Except for when, of course, I do believe. Or did, anyway. It’s been a long time since I hid my head beneath the sheets, terrified to peek out and behold the grim horror that surely awaited me. I could probably have been awarded a medal for my performances in the little girls’ long jump from the light switch to my bed to avoid the gory monster underneath or the 50 yard dash up the basement stairs.
My family loves tales of the otherworldly. My mother and brother faithfully watch psuedo-scientific tv shows about hauntings and child psychics. It seems curious that I don’t share their love of creepy tales, since I do love the fantastic in general, but there are, I think, a few reasons. The thing that encompasses them all is that I grew up in rural Alabama in the 1980s and 90s. Which is to say, that no one assured me that the dead walked free on All Hallow’s Eve or that the woods were full of demons hungry for roast maiden. The woods of my childhood were bright and green instead of ancient and malevolent and the houses were generally built within the last 40 years by the hands of those who loved me or their neighbors. All of the dead that I knew were dearly missed family (although I did assure Papaw and Jesus in my prayers that I didn’t want to see either of them for now…nor any angels *shudder*).
So I think that the kinds of spirits that would have most captured my imagination were not present among the letterman’s jackets of the dead and scratchings on bridges that were the ghost stories of my youth. Besides, they all involved cars and teenagers, which had nothing to do with me. There had once been a suicide in a barn not too far from my house (I seem to remember), but the walk through the cow pastures adjacent would have cleared the air of any devilish portents, and I probably would have gotten distracted by an interesting bug before I got there, anyway. In addition to all of this, my mom was pressured by our church to disallow Halloween during the years when it would have been most important to me, so today I mostly celebrate it as a reason to craft happy gourds and eat candy. And while I’m not a believer in the supernatural, I do love wild stories dearly. I drink in stories of magic, murderous woods and monsters with murky ethics and suspicious grins thirstily. But the illuminating, young, yellow sun of the Tennessee Valley never seemed to allow for witches, child-starved or otherwise, except for perhaps in basements and under beds where it could not reach.
Now I live in a house that has stood on the streets of an old Southern city for 120 years, built by a long-dead person named Neely. The sidewalks are gaslit and torn by rough, elderly tree roots and you can see the brick streets of centuries before peeking through the worn paving in places. In my neighborhood, stone stairs lead around ivy-covered walls to end suddenly in mid-air. Live oaks and magnolias cover the entire area in dappled shadows and break up the penetrating sun of the Gulf Coast. It seems that things more mysterious than ivy might thrive twisting through the wrought iron. It is a very satisfactory place, in short, to celebrate Halloween. It is an old place, that might even have enough of a history about which to complain, and I’m very much looking forward to reveling in the spirit of the season for a bit.
Some Halloween Recommendations:
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
Kelly Link’s stories are deliciously odd and usually disturbing in a very fun way. This is her most recent collection, the first I read and my favorite. There are werewolves and zombies and ghosts, all uniquely imagined. One can read many of her short stories online including “The Specialist’s Hat,” “The Wrong Grave,” and “The Faery Handbag.”
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
I’m sure this one is recommended all over the place, but I loved it, so I list it anyway. You can listen to him read the entire book, a video a chapter, on its website.
Supernatural
Supernatural is a favorite of ours, and early season episodes are just the right things for Halloween. (It’s not that the later seasons aren’t awesome, just pursuing the story arch as opposed to awesome ghouls.) Some of the best episodes I remember for a spooky night in are “Asylum,” “Scarecrow,” “Roadkill,” and “Bedtime Stories.” This show helps me appreciate America’s own scary legends along with older tales.
Doctor Who
There are some great spooky episodes of Doctor Who. A few that come to mind are “Blink,” in which a creepy race of stone angels attack, “Tooth and Claw,” which involves Queen Victoria and a werewolf, and “The Unquiet Dead,” in which ghost-like beings haunt Dickens. All of them are available streaming from Netflix.
As you can see, I don’t have any favorite Halloween movies, so feel free to recommend them for me.
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