Why anyone likes to be scared on purpose is beyond me. This time of year, while many of you truly embrace “spooky season” with your haunted houses, horror movies, and terrifyingly realistic Freddy Krueger costumes, I am perfectly content to enjoy my happy little PG version of Halloween.
When the still of the night is interrupted by the sounds of shards of glass hitting the hardwood as an ax murderer shatters our window, we are too busy springing up to wield the baseball bat that’s kept hidden under the bed for occasions like this to stop and realize that it might actually just be a few perfectly harmless cubes dropping from the icemaker into the empty bin.
Or the innocuous robot vacuum, making its way across the living room, just as it has been programmed to do every evening, terrifying us nonetheless. Things that go bump in the night send our anxious minds into overdrive, even if those things are household appliances.
We avoid anything that jumps at us unexpectedly like the plague. Just imagine what a surprise encounter with a chainsaw-revving, Jason mask-clad employee stepping from behind tall corn, stalking into our path in pitch dark would do to us if the “cute” little green tree frogs that hide in our planters and leap forth with wild abandon at the exact moment we bend down to water it nearly send us into cardiac arrest. “Path of Panic,” “Field of Fear,” “Trail of Terror” — call them what you will, those after-dark corn mazes are going to be a hard pass for us wimps.
And as for you who adorn your homes with those straight-from-you-know-where, motion-activated Halloween decorations that pop up at unassuming trick-or-treaters, please forgive me if I karate chop the spider that drops down from your crepe myrtle or ninja kick the witch that springs from behind your mums. It’s reflexive and I simply cannot help it.
And maybe it’s because I’m still working through childhood trauma induced by the flying monkeys from “The Wizard of Oz,” or the time that my mom let me watch “Cujo” (and spent the rest of the night carrying our 9-week-old Jack Russell terrier around wearing oven mitts), but I’ll also be sparing myself from sleepless nights and skipping any movie scarier than “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”
I viewed “Jaws” enough times in my youth to forever steer clear of the ocean after dusk. It took one time of watching “The Shining” to automatically hear Jack Nicholson’s voice in my head and get shivers down my spine anytime I encounter someone named Johnny.
One screening of “The Exorcist” at a birthday party sleepover in middle school was enough to make me say a fervent prayer over my infant daughter every time she spit up. Heck, I’ve never even seen “It,” and still know to put a good football-field distance between myself and any sewer grate.
It’s safe to say that every horror movie I’ve ever seen has scarred me for life. Thus, I will be scrolling right past all the “Scream” movies on Netflix this Halloween and opting instead for something that’s right on my level of “scary.” It’ll be a tough call between “Casper the Friendly Ghost” and “Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween,” and I’ll still watch with all the lights on.
We should also address modern-day Halloween costumes. What happened to the days when the scariest thing on the street on Oct. 31 was a kid draped in his mama’s white bed sheet with cutout holes for his eyes?
Nowadays, one trip to Spirit Halloween is enough to send someone like me to the grave that all the characters depicted on the costume packages apparently arose from. For the sake of my own nerves, I’ve had to set firm costume-selection ground rules for my 7- and 10-year-olds: nothing that involves blood, monsters, ghouls, goblins (or anything otherwise undead), lethal weapons (real or fake), red glowing eyes, green glowing eyes, yellow glowing eyes, orange glowing eyes, red-headed dolls in overalls, killer clowns (or any clowns for that matter), and really anything that would generally qualify as scary whatsoever.
My kids whined that that just left costumes that are “cute,” and that they’re too old to be “cute,” and scoffed at my suggestions of perfectly great, coordinated get-ups. I truly don’t understand why they would prefer “walking dead zombie cheerleader” and “demented grim reaper of doom” to Albert Einstein and Marie Curie or Gandhi and Mother Teresa. After all, the only thing more frightening than the real, on-screen Ghostface, Chucky, Michael Myers, or any one of the infamous horror protagonists is dozens of miniature versions hyped up on sugar running amok through your typically peaceful neighborhood under the cover of darkness on the spookiest day of the year.
I hope you brave (and maybe a little twisted) folks who delight in these sorts of things have a terrifyingly terrific time on All Hallows Eve. I just have one request: please approach us Hallo-weenies with an abundance of caution. We tend to scare a little easy.
Read CityView Magazine’s “Arts & Culture” October 2024 e-edition here.