Sunday journalling prompt

On ghost stories and the way we tell them

Hello,

Halloween is coming on Tuesday, that brash, campy gateway into winter. I wrote about my dislike of it in Wintering, but things have moved on since then. Bert remains steadfast in his belief that Halloween is the most wonderful time of the year (way better than Christmas) and I have simply surrendered. It would be churlish to do anything else. 

Nowadays, I have a box of Halloween decorations to rival the Christmas ones, and I started planning my costume in August. I allow Bert to throw a Halloween party every year, and I’ve become quite the expert in turning out a spooky banquet of Mummy Dogs and Banana Ghosts. I would even say that I kind of enjoy it, as long as everyone goes home at 8pm and I can go into hiding for a few weeks afterwards. It is - metaphorically at least - a deal with the Devil to keep my son happy.

It’s hard not to notice that Halloween has lost its bite, which is perhaps why kids now find it so appealing. The gore and the jump-scares are all just surface artefacts, more of a joke than an encounter with mortality, and a little bit of me yearns for something more unsettling. Halloween is, after all, meant to be a celebration of the liminal, of the borderlands between life and death, the known and the uncanny. We keep returning to that place because it helps us to confront the shadow side of life, its uncertainties, its fears, and its yearnings.