Thread: Halloween Self-Analysis

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Have you ever self-analyzed where your fascination for certain Halloween effects and preference of props comes from? Was it something in your childhood, something deep seated in your brain, something in current life, that causes you to prefer, say, pirates over vampires/witches?

I’m just going to throw my bazaar ideas out here as they relate to myself. Ever since childhood I’ve been fascinated with sideshow freaks. Not as much to gawk at them, more a need inside myself to try to understand what’s going on in their brain. I felt as if looking at them, I could maybe begin to understand what their life is like being the way they are. Ditto for the horror movies with dysfunctional, murderous families, inbreeding, or serial killers. How do their brain processes work? Now I’m a social worker, analyzing people, their lives, and their thinking.

Ever since movies like The Exorcist and The Grudge, I’m fascinated with the awkward, wrong looking ways of the body. For example, Linda Blair doing that creepy, backward run down the stairs and The Grudge effects where the limbs are turned in the wrong direction. I have rheumatoid arthritis (from a young age) and am aware daily of the misfunction of my joints, thus the fascination with the wrong limb look. I look at that and think to myself, “at least my joints aren’t that bad.”

I’ve always been fascinated with medical stuff, the inside workings of the body, surgical instruments, all those lovely internal organs. When I was eight years old I had a major surgery on my back to remove a benign tumor. It terrified me at the time but that turned into fascination with everything medical which is why I always choose to work in the medical field rather than as a school social worker or at a counseling center. I’m very enthusiastic about our mad scientist lab scene this year!

Ok, enough of my Sunday afternoon rambling. Where do your scary Halloween preferences really come from??

I have always had a fascination with skulls and skeletons. Even since I was small. Not really sure why, but everything I do kind of goes back to that.

I d also incorporate a witch in my display, but that's only so I can play with dry ice in th witches cauldron.

I don't do the actors jumping out at you kind of scares. I prefer to make things as realistc as possible to make people wnder if any of that was REALLY real when they leave. I prefer to generate disturbing thought rather than startling my TOTers. If they have bad dreams that night, I've done a good job.

That has also been my preference for movies. I much prefer an old Hitchcock movie or something like "The Sixth Sense" over slasher and gore flicks. I don't have anything against the gory slasher films, I just don't find them as satisfying. Once the initial startling is over with when they play the loud music and the headless corspe drops onto the car winshiel and shatters it, I find I wasn't really scared, just startled. I have always been like that. I'm not sure why, but it is why I design my haunt the way I do.

My love for Halloween was nutured when I was a kid. My mom would start in November with "Thanksgiving is coming up, better get the decorations out." My brother and I would sprint up to the attick, get out the cardboard cut outs, run down stairs, and very carefully put them up. We did this for every holiday and it just gave me so much joy with divorced parents.

Halloween was espicially fun because I have always loved the idea of getting dressed up and pretending I was someone or something else. Add my love for horror movies, and chilly foggy nights, and it was a match made in heaven.

My decorations are more old school smiling pumpkins, flying withces, happy cats, etc. I don't like scaring people with gore, but suspence. for me it's not knowing whats our there that is the real fear. Plus the fun factor of candy, bobbing for apples, costume contest, and I was hooked since I was 5.

I used to think that I was some sort of Wack-o for going overboard at Hallowe'en. This was back ion the mid-80's, when you had to RENT a Fog Machine, RENT large Black Lights. I shrugged it off at the time, rationalizing that, since I do Nada for Christmas (No presents, no Tree), and had two small kids at the time, that Hallowe'en was a "substitute" for Christmas. I didn't want the kids to feel deprived.
Then, after many years, I came across this Forum on the Internet, and realized that I'm not a Nut after all.
Self-Analysis? Not required. If you believe in having fun, as long as nobody gets hurt, anything goes.

My birthday is the week of Halloween. So.... my cakes always came from the Halloween Carnival at school. MY bday parties were always in the Halloween time frame.

A lady in town would do up her house like we all do today...except she did it before you could even buy that stuff in stores. It was just awesome... saw her recently and she said she had to quit doing it because jerk kids would steal and/or destroy her stuff. Just pathetic.

We bought our new house sans street address, and the address ended up being 1031! AND...it turns out there is an old Civil War era cemetery just across the street. It has a way of finding me, I guess.

Skeletons are my preferred Halloween decorations - although I've been on a pirate kick recently, it's just because of the skeleton pirates in POC Curse of the Black Pearl.
Analysis. Hmm. Do I deal better with death when it doesn't have the immediacy of blood and guts? When it's far enough in the past to appear clean, no fuzzy edges? Or is it my fascination with history and mystery, digging into the past , putting together the pieces? The importance in my life of a good foundation - readin', 'ritin', 'rithmatic in education, structure in my daily life? Or do I just love those evil grins that come so naturally to a skull?

I started making stuff when I was 8. My mom says she thinks it began as my way of dealing with my fears. And I think there's a lot to that.

I was a very scared child. Of a lot of things. But there was one particular nightmare I still recall vividly that really laid the groundwork...

Anyway, this requires some background to understand the dream:

When I was about 3, our basement was mostly unfinished. The floors were painted red for some reason, but I remember the matchbox cars ran REALLY well on it.

We finished it when I was 4. You come down the stairs, turn left into a hall and there's a wall that ran along the left side all the way down. First was the Kitchen where we did all the canning, then a small bathroom, finally my dad's workshop. This was off limits.

On the right of the hall the wall only went about a 3rd the way, seperating off a 'fruit room' as my mom called it, where we stored all the canned goods. Then it was open for our play room. On the far end were a ton of books and bookshelves and the TV, along the right were cabinets dad made. Several were for the toys, one was for halloween costumes, one was off limits (not locked but kinda hidden if you didn't know about it) as it had the guns, and the rest had my mom's sewing stuff as she made most our clothes at that point.

I'm 5. We're in the basement, and I'm watching my first horror movie. The Birds.

I did not sleep for weeks. Petrified of every sound ever, the birds are coming for me!!! As a typical child, go get mom and be made all better.

Now, my dad was rarely home due to his job. When he was home, he was on call and needed his sleep to be ready to go if they called. I made the mistake, one time, of going in there when dad was home. He'ld just gotten home, and we'll just say it was made perfectly clear I was not to come in that room and wake them up ever again.

5 years old. Having nightmares. Never going to parents again. I'm left to deal with them myselfs.

Through the summer, my older brother would stay up till Mom went to sleep, then wake me up to listen to radio dramas. Typically scary ones.

Come Christmas. As usual, Kizzy (our Basinji) was having puppies Christmas eve. It's a grand time. I know this has happened every Christmas. Puppies are born and kept in dads workshop (otherwise off limits) till they start crawling around. 3 puppies died. Nothing too unusual, but for some reason that stuck with me.

The puppies grow, and one day they get ahold of my pillow. This was my security item as a child. Took it everywhere. Anyway, they tear it to shreads. It's gone.

5 Years old. Having Nightmares. Can't go to parents. Lost security item.

We got an Atari 2600 for Christmas, and I loved it, started spending more time in the basement. And I began to notice this skull on the bookshelf. I asked what it was, and was told it was a coyote skull. Asking what a coyote was got me 'its a dog'. Asking what a skull was got me 'it's their bones after they die'.

One day, my older brother decides to get into dads workshop and dare me to go in. Well, my dad and uncle were upstairs redoing my parents room which was right above, and they heard us through the heat vent register...

Inside the workshop was a pile of skulls. Deer, elk, etc, from my dad's hunting. Now, I didn't quite understand that at the time, they were skulls, skulls = dead dogs, this room is where puppies are born, puppies die, skulls = dead puppies. It made sense when I was five. Anyway, brother egging me on, I start coming into the room. Dad and uncle start making ghostly sounds through the register, brother gets spooked, knocks over pile of skulls. What I SEE, however, is these skulls making awefull sounds coming for me.

5 years old. Cant go to parents. Lost security item. Parents keeping dead puppies in the basement. Puppies like to rip things apart. Dead puppies come alive.

That night came, the radio program was the Tell Tale Heart, the most recurring nightmare of childhood for the first time, and the start of the dream:

I'm locked in the basement, the skulls come alive with the spirits of the dead puppies, and these skeletal dogs coming to rip me apart like they did my pillow making these awefull noises. I wake up telling myself "it's just a dream". But I can HEAR them down there, their heartbeats coming up through the floor (since, naturally, skeletal dogs have heartbeats). Really this was do to the fact that I was laying on my arm under the pillow, and it's my own heartbeat, but it would be years before I figure that part out.

I can't tell you how many a night I lay awake over this dream. I can tell you this, my friends, is most likely why I'm obsessed with skulls now.

I like monsters.

I remember there was one house that was decorated with webs, the dry ice in the witches cauldron, and the scarey music was playing. Occasionally the resident would pop out in costume. That was the house I had to go to every year. My husband had a similar experience when he was growing up, one older spooky looking house that was decorated every year. My husband started decorating his folks house when our 11 year old was born. They lived in the "big candy" neighborhood, so it was worth decorating. His ideas and excitement along with the neighbors asking if we were going to do it again, really encouraged us to dive into Halloween. The rewards of the smiles, thank yous and screams make it worthwhile. Now we decorate our property trying to encourage the neighborhood kids to come back and they have. We've gone from 20 to 120 in 3 years..... Happy haunting

Wow, UnOrthOdox! That was such a fascinating story that I read it twice! Great self-analysis of your obsession with skulls. That story could be the start of a really great horror novel...it’s kind of Steven King/Dean Koontz-ish! Thanks for the intriguing read!