As I may have mentioned before, I am easily scared. Birds, bridges, bugs, water, all scary things. Is it any wonder, then, that Halloween is my favorite holiday?
Contrary to Pat Robertson’s assertions, Halloween is not a Satanic holiday, though I suppose some Satanist kids do go trick-or-treating. Everybody likes candy. Halloween has its origins in Celtic harvest festivals, coinciding with their new year, which began on November 1. They called their new year’s eve Samhain, and built giant bonfires, wore animal skins and drank apple cider. This later developed into the holiday we know now, where we put candles in carved pumpkins, wear polyester fairy costumes and drink beer. The next day, the Celts had a big party. Nowadays, we start thinking about Christmas the day after Halloween.
In Mexican culture, they have the festive Dia de los Muertos, a multi-day holiday to celebrate their ancestors. Families gather to eat the favorite foods of their dead relatives, which strangely seem to include pan de muertos (dead bread) decorated with pieces of dough shaped to resemble tibias, and calaveras, which are sugar skulls. It’s a bony day. Some towns have wonderful parades where the participants paint their faces to resemble calaveras and carry slips of paper with prayers for their dead written on them. At the end of the parade is a giant urn into which the paraders toss their prayers. The urn is set on fire and all of the prayers are sent spiraling into the sky. Then they all go drink beer and talk about what to have for Thanksgiving dinner.
Day of the Dead aside, I love a good scary story. I’m forever reading the ghost stories people post on the internet, where an unknown something is looking in the window, grandma calls on the telephone even after she’s been dead for seven years, a demon possesses your neighbor’s cat. They’re probably not true, but then neither was Pet Sematary, and some people think that’s the scariest book Stephen King wrote, but it’s just zombie animals. I think his scariest might have been ‘Salem’s Lot, but really, vampires are so last year. My favorite Stephen King book is Firestarter, but it’s not scary either, just people with good creepy powers that they got from LSD experiments administered by a faceless government agency. I guess the faceless government agency is the scariest part of that one. Peter Straub’s Ghost Story is way up there in terms of scare factor, as is his Shadowland.
Yes, I have probably read every scary book ever published, from Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White to Stinger by Dan Simmons. Some are silly (I’m thinking the Twilight series) some are boring (Hex), and some are out-and-out terrifying. In 1971, I heard about a scary new book and couldn’t wait to read it. I was a poor college student and had to save up the $1.95 for the paperback, and when I finally bought it, I was so excited I started reading it in the car on the way home. That book is still one of my all-time favorites, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. I’ve read it a couple of times since then, and it still scares the bejeebers out of me. My other fave, Ghosts by Noel Hynd is about ghosts (hence the title). I bought so many copies of that book to give away, I didn’t end up keeping one for myself, but it’s on Amazon, so I’m saving up.
A few years ago, D Magazine’s blog gave us some six-word scary stories. That’s pretty hard to do; here are a few of them:
Ma’am, every mimosa has a bottom
All the fried food is people
It’s a quarterback controversy in Dallas
And the best:
We have to move to Houston
(My thanks to Frontburner for those brilliant short stories.)
Maybe you don’t think Houston is scary, but try driving on Highway 59 during rush hour. You’ll change your tune, for sure. Maybe it takes an hour to get anywhere in Dallas, but in Houston it takes at least two, and you’re mad when you get there. Plus it rains every day at 4:00 pm.
When all is said and done, I think ghost stories are the best. That could be because I’ve experienced a few unusual events myself, including phantom pets and things that went bump in the night. What was it that I heard walking up the sidewalk that night, what was in the garage? Are the people who bought our house in St. Louis afraid of the basement, too? What were those glowing eyes looking in a window that was 15 feet off the ground?
I guess if you’re like me, life itself is so scary that we have to hide in some otherworldly idea of not-real scariness in order to get by. It’s safe to read about zombie cats and evil magicians because they’re not really real. Still, Black Dog sleeps on the door side of our bedroom in case a werewolf comes in during the night. The down side of that is that I sleep on the window side, so if a vampire creeps in through the window, I’m toast. It’s still better than thinking about Cheetos or Twitter. Triskaidekaphobia is easier to deal with than trichinosis, but I’ll admit, they’re both tricky.
Halloween is a great kick-off to the holiday season. We have lots of turkey, pie and presents to deal with in the next few months, but first let’s get through this candy business. Happy Halloween y’all!
