I hate Halloween. Yes, I realize that I’m a week late for this horrid holiday, but, you see, I was hiding under the bed and forgot to take my laptop. So, please excuse my tardiness. Halloween scares me – make that “terrifies.” Halloween terrifies me. (No pun intended.)
This is not a new problem. I have never liked Halloween, even as a small child. I think it might have something to do with all the news stories about children dying from poisoned candy. What, you don’t remember those? Ok, so maybe there weren’t that many, and maybe I never lived anywhere remotely near the areas in question, but that’s why we have news, right, to allow for panic to spread to previously unaffected areas?
If I’m honest, it has nothing to do with the tainted candy and everything to do with the awful masks and costumes and what they represent. Have you seen some of these things? This year I saw where some of them had even been animated. What – because the monsters weren’t bad enough without being able to move? Great, a reason for me to crawl further under the bed!
I do not watch scary movies either. I had a hard time sitting through part of Sleeping Beauty – where the evil queen turns into the dragon. Yeah, yeah, yeah; laugh all you want. Wait until something turns into a dragon and comes to get you. (No, I have no problem separating fantasy, and reality – it could happen.) Then we’ll see who’s laughing. When a trailer for a “thriller” comes on in a theatre, I’m the girl sitting hunched in her seat with her hands over her face, sometimes I even have to ask is it’s over yet because I’ve shoved my fingers in my ears to block out the music. I just get the heebie-jeebies from those trailers. I don’t know what else to call that feeling; something just shudders deep within my soul.
I used to be able to watch some sci-fi like the X-Files, but I can’t even do that anymore. Ugh!
A few years ago I lived down the street from someone who loved Halloween, decorated their house to the nines: lights, blowup thingies, you name it. They started October 1 and, of course, left it up for the entire month. I could avert my eyes when I drove by, but the problem was that they also played the theme music from the Jason movies – LOUDLY. I could hear it in my house with the doors and windows closed. It was awful. I invested heavily in earplugs – I’ll get you the stock ticker later.
When I was a child, my parents tried to be sympathetic to my scaredy-cat behavior, but they just really didn’t get it. Then my mother attempted operant conditioning. One night when I was about 8, my brother and I stayed up to watch the 70s version of Dracula on TV. After the movie ended, my father shut off the television and tucked us into bed. My mother was nowhere to be found. Now, because I was afraid of the dark, the closet, and under the bed (also because I was a bit OCD) I checked the closet and under the bed every night before I went to sleep. That night, though, I was too scared of the closet to look. Instead, I climbed into bed and pulled the covers over my head. After my father had turned out the lights, I heard the closet doors squeak open, and I peeked out from the sheets. My mother came inching out of the closet in a vampire-esque motion, hissing, upper lip pulled back to reveal her teeth. I screamed and wet the bed; my mother got to do laundry. Operant conditioning plan failed.
My nephew, Auz, is a kindred soul as far as Halloween is concerned. The poor little lamb won’t even walk down the Halloween aisle at Party City. I feel his pain.
What does Halloween represent to me? I think it’s about the masks – the violence and horror that go into the thoughts that create them. There’s already enough true evil and ugliness that I just can’t see it as entertainment. I do like seeing the little ones in adorably cute costumes like bumble bees and strawberries and such. Also, I don’t have a problem at all with my friends and family that say that the scariness doesn’t affect them, but for me I think I need to sit this day out.
The Unexpected Life 