Halloween is a night filled with fears on several levels. Homemade haunted houses. Real houses that are rumored to be haunted. Dares to go to areas of your neighborhood secretly known as "Satan Town."
I was not the kind of kid that enjoyed being terrified. I didn't like scary movies. In fact, I refused to watch anything even resembling a horror movie. If I accidentally walked in the living room while my brother, Patrick, was watching, "Halloween," I couldn't sleep for weeks. Even if it was just an innocent scene of someone answering the telephone, my imagination filled in the blanks and suddenly I was convinced a clown ghost was hiding behind my shower curtain while I peed on the toilet.
And yet, even I couldn't hate Halloween. I would have to be dragged into haunted houses by more free-wheeling friends, and my heart would be racing, and inevitably it would end in screaming as I sprinted out of the house at a speed that I would not normally be capable of. But, I looked forward to this dance in an odd sort of way. I can still feel the cold wind of the Vegas night whipping through my witch costume (I was a witch 8 out of 13 years of my trick or treating lifespan) as I braced myself to enter the neighborhood haunted house. Calming myself with another in a series of fun-sized Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, and then clinging to my friend Andrea (a hobo*) for dear life.
What is this love of fake terror that can make even the most frightened child excited? How exactly does this process work in our brains? Is it that we have tricked ourselves into suspending disbelief, and believe, for the moment, that these monsters and ghouls are real? Or, is it a deeper fear that kick starts our adrenaline? Perhaps we fear that even though we know these monsters aren't real, that the person inside the costume might be some kind of psychopath who really does want to murder us and eat us for dinner?
It was this second fear that used to send me into a frenzy when, in my early twenties. I would go to a place called "Knott's Scary Farm," every Halloween with a group of friends. "Knott's Scary Farm" is really just an amusement park known as "Knott's Berry Farm," that has been turned into a series of dark and frightening mazes, full of every horror movie icon who has ever kept you awake at night. It is terrifying.
I used to find myself thinking, "I know this guy's not actually Freddy Krueger, but I'm not so sure he knows he's not Freddy Krueger!" I was a little skeptical of the vetting process at Knott's Scary Farm. You can try and calm me down all you want, but at the end of the day that Pinhead with the chainsaw, was chasing me just a little bit too far out of the maze! If you really thought about it, this seemed like the perfect job for someone with anger issues and a propensity for violence. These people are actually being paid to act like they were going to kill you, and they were really good at it. Too good, if you asked me - what were the chances that the finest thespians in the world were all working at Knott's Scary Farm during the month of October? Slim, according to my reasoning.
Needless to say, this entire thought process added a level of fear to my Halloween experience that my over-worked imagination didn't really need. Here I am passing that gift onto you. If you find yourself unable to muster up the ol' Halloween suspension of disbelief this year, just remember that underneath that Dracula costume might be a madman who really does want to eat your blood. Happy Halloween everybody!
*Hobo costume. Not an actual hobo.
