Halloween

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Halloween

Halloween is a holiday that is intrinsically linked with Death. With it’s roots tied into All Saints Day and Samhain, Halloween is wrapped up in death. However where All Saints Day and Samhain were serious events in culture, Halloween is a playful jab at Death. Nowhere is that more evident, then in the concept of the Haunted House. Death is not celebrated or embraced in this Halloween tradition, but rather it is used as a thrill, something to make life more exciting.

As a child, I remember vividly the Haunted houses that the schools put up, and going to Knott’s Scary Farm. A menagerie of dismembered bodies and monsters which would hide and jump out at you in an attempt to frighten you and get that adrenaline flowing. When examining this ritual of Halloween, it is apparent how far Halloween has changed, not just from Samhain and All Saints Day, but from the 1950’s. The main theme of 1950’s Halloween, was one of fun and enjoyment. The Main theme of the haunted House, is fear and disgust.

The Flashing strobe lights and Pitch Black rooms are designed to disorient you, so that you are easy prey for someone to scare you. Often gruesome scenes of death and dismemberment are apparent, and people go to great lengths to be as disgusting as possible. The power of death is no longer respected, but rather it is now trivialized. The consumer mentality has also bought into this trivialized version of death. More and more in these haunted houses, you see expensive costumes of death and the grim reaper. The haunted house may be seen as a method for people to laugh of the fear of death that we feel in normal every day life.

The dead are represented as something to be feared and reviled, monsters who will rise up and strike back against the living. Tied into that is the fears that All Saints Day brought up, with evil spirits who rise up on Halloween and the monsters that accompany them. All these images are tied up within the Haunted House, from the skeletons and tombstones found within, to the screaming ghosts and vampires which jump out when you don’t expect them. The haunted House views death in the most violent and bloody ways. The dead people always have blood coming from them, and generally a knife or axe sticking out from them.

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