Button-down D.C. seizes the day to really wig out

So, Halloween in the office.

Maybe there's a bowl of candy at the front desk or a tissue-paper bat hanging limply from the acoustic tile ceiling. Perhaps the receptionist wore her little black cat lapel pin or the procurement guy is wearing plastic fangs.

Or maybe, when you rode the elevator up today and arrived at your desk at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, you walked into an Egyptian palace, passing a hunky pharaoh along the way.

The women at the HHS Center for Medicare and Medicaid, most of whom normally plod through piles of Medicaid form CMS 10095NOMNC (or something equally scary) in sensible suits, are gliding along the darkened hallways glammed up as Egyptian queens with kohl-smudged eyes and golden snakes swirling up their arms.

This is a time of year when a special kind of Washingtonian thrives. We know you're out there: bureaucrats, lawyers, doctors, politicians, teachers and other brainy, somber souls with serious lives and careers 364 days a year.

But in this town of blazers and neckties, skirts of an appropriate length and practical shoes, you can't wait to bust out the fishnets and the fake blood, the wigs and capes. Halloween is the day you can let your freak flag fly.

Just ask Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.), who sits through two-hour makeup sessions to transform himself into Frankenstein. His staff Twittered photos of him in the get-up last week, says spokeswoman Kate Dickens, alongside an intern who got roped into the role of his big-haired bride.

Or Edward Stolar, a bespectacled Washington dermatologist who has dressed as a mummy, a gladiator, Igor and Dracula.

These are folks who keep it normal on the outside but are all ghoulish and hot red devil on the inside. And when Halloween rolls around, they delight in the chance to let it all out.

"We all get into it, everyone at the office. It's an eclectic bunch," says William Kelson, a Silver Spring dentist who shocked everyone last year when he arrived at work dressed as the tooth fairy, stockings and all, and wordlessly began filling cavities and crowning molars.

At HHS, there's that entire division that indulges in a public display of its wilder side.

"We've done hero themes -- that was fun. We did the ghosts of administrators past, which was interesting," says Ritia Harvey, an executive assistant in the division who helps organize the annual affair. Seeing everyone let loose and be creative boosts morale in the office and strengthens camaraderie, she says.