For your spooky attention on Halloween

On dusking, ghosts, subversion and the metaverse

Hello,

Usually, I’d send out this email on Sunday, but this week, I couldn’t resist going out a few days early. It is, after all, Halloween. I may not love the tackier bits of the festival of darkness, but I will always be right here for that frisson of liminality.

Here’s how I described it in Wintering:

As I also wrote in Wintering, I always avoided Halloween until Bert came along. I found it trashy and and annoying, full of bad intentions and menacing demand. But his passion has been contagious (and persistent - he starts planning his costume around January each year), and I’ve come to love what I see through his eyes: a joyous festival of camp that makes the encroaching winter darkness feel a little less restrictive.

At the same time, I’ve come to relish the older associations of Halloween, and they way that it invites a communion with the dead and the uncanny. In an overlit age, Halloween is a welcome patch of shade.

So, let’s get into it. Here are my favourite pieces from the past week or so.