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You guys, it is Aug. 12 when I’m writing this and just a day earlier I was shopping and saw Halloween candy out on the shelves of Hy-Vee.

This makes me entirely far too happy for a 50 year old man, but as a person that continually complains about how quickly stores put up their Christmas stocks, it gives me hope for a spookier future.

Not that I don’t like Christmas. I just always found it mildly irritating that I would have to start looking at the stuff when Halloween hadn’t even reached us yet. Show some respect to those of us stuck in a perpetual state of immaturity.

In case you haven’t figured it out, Halloween is by far my favorite holiday and it’s been that way for a long time as it follows a lot of my other interests: ghosts, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, witches, vampires and the list goes on and on.

There’s just something about the darker side of the supernatural and legend that I’ve always found interesting and, now that I think about it, probably speaks a little bit to my love of history.

After watching movies like the “Lost Boys” and reading Stephen King’s “Salem’s Lot,” I started looking into the legends of vampires more, especially into the history of the real Dracula — Vlad Tepes, who is still considered to be a hero among those in various parts of Romania for his stand against the invading Turks in the 1400s.

Granted, it was a stand marked by fairly gruesome circumstances and he did have some pretty harsh rules, but there is no doubting that he was an interesting man of history.

But that is not the point of this column. It’s the fact that I have so many amazing memories from Halloween, like trick or treating in a snowstorm while trying to breath through my plastic mask, gladly suffering the tongue cuts brought about by the plastic mask and its poor excuse for a breathing hole.

Countless haunted houses, horror movie marathons with friends or sitting down to read “The Amityville Horror” for the umpteenth time leading up to the day itself — all of it has added to a lasting love affair with the holiday.

It’s heightened all the more by the season itself — often chilly with leafless trees that carry an unnatural tone of the wind through its branches, marked by the shallower days that allow night to creep in all too soon.

It lends a theme to the day leading up to the night and the night itself where the shadows come alive. The night is made for stories around a campfire; stories that are oftentimes half fun and half terrorizing and that coax the nerves into believing something lies just beyond firelight’s edge.

It’s an itching at the back of your neck that refuses to go away, but at the same time you kind of don’t want it to because that’s the night and the holiday itself. Us fans live for the light touch of possibility.

I for one have always liked looking over the shoulder trying to identify the twig snapping or whether or not the other sound is the wind or breathing.

In all, it’s the suspense of the night that brings it all together. It’s a thin veil between fact and fiction, real life and legend . The footsteps in the night, the wings against the moon, the shape lost at the corner of vision.

Was it even there or was it just a figment of the imagination?

Was it the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown?

From here we’ll march steadily toward the night of shadows where the ghosts and goblins come out to play. The candy made available now, in the heart of August, only heightens that excitement.

It means the ghouls will soon be creeping through the murk of starless skies and the witches will be flitting about the ethereal fabric of Luna’s rays.

However, before the night of dancing spirits is upon us, the true question has to be considered. Perhaps it’s the most horrific answer we have to find during the season of sin — how many bags of candy does one buy and will they make it to the actual night?