What scares you?

It's Halloween today and I can imagine that many people across the US certainly don't want or need anything else to scare them. Real life is scary enough as it is. And then I'm thinking of all the poor little kids who have the costume and the Trick and Treat pail and nowhere to go. Mother Nature can certainly disrupt our frail human plans, can't it?

But because it is Halloween I'm thinking about what I'm scared of. Mostly it's silly things, primeval things like the dark and spiders. I don't know why I'm scared of the dark but I still have to sleep with my door open a crack and light coming in from the hall. When I'm in a hotel room I have to open the drapes enough to see around the room.

 And spiders...i know they are good and helpful and I shouldn't be scared, but I am. Of course there were a couple of times when I should have been scared like the time I carried out a big spider in a glass with just a sheet of paper between me and it and discovered from the photo we took that it was a brown recluse. And once in Australia I went to the bathroom at a national park, closed the door and a huge, large, very, very big Huntsman spider, about 4 inches across and hairy, crawled and sat on top of the door. I had visions of it dropping onto my hand if I tried to open the door but didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a restroom. My heart was certainly beating fast as I pulled that door open, inch by inch, then ran for my life, convinced that the spider was sitting on my shoulder laughing....

A writer's imagination is sometimes dangerous. It is prone to embellishing reality and presenting a worst-case scenario.  Oh, and I'm scared of moths. But not snakes or sharks. I have swum with baracudas. I have stood on narrow mountain ledges. Makes no sense. How about you. What scares you most?

Desperately seeking something.

We have a guest visiting from England and she was enthralled that people here put up lights for Halloween, decorate their front yards with tombstones and ghosts and generally get into the spirit long before the event.

"You should see Christmas," I told her. If you don't have lights all over the house, Santa leaping on the roof-top and animated snowmen in the front yard you are dubbed a grinch. So why do we go overboard about holidays here? We must be desperately seeking for something--my guess is that we lack the pomp and traditions of older nations--we don't have a week of New Year madness like they do in China, we don't have Carnival like Rio or like much of Europe. Former religious holidays have lost much of their meaning and power,  so we need to make the most of what we have.

I think humans have an inborn desire for feasts, celebrations, especially celebrating the passing of the seasons of the year. So we're just imitating those old Celts. Our spring festival is Easter with eggs and the Easter bunny, our summer festival is Fourth of July and red white and blue parades, our fall festival is Halloween and our winter solstice is Christmas and/or Hannukah.

So do you think we go overboard here? Are we desperately seeking something we no longer have?

It's that Time of Year Again!

I've just enjoyed a great week on Rhys's Pieces, with almost 700 visitors on the best day. So I've been checking past stats and interestingly enough the post with the most views was last year's Halloween blog about why people like to be scared.

Halloween is, of course, a Celtic festival. It was the time when the veil between our world and Otherworld was lifted, when spirits, ghouls, and all manner of horrid things passed into our world for one night. Thus the wearing of scary masks and dressing up as ghosts and monsters was to make the creatures from beyond think that we were one of them and thus not try to grab us and take us back with them.

So I wonder if Halloween is part of our collective psyche, like being attracted to the smell of wood smoke and the fear of the dark (and spiders in my case). Some part of us remembers sitting around a camp fire generations ago, feeling safe and protected while one of the group told a scary story.  My children and grandchildren certainly have enjoyed transforming themselves into frightening things. Sweet little Mary Clare, aged 6, apparently told the other kids in her class that she was really a vampire, making them all terrified of her. The teacher complained to my daughter who made her promise not to do it again. "So promise mommy you won't tell anyone you're a vampire again," my daughter said. Mary Clare gave her a sweet smile. "Okay, mommy," she said. Then she went to school the next day and told them that she wasn't a vampire.... she was really a werewolf!

I have to admit that it's fun dressing up and being someone else for a while, but my costumes usually are of the harmless variety. Last year I was my character Lady Georgiana and John was an aging seducer from the Thirties. And this year I've written a special Halloween story featuring Lady Georgie. It's called Masked Ball at Broxley Manor--an extravaganza involving royalty and at least one gate-crasher. You can find it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble to put you in the Halloween spirit.

Prepare to be Scared.

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Getting ready to migrate south to Phoenix for the month of November. Actually I have to be there before Halloween so I can go around trick and treating with our little grandchildren. Since I missed out on Halloween as a child, I have some catching up to do. Today Halloween is also celebrated in England but it certainly wasn't when I was little. I think some people had parties and bobbed for apples etc, but there was no door-to-door stuff and no dressing up.
I remember my first Halloween in California. I was alone in the house one evening when there was a knock on the door and outside stood a very cute black cat. Trick or treat, she said. I had no idea what she was talking about and no candy in the house. It's lucky I wasn't TPed that night or had eggs thrown at me.
The interesting thing to me about Halloween is how long it has survived--a festival of the most primitive superstition in a modern world. It was a Celtic festival, of course, the night when they believed the doorway between this world and the other world was opened and ghosts came forth. People dressed up in scary masks so that the ghosts and ghouls would see them and think they were one of their own, thus not touch the living and take them back to their world. Christians kept the feast day as All Souls and then All Saints, proving how smart they were in incorporating old religions and giving them a new twist.

You can imagine how frightening it was in the days before electricity and how easy to believe in things that go bump in the night. But it's interesting to me how we still love Halloween today. Some kids like it better than Christmas and not just because of the candy. It's fun to be scared in a safe way--which is why mystery books sell so well, I guess!

What's so great about Halloween

I'm surprised at the number of kids who tell me that Halloween is their favorite holiday--over Christmas with all the presents and the tree, over 4th of July with the parades and fireworks, or Easter with the chocolate eggs.

I'm also surprised at the costumes they choose. I think my girls were always something sweet and adorable--princesses and fairies and maybe a good witch or two. But my little granddaughter Mary has been a vampire, two years in a row. What's more, she is so convincing about it that her teacher last year had to ask her mother to speak to her about scaring the other children.

"They think she's a real vampire," the teacher said.
So Clare spoke to her and she agreed she wouldn't try to tell them she was a real vampire any longer.
So guess what she told them?
She told them she was really a werewolf instead!

So is this the main reason that kids like Halloween? Not the candy? They love the power of being able to scare people, and feeling just a little scared themselves. Mary for the rest of the year is a sweet, well-behaved little girl (if a rather good actress).

But I'm also surprised at the number of adults who say they love Halloween. I suppose again it's the costumes, the taking on a character so different from our own--pretending to be evil, or sexy, or both. It's the one day nobody stops us if we act strangely or look even stranger.
But it's not for everyone. You try getting my husband to select a costume for a party tomorrow night. He's agreed to look like an Englishman from the 1930s, wearing blazer, bow tie, yachting cap, white flannel trousers.  And what does he normally wear--blazer, sometimes bow tie, sometimes light trousers. And he thinks this is a costume???
I'm going as my character, Lady Georgie in my blond flapper wig, long backless evening dress and long pearls. Still looking for cigarette holder, and you know what? They don't seem to make candy cigaretts any more so I'll have to pay for a pack of real cigs--almost more expensive than the rest of the costume.

 I expect we'll have fun, but it's not my favorite holiday. My favorites involve the family, around the dinner table, fire crackling merrily, Christmas carols on the stereo, tree twinkling with lights in one corner. Or Thanksgiving is almost as good.

You know how Halloween started, don't you? It's a Celtic festival that was adopted into the Christian calendar. It is the one night of the year when the door bewteen the two worlds opened and the dead came among us. And people put on scary costumes--skeletons and ghosts--so that the dead would think they were one of their own and wouldn't take them to the otherworld with them.

Do you think they'd be convinced by a man in a bow tie and yachting cap?

Do you love Halloween?