smoke of the fog machine to some of our favorite psychedelic songs.