Halloween 2022: Preamble

Art by @sleepylizbean

Nobody reads these Halloween blog entries to hear about my personal life, much less the difficulties I (like everyone) have endured. But allow me a little self-indulgence. I swear there's a point. I don’t know if 2022 has been the hardest year I’ve ever lived through, personally, but it’s definitely a contender. Last month, my dad had a heart attack which exploded a whole barrel of long-held resentments. The month before that, my mom badly broke a bone, leading to a lot pressures and stress on everyone. In February, my beloved fourteen-year-old puppy dog, Uma, became so frail that ending her pain was the most responsible decision. That one hurt a lot. This isn't even everything. It’s been one personal crisis atop another around here. 

I mention this because, after about two months without a dog around the house, I decided to bring another canine into my life. Things were too strange, too empty, without one. The minute I saw the adorable little face of another black Labrador puppy available through a local fostering agency, I knew she was going to be my next dog. And I what did I name this little spectre, as black as an October night? I named her Spooky. Say hello. 

Hello Spooky!

Adapting a puppy to your home is never easy. Befitting a little Halloween dog — who is not so little now, at eight months and sixty pounds — Spooky has the mischievous spirit of Jack of the Lantern in her. I’m fourteen years older than the last time I raised a puppy. Her boundless energy is a lot to handle sometimes. But I love her. Spooky is clearly a former resident of the Autumn Country and she has brought laughter and joy into my life, along with the little bits of chaos that we all need. 

Having Spooky, whose collar is orange with bats and whose harness has a skeleton on it, around is a good example of how Halloween floats over my entire year. Just last night, I was loitering around a local craft shop and perusing all the seasonal decorations and knickknacks, with one of my oldest friends in tow. It was the simplest thing but it made me feel the kind of effervescent glee that I always forget I’m capable of until it returns every September. I guess I really do live for this time of year. I need it. Welcoming Halloween back every fall gives me the energy I need to get through the rest of it. 

Silly as it sounds, the Halloween Horrorfest Blog-a-Thon is one of the elements of this time of year that I most look forward to. Truth be told, I really build my entire fall around it. Can you believe that I've been doing this, in one form or another, since 2009? That was 12 years ago! Back then, I called it the Six Weeks of Halloween. The person who coined that term, and started me on the path, hasn't posted in years. God bless him, wherever he is. I think Kaedrin and I are the only people still around who know what this tradition is. Nowadays, just devoting six weeks to Halloween seems quaint, when the rest of the spooky-sphere has decided all of September and even parts of August belong to Samhain now. The only reason I devote forty-three days to the season, instead of a full sixty-one, is because I go so fucking hard with this thing. I think two full months would completely burn me out. 

For example: My plans for this year's Blog-a-Thon are maybe my most ambitious yet. The arrival of "X" – which quickly became a trilogy – has finally pushed me to catch up with the films of Ti West I haven't reviewed yet. (Well, not the western.) Similarly, the release of a new, highly divisive Alex Garland movie this year will see me doing a retrospective of all his directorial credits, My desire to explore long-running horror franchises of debatable merit previously had me talking about "The Amityville Horror" and "Friday the 13th" during previous Six Weeks. This year, that cinemasochistic drive will expose me to all of the "Paranormal Activity" movies, even the Japanese one. Also, last year I watched all the "Wrong Turn" sequels after reviewing the original years ago. That need to wrap up unfinished business, this year, is forcing me to cover all the shitty "Pumpkinhead" sequels. 

Even my kitchen is in the season!

There's lots of TV on my plate this year too. I'll be continuing my coverage of Shudder's "Creepshow" series. I've grown to like my now-annual tradition of watching selected episodes from a variety of horror anthology shows so much that I'll be delving even further into that format. Some of the shows I want to talk about are so obscure, I'm not even sure I'll be able to locate the episodes in time. Since I've reviewed all the "Chucky" movies, I guess I better catch up with the first season of the TV show too. Oh yeah, I'm also watching all thirty-eight episodes of the first season of "The Munsters," to tie-in with Rob Zombie's dreadful looking film adaptation that I'm far too morbidly curious about. 

That's not even everything. I plan to throw in some of 2022's most-talked about new horror releases, catching up with some stuff I haven't seen yet. That includes upcoming installments like "Halloween Ends" and David Bruckner's "Hellraiser" reboot. Classic stars, classic tropes, and cinematic voyages to other countries are also on the docket. Oh, and some shorts too. Also, JD and I are going to Monster-Mania on October 1st, for the twelfth year in a row, because I want to meet Clint Howard and Alice Krige. Seems like a lot when I write it all down like this. This is insane, right? I'm not remotely prepared for any of this! (Which is why, if anyone was wondering, I'm putting the rest of my Steven Spielberg retrospective on hold until November.) 

I guess sometimes you have to go a little mad to really embrace the season. Halloween belongs to the mad, after all. It belongs to the freaks, the weirdos, the outsiders. It belongs to the ghosts, the ghouls, goblins, zombies, and all other form of mythological chimeras. That’s because, above all else, it belongs to the dead. And only we who see the dead, whose morbid hearts are touched by the dark finger of the other side, understand that. Look, there’s one now. 

Halloween exist in every dried up, golden brown leaf on the sidewalk. The October Country is in every bowl of candy, in every plastic skeleton. In every carved-up pumpkins and cardboard black cat. Halloween exists in each scare that makes our spines sit up straight. The festival of the dead is there in very sign and intuition that says we will one day be worm food, down in the ground, providing fuel for future generations of brown leaves on the sidewalk. If that’s the case, Halloween is also in every shock and sensation that tells us we are still alive. Halloween is the void, the final slumber that brings eternal rest, but it is also every kick and push and scream against that void. And if life and death are the same, just different ends of a cycle that spins on forever, then no one is ever really dead and no one is ever really alive. We are ghosts all, forever booing in our haunted houses at the passer-bys brave enough to look the danse macabre right in the face.

Come on, baby. Don’t fear the reaper. Indulge yourself. We have six weeks to journey to that place and back. It’s time to begin. The Halloween Horror-Fest Blog-a-Thon lives once more. 

The inside of my head right now