Earlier this year, some renovations where being done in my home. After taking a picture frame in a storage room off the wall, a sleeping bat was discovered. At first, I was worried the little guy was dead. Instead, I quickly realized he was just hibernating. I laid the fellow on the ground outside, before giving him some water. A few hours later, he had flapped his little wings and flown away. All throughout the summer, my little Spooky dog demands her first walk of the day around five A.M. This turned out to be an excellent time of day to see a bat, and the family of friends he's seemingly made, flap around my home. In many cultures, a house bat is considered good luck. If nothing else, they eat mosquitoes and other pests. Me being the kind of person I am, I immediately gave the little guy the nickname of Hector the House Bat. May long he reign.
I bring this up because it's a good metaphor for the way the Halloween season is never far from my mind, no matter what time of year it is. As long as I have bats in my belfry, the autumnal days of creepy frights and warm hearths will never be out of reach. Halloween lives in my heart, alongside all the spiders and dead things and, yes, bats that flap around the creaky old cemetery that exists where my rib cage should be. Too often, especially when it's sweltering outside and life is getting me down (as it often did in the last year) that creepy feeling inside is what gets me through.
Well, we made it. The Autumn Country is here. Store shelves are packed full of decorations and candy. In fact, it's been that way since late July. When I was a kid – I say from my on-high position as a decaying nineties kid – you were lucky to find any Halloween goods haunting store shelves before September. Things sure have changed since then, when skeletons and tombstones pack big box stores of all types during the dog days of summer. Honestly, starting my Halloween Horror-Fest Blog-a-Thon on September 18th feels like a relic of this more conservative time. I know it's just capitalism pushing everything forward, to make way for three whole months of Christmas shopping. Even now, stores are filling up with Santa schlock. But I like to think it's a good example of the world at large embracing the spookiest time of year. Everyone knows Halloween is awesome now. Everyone wants to own a twelve foot tall skeleton these days.
Still, the first time I spot a ghost-shaped pitcher or an enormous scarecrow or felt pumpkins or bottle stoppers shaped like Edgar Allen Poe's head, I do get giddy. A delightful little shiver runs up my spine and I feel like a kid again. The same is true when I'm munching down on a bowl of the first new Monster Cereal introduced in my lifetime. (Carmella Creeper is very tasty, by the way.) It's how I feel when I stalk stores and random locations for any sort of spooky accessories. In the wise words of Matt from Dinosaur Dracula, the greatest gift of the Halloween season is that it turns the simplest acts into a celebration.
That is probably why I'm still doing the Blog-a-thon after all these years, even though nobody reads blogs anymore and devoting only six weeks to the holiday seems tame in 2023. The only reason I haven't made the jump to two whole months is I'm not sure it would be feasible for me. The small handful of regular readers I have these days – sorry for taking four months off in the middle of the year, I was busy having a nervous breakdown – probably know that I pack the next forty-three full of as much spooky bullshit as possible. I'm going to be living the Halloween life style 24/7 for the next six weeks. It makes me happy. I wouldn't have it any other way.
In some ways, as I look at my watch list for this six weeks, it seems a little more relaxed than in past years. I only plan on watch my way through two film franchises this year. That would be Full Moon's vampire saga “Subspecies,” which finally had a new entry after a break of two and a half decades earlier this year. After seeing a ton of people cosplay as Art the Clown at Monster-Mania back in August, I decided it's finally time I sit down and see if these “Terrifier” movies even remotely live up to the hype. I've been quite skeptical of them, to be honest. (Because I'm an obsessive compulsive completist, I'll also be watching the two “All Hallows Eve” anthology films that “Terrifier” spun-off from originally.)
Don't think this means I'm going to be watching less, overall, than I normally do. I have a big-ass list of titles I hope to explore this year. Many familiar faces, classic stars, and directors that I enjoy will be making their expected appearances over the next six weeks. As always, I use this time to catch up with some new releases I've meant to see throughout the year. Naturally, I will be journeying to my local theater to see some hot new releases this Halloween season as well. I've got a large number of TV shows to cover too. I plan on finally watching the first season of Guillermo del Toro's Netflix anthology series, “Cabinet of Curiosities,” as well as continuing with the second season of the “Chucky” TV show. As I've done for the last few years, I also plan on including a number of selected episodes from a number of classic, obscure, forgotten, and more recent horror anthology shows. That's become a yearly tradition I really look forward too. There will be a couple of short films too.
See, that feels like a lot when I list it all out like that. As I write this preamble, I find myself asking the same question I ask at the start of every Halloween Horror-Fest Blog-A-Thon: Why do I do this? It's not like a ton of people read these reviews. I put far more work into them than is really justified. The Six Weeks of Halloween tradition has been almost totally forgotten, save for one other fellow traveler. At this point, I do it because I have to. Watching and writing about a shit ton of horror movies and TV shows, old and new, loved and despised, familiar and unseen, is how I honor this season. It's become my own tradition, part of the season, even more-so than carving pumpkins, bingeing on candy, or nailing black cats to people's doors.
I can get very pretentious and philosophical when writing about why this is important to me. I do it every year. I don't put much faith in the existence of ghosts or spirits, or even in any sort of afterlife. Yet, during the Halloween season, I am a believer. I can feel the spirits of the dead move through me. They stir in my heart and soul, every time I see a dead leaf flutter down to the ground. Every time I pass a colorful or morbid costume. And, yes, every time I watch a crappy old horror movie or a modern day shocker. If Halloween is about honoring the dead, celebrating the harvest, opening the door from one season to the next, then this is how I celebrate. I perform these cycles, every September and October, because they mark this time on the calendar as special. As my ancestors did, in their way. As my descendants will do, in their own way.
This is why Halloween, and all the ways we celebrate it, is important. It connects us with our past, with the mysterious corners of the world. It allows all of us, no matter how skeptical or reasonable, to indulge in the fantastique for a little bit. It allows the ghosts and goblins, the witches and warlocks, to spirit us away to another world where anything is possible. The Celts believed that the dead walked among us during this time and I can't help but believe that too. They live in us through the stories we tell, the traditions we embrace, and the monsters we become.
Alright, enough words. It's orange and black time. Time for ghoulishly grinning pumpkins, full moons, screeching black cats, cool October nights, skeletons dancing in cemeteries, and ghosts clanking their chains. It is time, once again, now and forever, for Halloween. Throw open the gates. Hail, hail, hail. I can smell the Autumn Country now. I am home. Let's party.
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