Out of Kilter presents:
Halloween: Screams, Fiends, and Chocolate Dreams
By Ken Carpenter
(I have to start out this salute to Halloween with a couple short, sobering sentences. Halloween has not been the same since 2014, when my dear wife Joy passed away that day. She loved Halloween though, so I left the story the same as when I wrote it in 2004, including mention of her.)
Ahhh, Halloween, a gift grom the gods of heebie-jeebies, a time for all good men to degrade themselves more than usual and all good kids to vibrate with excitement and candy-filled quivers. I love it and have since the first time I held out my bad and had a free Idaho Spud tossed into it.
Humans love free stuff, they love scaring people within an inch of a massive coronary, and they love pretending to be something they are not. We were born for Halloween.
The thought that toothless Aunt Mabel’s moldy spirit taking them over obviously scared them witless. They would let the fires go out in their homes and blow out all the candles so that the houses were cold and inhospitable even for ghosts.
Then they would dress up in spooky costumes and roam the streets banging drums, screeching and raising unholy hell so that the starving spirits would perhaps pass them by and hone in on a more accommodating soul.
In medieval times the event of All Saints’ Day was celebrated by Catholic church and since it took place on the same day as Samhain the two celebrations eventually merged into Halloween. The pagan’s hall raising practices seemed like a good idea and an unexpected lot of fun, so they remained popular.
It’s probably no big surprise that the word Halloween was an English word originating from Christian beliefs, based on All Hallow’s Eve, the evening before the Christian holy days of All Saints Day on November 1 and All Souls Day on November Day.
Around the 9th century there was a practice called souling in Europe, where folks roamed around knocking on doors and in return for a piece of sweet raisin bread they would promise to say a prayer for them in return. People back then liked to stack the deck a little bit when it came to salvation, so most everybody was up for a few extra prayers in their corner. Thus, was trick or treating born. It was probably not only difficult but dangerous to soap the windows of the time though, since only the filthy rich had glass, and they were always itching to behead a guy.
The best thing about Halloween, maybe even better than the candy, is the seeing all the little kids in their costumes.
Speaking of the candy, there is probably a 95% chance that adults will buy more treats than they need to give away. Sweet tooths don’t just belong to kids so there has to be a surplus to hide away.
Goblins, pirates, witches, fairies, Elvises, slackjawed yokels, and ghouls all of them crammed into hopefully short packages of grinning greediness. Nobody wants to fill the bag of a six-foot-high scarecrow though, but that happened a few times when I was a kid.
It is almost a shame to scare the live out of costumed tykes. Almost, I said for a good Dad is obligated to improve his children’s nervous system with a nice, scream-inducing fright once in a while. You don’t have to wait for Halloween, but you absolutely can’t let this holiday go by without dishing out some homespun terror.
It can backfire on you sometimes though. i need to walk around with my two boys when they trick or treated, and we once walked toward a shadowy, spookily decorated old house looking for a handout. I was just plotting about how best to take advantage of the surroundings to shiver their innocent little lives when what I thought was a straw dummy jumped out of his chair and screamed at us. He was answered by not two, but three high-pitched squeals of pure horror.
Chastened, I congratulated the wretch on his technique, adjusted the pants I had come so dangerously close to soiling, and kept my frights to myself for the night. Needless to say, the boys were extremely pleased to have heard their poor old Dad screech like a little girl. They said something along the lines of, “See whatcha get, Daaaad”, and snuck up on me with a few squeals for the next week. I did the same thing to them, so eventually we made kind of a truce.
Anyway, I recovered and since my boys are grown up now my poor wife is now the one who peer suspiciously over her shoulder when I appear out of nowhere. She knows how effective a snort can be at the proper time, and she knows Halloween is not to be taken lightly around this neck of the woods.
the problem is, she also knows my nerves aren’t what they use to be, and she has had an evil glint in her eye lately.
Sigh. I wish there was a “rent-a-kid” business around here so a man could scare someone else’s kids without worrying about some big brute pounding him for it.
I suppose I’ll only have to wait a few more years for some grandchildren to get big enough to frighten. I can’t wait.
Meanwhile, my wife and co-workers will have to do. I am sure they will understand.