Happy Halloween!!!

This is my favorite holiday!

On Halloween, we get to take off the masks we wear every day and put on masks that better resemble who we are.

I grew up watching the slasher films Halloween and Friday the 13th. I read Goosebumps while waiting for my grandfather to pick me and my sister up from elementary school. I read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark before going to bed every night which, you can imagine, was not the greatest idea and gave me plenty of nightmares as a child.

These experiences are imprinted on my soul, and I'm a better person for them.

As Guillermo del Toro said, perfectly: "Since childhood I've been faithful to monsters. I've been saved and absolved by them because monsters are the patron saints of our blissful imperfections."

This is absolutely true.

In each monster on the screen or on the page, we see our own imperfections. The unbridled rage, the unyielding guilt, the desire for acceptance. We are, each of us, safe harbor for our collective terror. Even now, as winds of ignorance stoke the fires of hatred across our world, each of us takes a piece of this time and buries it within. There it roots, festers, and grows into unspeakable horror in the depths of our soul.

One of my favorite horror stories of all time is The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Although not a classic "horror novel" by any definition, it is a pillar of "Gothic Literature" which has horrific and terrible elements in it.

This novel has caused me innumerable days of stress and agony. What is the cost of never aging, of living an amoral lifestyle, of treating others as mere keys to unlocking the doors of unbridled sensual experiences? Why, your soul, of course! You can have all that, the eternal youth, the hedonism, the debauchery, but when it all ends you will spend the remainder of your days in Hell.

What would you do? What would you give for just one more moment with the person who walked away from their life with you? To speak with a deceased loved one once again? To have all the answers to all the questions you might ever ask?

Stories with ghosts and monsters and deeply philosophical and nightmarish questions are really about the breadth of human experience. They always explore the cost of getting what we actually want. If it were possible and we could do it, what is the cost? It's almost always a Faustian Bargain–a contract with The Devil.

But if there were no Devil, if there were no cost, could you, would you, make someone love you against their will? Exhume your deceased loved one's body and reanimate it? Reduce the mystery of life to a simple answer? Would you? Could you bring yourself to do it?

Halloween is one of those days where we can pretend, for a single night, that we would and could do these things.

We shed the mask, our public persona, and we pick up the knife.

For one night out of the entire year, we pay tribute to all those things which haunt us. All those regrets. All that guilt. All that shame. We bury it all and we become who we really are.

When the clock strikes midnight, the carriage comes, and we retrieve our mask. Ours is not an authentic world. Ours is a superficial world. But for one night, we can be ourselves.

Happy Halloween!

Enjoy yourself.

If you're looking for spooky movie or show recommendations, The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix is phenomenal.

If you're looking for something spooky to read, PTSD Radio Vol. 1, 2, and 3 by Masaaki Nakayama is incredible. If that's not your style, read anything by Junji Ito–a true master of horror manga.