Barbara Quayle sat at the end of the bar, self-conscious. Her hands and arms were wrapped, her face covered by a white mask.

"Take off your mask. Halloween is over," a man yelled at her from the other end of the bar.

She tried to ignore him. He got louder.

"Did you hear what I said? Halloween was last night."

But Quayle couldn't take off her mask. It was part of her.

With burns to more than 60 percent of her body, Quayle's face was covered by the mask to protect her fresh skin grafts -- the first of more than 20 to rebuild her nose, her face.

Halloween is a celebration of the devilish and dirty, the disfigured and deformed -- a time to don ghoulish masks and makeup. But for Quayle and others whose bodies have been scarred by fire, it can be a difficult day that reminds them of the permanent masks that the flames have left behind.

"Halloween," Barbara Quayle says, "is not one of our favorite days."

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JUST STAYING HOME

Every year, the day of trick-or-treat stirs emotions for burn victims and their families. Most people can walk down a street unnoticed. But after you've been burned, you're on display to the world whenever you go out in public.

"People stop, turn and look. And some of them feel a need to ask questions, invade your privacy," says Amy Acton, 43, who heads the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors in Grand Rapids, Mich.

"Halloween intensifies that feeling for a lot of people," Acton says. "There are many who just won't go out that day. They don't want to bring any more attention to themselves."

Some, she says, use a "sick sense of humor" to get through it.

Actor Robert David Hall of CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" says he believes he would use humor if he saw one of those ghoulish masks.

Hall, who plays the CSI coroner, had both legs amputated in 1978 after he was hit head-on by an 18-wheeler driven by a man who was drunk. He survived the impact and was trapped in his car when the gas tank exploded, burning him over 65 percent of his body.

"I go days, sometimes weeks, without ever thinking about it," he says. While Halloween is not a particular trigger of memories for Hall, he admits to having overcome his feelings when dealing with a storyline that requires his character to work on a burned body.

"It's a little too close for me," he says. "It is one of those defining moments of my life. It's always there — but it doesn't own me anymore."

Occasionally, he has to deal with the "kids and drunks" problem. "Kids, in their innocence, ask all kinds of questions," Hall says. "And then there are the drunks. I have had a drunk look at me and ask, `What the hell happened to you?'"

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BEAUTY REDEFINED

"We are not victims," Amy Acton says. She sounds definitive.

Her organization works to help burn survivors gain the knowledge they need to cope with re-entering society and dealing with the stares and the questions.

Acton was in college, working a summer job at a marina, when she was burned. She was pushing a boat when its mast caught on a tension wire. The electrical burn ran down one side of her face and across different parts of her body.

"I became much more attuned to what the media is putting out there about beauty," she says.

Many who have burns, particularly facially disfiguring ones, find the hardest part is coming to terms with two kinds of scars -- the physical, yes, but the emotional kind too.

Quayle was 33 when her car was rear-ended and the gas tank exploded. Her boyfriend, who was driving, was pulled from the wreckage. But rescuers didn't initially see Quayle inside. By the time she was spotted through a break in the flames, she had been badly burned.

In the three decades since, she has worked to help others deal with life-changing burns. She shared her story at a recent three-day workshop in Pennsylvania.

"Halloween is coming up, and we talk about how we feel about it," she says.

Quayle has heard it all over the years about her "mask." Her answer is to address people: Smile and talk about it.

But both Quayle and Acton know it takes time to get comfortable.

"I don't see beauty in a Halloween mask. I see evil and mean," Acton says. "But the minute you see a burn survivor and connect with them, there's the beauty."

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Chelsea J. Carter is an asap reporter.

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