Here we are, on the very doorstep of Hallowe’en! The hills of western Pennsylvania are gorgeous these days. Driving into town this afternoon, I felt I was in Lothlorien, all the slopes around me aglow in yellow. What a strange fall it’s been, huh? The leaves took their time about beginning to change, as if they were hanging onto summer. Anyway, we had a very fine jack-o’-lantern carving party the other night:

October 26, 2013

I’ve been reading October Dreams again, that greatest of all Hallowe’en anthologies — that’s the one I’ve so often written about — the one that contains not only stories but Hallowe’en memories by the various authors. The stories are generally superb, but the memories are what sets this book apart from others of its kind. This is a holiday about memories and nostalgia, and this book delivers!

Shelley’s creation seems to be demanding to know who drank all the coffee.

Synchronicity surrounds October Dreams this year. Back at the beginning of the month, my friend Nick in the Midwest went to his bookshelf and pulled the book out for reading this month. Nick is reading it little by little, year by year; each October, he savors a few more of the stories and the memories. With the book in his hand, he went to his computer, and there he found e-mail from me saying, “It’s time to get October Dreams out again, huh?” But it gets better. Last night I re-read (from that book) the story “Boo,” by Richard Laymon, which I still contend is the best short story ever written in the English language. I seriously do not know another one that has it all in the way this story does. So I re-read it late last night, when the house was dark and quiet — a wonderful experience. Today I sent e-mail to Nick extolling some of the virtues of that story — I assumed he’d read it long ago. But no: he’d read it for the very first time just a few days ago! So my comments were perfectly timed.

Ryan’s pumpkin, on the other hand, fully intends to destroy and devour all humankind. This jack-o’-lantern is not our friend.

Anyway, I commend to you again October Dreams, edited by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish . . . and in particular the story “Boo,” by Richard Laymon.

My own jack-o’-lantern is the Spirit of Hallowe’en, with his merry eyes and wide grin. My wife describes this face as belonging to a wild, jolly, silly, dangerous, friendly, insane, companionable arsonist who may set your house on fire. I think this one drank all the coffee. This is also the largest pumpkin I’ve ever carved. Even hollowed out, he weighs a ton.

Speaking of Nick, you don’t want to miss his latest post on the BLACK GATE web site! It’s an ideal read for this Hallowe’en week, all about (among other things) spook houses and why they appeal to (some of) us. Here it is:

The Weird of Oz Wishes You a Happily Horrifying Hallowe’en

(Notice that Nick is with me in spelling “Hallowe’en” the right way. Let’s remember that elided “v” — and the “even”/”evening” before All Saints Day.)

Things that go bump in the night

On the subject of spook houses: I’ve always loved them. In my hometown when I was a kid, a local service club would put one on each year — an elaborate affair in one of the old buildings near or on the Square, with lighting and sound effects, gruesome mannequins, strange surfaces underfoot in the darkness, and costumed actors leaping out at you in lurid flashes. I would always get my dad to take me.

October 26, 2013

At the county fair in the summer, it fascinated me that spook houses could be contained in a trailer and hauled from town to town. Those delighted me, too, though sometimes their spookiness was mixed with elements of perspective disorientation and general weirdness — upside-down rooms, halls of mirrors and of transparent plastic, slanted floors, and tunnels that rolled like barrels.

Don’t you think there should be Hallowe’en fairs in October, similar to county fairs in July? The carnival people could all come back and set up again, with games built upon eeriness and oddity . . . with sideshows, enhanced funhouses, and scary rides! It could still be an agricultural fair — autumn is harvest season! There could be prize-winning apples, pumpkins, jam, and pies in the exhibition building. Why don’t they do that? They’d make a killing. Well, I mean, a fortune!

This is cool: we have the ideal setup for enjoying jack-o’-lanterns. They inhabit a table outside the window, out in the dark and the cold that they prefer; but they peer in at us with their flickering eyes, which they also love to do.

An intriguing discovery we made this year was the album Black Rider, by Tom Waits. It’s strange, but it’s ideal music for this holiday, especially as background for a Hallowe’en party . . . or just for atmosphere, for music to admire jack-o’-lanterns by. Julie made us a fantastic playlist including this one and some appropriate selections from Saint-Saens, Berlioz, and Mussorgsky. (I have to give a credit here to Michael Mayhew and Joshua Mertz in the book Harvest Tales & Midnight Revels: Stories for the Waning of the Year, who pointed us to some of this music, and who offer not only a bookload of great tales, but also suggestions on how to throw a Hallowe’en story party — which they did; which, over a ten-year period, resulted in the stories that compose their book.)

I had a challenging task this past week: portraying our Lord as a part of our church’s entry in the local Hallowe’en Parade. All frivolity aside, it was a humbling and pretty scary experience — to be representing Him before the eyes of the whole town! What do you do with your face? How do you move? I tried to look tranquil, joyful, warm, and inviting; I tried to get my expression to glow with wonder, to make as much eye contact as I could with individuals in the crowd, and to reach out as if urging them to come with me. It was a new experience: a Hallowe’en costume that scared ME a little. But it was good — a reminder to me that that’s what we Christians are called to do all the time. We put on His garments; we wear His face, walk on His feet, and use His hands as we go into the world. Yes, there is Gospel in October, and I was Jesus for Hallowe’en.

Well, we’re winding down for the night here. The jack-o’-lanterns outside the window have gone dark — but they’re there beyond the curtain, biding their time.

In that post on the BLACK GATE site, Nick’s post, which I do very much urge you to read if you like this time of year, Nick talks about how the sound of dripping water, recorded on an album of spooky noises, scared him as a kid more than any other sound on the record, even though many of them were more overtly threatening.

And that reminds me of a memory from Japan. Yes, the power of sound to frighten . . . A close friend there told me of a dripping faucet in the depths of an old city house where she lived as a child. It was a long building, its parts constructed at different times, so there was a ways to go from her bedroom to the bathroom. And when she was small, that dripping faucet made the trip so scary that she would avoid it for as long as she possibly could. For the droplets of water, you see, had voices, tiny voices that spoke in the dark. My friend and her sister couldn’t agree on just what the voices said, but these were the words they each heard (I can’t remember which girl held which theory, so I’ll just call them A and B):

A: Sabishii yo! Kowai yo! (I’m lonely! I’m scared!)

B: Itai  yo! Iyada yo! (It hurts! No!)

[The Japanese iyada is hard to translate. I’ve rendered it as “No!” It’s what people — and very often children — say when they object to something, when something scares them or is otherwise extremely disagreeable. It’s emotionally charged, often said in combination with a physical shrinking away.]

So you can imagine how hard it was for those little girls to descend the stairs, to tiptoe along the cold floorboards of the lower hall to the bathroom while the small voices echoed somewhere far off in the dark yet not so far off, calling out those words.

Remember these fellows, from the early days of this blog? I thought you’d like to see them again. I met them on my first visit to Pittsburgh, on the top floor of the Cathedral of Learning. Perhaps they are making a commentary on the sum of man’s learning; it is the wrong thing to dedicate a cathedral to.

Happy Hallowe’en 2013!