How many times have you trapsed blindly through a corporate haunted house whose theme was a collection of gore, guts, blood, evil clowns, more gore, and some lunatic running around with a chainless chainsaw?

It’s the same thing year after year. Pick out the cluster of tweener girls that are huddled together like a pack of hamsters in a box full of rattle snakes, follow them around, torment them mercilessly. Meantime, your guide, if there is one, leads you from one uninspired room to the next.

Here is the “bloody operation gone wrong”. Next is the “Freddy Krueger” room. Next is an Alien chomping on a space marine. Wait…what?

There was a time…1974, I think, when your friendly neighborhood haunted house was populated by Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, and their pet bats. Sure, some folks raised an eyebrow, but times were changing, people were loosening up a little, and if two middle-aged men wanted to live together, then who really cared? But back to the subject. Whole flocks of ghosts roamed the dark, cobwebbed halls where black cats and witches danced around cauldrons and maybe you’d even see The Creature From The Black Lagoon because you just never knew where that guy was going to pop out from. There were hollow-eyed skeletons and white-faced zombies, and graveyards, and all manner of unseen spirits. Sadly, focus moved away from the scare, instead concentrating on the shock.

“Haunted” has been replaced with “horror”, and there’s a distinct difference. Horror denotes “an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking”[reference.com]. Haunted simply means “inhabited or frequented by ghosts”[reference.com]. Sort of the difference between a midnight stroll through a cemetery and being electrocuted by a malfunctioning automatic toothbrush.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for a good shock, but the movie’s getting old. This fixation on grossing out the audience has taken over. Violence replaced the gothic. It’s much more difficult to evok and maintain a sense of apprehension or full blown dread than to simply target a knot of hamster girls and scream “Rrraaaaahhrr!!”

Being shocked isn’t being scared. You may fear the shock that you know is coming, but after the shock, everything’s over. That is, until the next one. And the next. After a while it just all runs together.

I want to experience a haunting. I want chills to run up and down my spine. I want to have time to appreciate a really well done prop. You should experience a haunted house. The only example I can think of is Disney’s Haunted Mansion. It plays with you. It doesn’t throw you down on the bed without so much as a kiss and scream “Rrrraaaahhhrr” in your face.

There are usually two or possibly three big “horror hotels” or “industrial nightmares” in any given medium-sized city, and they’re often run by the same company. The props are generally static, usually horrific, and every couple of rooms are sparsely peppered with actors earning minimum wage. A quick shock, then herd the sheep through the chute to the next blood-drenched room. <yawn>

Is it any wonder why home, carport, basement, and yard haunts are so popular? Their focus is on the scare, the creep factor. Not the dollar. Sure, they’ll still torment that cluster of hamster girls because they make it so easy, and because it’s fun. And without so much “blood – raar! – blood – raar!”.

“Did you see that ghost floating in the window? How’d they do that?”
“What’s behind that tombstone, daddy?”
“It’s a werewolf, son. We used to see those all the time back in 1974.”
“Where’d they all go?”
“I think they were hunted down by clowns or something, but they’re making a comeback.”
“I’m glad.”
“Me too.”

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* The phrase “because chainsaws are stupid” was first launched into the Haunter’s Lexicon by the horrible folks at Castle Blood probably back before that one time I saw them at Ironstock and bought a bumper sticker that’s still stuck to my red toolbox out in the shop.

Category: Halloween  

Here is another group of old magazine ads for … stuff from … some time back. If you’ve missed previous installments on this subject, you’ll enjoy these. ::1:: ::2:: ::3:: ::4::
	If by “Banquet” you mean nude drunken civil disturbance. Can you find the third woman in this picture? We wonder if she shares the glazed stare of the copper-haired beauty on the left. “Sweet elixer of life, I hunger for you.”
	I don’t know what this an advertisement for, but judging by the number of phallic symbols, I’d guess it’s either lipstick or corn dogs.
	In a park somewhere in central Florida, a pod of Disney animatronic robots attempts to blend in with the local flora after bludgeoning three imagineers and slipping out an unlocked gate. It wasn’t hard to find them as they all stood perfectly still, one boy slowly pivoting around to swing at the softball hanging from a tree branch.
	Nothing brings out the hearty flavor of molten cheeze whiz and corrugated pig shavings like the zippy taste of Hunt’s Tomato Catsup. But we draw the line at whatever that disturbing green thing is.
	In the future of 1965, your house will come equipped with its own built-in weather radar/anti-commie warning receiver on the roof. Thin sheets of plastic will have the insulating properties of six inches of fiberglass as well as the tensil strength of steel. Friendly sentient snowmen will roam the countryside.

Category: Stuff  

Only 29 more shopping days until Halloween, kids!

Looking for the perfect gift for your favorite haunter, or for your pet zombie who lives in the shed out in the garden? We recommend Dawn of the Dead – The Unreleased Incidental Music Soundtrack.

This is currently at the top of my list of favorite (if not oddest) records, but as much as I admire Mr. Romero, I have to believe that the genius behind this supremely creepy and unusual soundtrack for Dawn of the Dead was rooted more in economics than cinematic brilliance.

The best and most recognizable moments of this CD come from the De Wolf, Rouge and Hudson sound libraries, an unremarkable collection of dusty music commonly used as background fodder for radio and television ad spots of the time. Purchasing the rights to a few pieces of “incidental music” from the collection was a less expensive alternative to having new music written for DOTD.  Not counting original tracks performed by Goblin, that is.  Romero’s choices were so…peculiar, yet they still fit.

My favorite tracks are The Gonk, of course, and the Mall Montage consisting of We are the Champions, Ragtime Razzmataz, Tango Tango, and Fugarock. They’re parodies of themselves and are so cartoonishly over the top that you can’t help but enjoy them in their grim context. Was Romero a genius? Lucky? Or were his tastes so avocado and burnt orange that The Gonk‘s destiny was self-assured?

I’m not a hater, really. I love George, Land of the Dead notwithstanding. And I love this soundtrack. Great noise to supplement endless repeats of Monster Mash at your Halloween party.

By the way, a Gonk is a sort-of furry doll thing with a sordid history.
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Dawn of the Dead – The Unreleased Incidental Music complete track list…

1. The Gonk H. Chappell
2. Cosmogony Part 1 P. Lemel
3. Sinestre E Towren
4. ‘Cause I’m a Man The Pretty Things (P. Reno)
5. Figment S. Park
6. Mask of Death J. Trombey
7. Scarey 1 D. Scott
8. Scarey 2 D. Scott
9. Dark Earth J. Trombey
10. Mall Montage Scene (We Are The Champions), Ragtime Razzamataz, Tango Tango, Fugarock
R. Tilsley, H. Chappell, B. Stoller, D. Scott
11. Barrarge J. Trombey
12. Desert De Glace P. Arvay
13. Sun High S. Park
14. Dramaturgy P. Lemel

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Where can you get your own? Well, try here, or here.

Category: Stuff  

Snug Harbor gathers itself in anticipation of Halloween number two at our new home out in the sticks. Black and orange pumpkin flags flap in the breeze from their poles on the Spook1 Weather Station, bright vanguards of the coming dark circus. At night passersby may notice that our front windows glow a great deal more orange lately, and the sounds of construction whirring and pounding out of Spooky Blue’s shop last long into the night.

However, in the midst of this bustling activity flits a mosquito. Its whine is persistent, and it sounds like “pagan holiday”, “witchcraft”, and “dark side“. Some folks are so frightened of Halloween and its symbols that they simply can’t tolerate them, instead gathering together in church basements to wait out the devil, relieved when it’s finally over with and they can go home and clear a spot for the Christmas tree.

Other folks take some personal responsibility to remind revelers that what we’re doing is fundamentally wrong. Sometimes it’s a friendly note in the mailbox from a neighbor, or possibly a concerned uncle drops by to talk about Leviticus 19:31. Still others might take things a step further and resort to good old-fashioned vandalism.

While vandals and Halloween have entertwining and often entertaining histories that are worth exploring, let’s save it for another time. Are the fears of the Leviticussers justified? Is Halloween evil? I submit that if one’s intent is not evil, then his actions cannot be evil.

Our version of Halloween has been renamed and repackaged many times over the long centuries. Scary sounding people and gods and religions were involved: Druids, Pagans, Samhain. All this Druiding and Paganizing made a lot of Christians angry, not least of whom was the Pope, who endeavored to put a stop to it, and not by means of a friendly letter in the post. Over time and under oppression, their misbehavior settled into a quiet passive-aggressive kind of sedition that remains to this day, though most people don’t know why they’re being seditious and would likely argue the fact, which brings me back to one of my two points. If one’s intent is not evil, then his actions cannot be evil.

Is Halloween steeped with pagan rituals? Sure, why not. Tons of new pagan children are doubtless drafted every October by dressing up as Spiderman or Optimus Prime and going out trick-or-treating. Is Halloween filled with symbolism that glorifies witchcraft, necromancy, casting – um lots, er… frisbeetarianism, and Druiding? Now we get to the meat of this discussion. Certainly we recognize symbols like the witch, a ghost, a bat, and a pumpkin as belonging to Halloween. But what do these represent?

That is the real point. To me they represent … Halloween! Not the other way around. The profile of the witch cut from construction paper and hung in the window is dear to me. It takes me back to fun afternoons that my mother and I spent together making witches and ghosts and pumpkins and bats to hang all over the house with bits of masking tape. A cardboard cutout skeleton on a front door reminds me of a cold rainy morning walking through the doors of S. Ellen Jones Elementary School and gazing up at the big bulletin board by the front office covered with crayon-colored leaves and guarded by that same tall, grinning, cardboard skeleton.

A construction paper witch hanging in my window isn’t a license to promote, advocate, ballyhoo, implement, transact, or otherwise do witchery of any sort. It is a symbol of Halloween and represents something entirely different to me. See what I just did? The witch, like the bat, black cat, skeleton, and Jackolantern are all symbols, objects that as a whole represent the abstraction of Halloween. My Halloween isn’t necessarily someone else’s Halloween. That’s what an abstraction means, and there’s where the trouble starts.

Round about and back again to the original question: Is Halloween evil? The simple answer is: No more so than we make it. In other words, a watermelon isn’t evil because a miscreant spits seeds all over the front porch. Halloween is wrapping yourself up in an autumn quilt and sharing the warmth with your friends and family. If folks can’t understand why all this sharing has to be carried out with the help of paper mache zombies and pumpkins, then I have to wonder if they ever had any fun as kids, or if something ate up all their sense of humor later in life. In any case, if Halloween means something different to them than to me, then that’s their business.

Here’s a final question with meat on its bones. Does Halloween glorify God? You tell me. Share, warmth, family, friendship. Those words all sound a lot like “Love”.

Happy Halloween!

— S. Blue will be on vacation the week of Sep. 24.
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Category: Halloween