LITERAL REMAINS

Is it ever too early to begin thinking of Halloween?  As I begin writing this, it is 107 days until Halloween.  Just a few days ago, a friend of mine said she wished it could be Fall all the time.  And I thought, Hells yeah!  Imagine it.  How awesome would that be?

I love Autumn, the Fall, whatever you want to call it.  Stuck here in the middle of July, I want it, I long for it, but it seems so close, yet so far away.  I love the leaves turning colors, and the sound of them crunching underfoot.  The world in general takes on a warm hue.  I love the smell of candles burning in jack o’ lanterns.  I love jack o’ lanterns.  I love Halloween, the costumes, the decor, the whole nine yards.  And hay rides and haunted houses.  When people discover that Halloween is my favorite holiday, they always ask “Why?”  I don’t know.  It’s like when people ask me, “Why do you like horror so much?”  I don’t know, I just do, why won’t all you people just leave me alone you’re as bad as the voices!

Sorry.  I’m okay.

Maybe it’s the mystery of it.  Maybe it’s just the atmosphere.  The aesthetics.  The freakin’ ambiance.  I don’t know.  It speaks to me.  It completes me.  I relate to it.  All the detractors can have their Christmas, and Easter, and (My Bloody) Valentine’s Day.  It could be some primal resonance, or my inner Pagan from a past life, I don’t know, I don’t care.  All I know is I love it, and that may be all I need to know.

So, it’s never too early start enjoying All Hallow’s Eve.  I look forward to it all year long; it’s never far from my mind.  And when it comes to October, to Autumn, to Fall, there are two books that pop instantly into my head– Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot.  They are the perfect books for Fall.  Read Lot for the vampires and just an all out scary good horror show.  Read Something Wicked because it strikes a chord to that child in all of us; it’s beyond words how good it is.  It’s only one of Bradbury’s masterpieces.

I also recommend two other books, these are works of non-fiction.  Witch’s Halloween: A Complete Guide to the Magick, Incantations, Recipes, Spells, and Lore by Gerina Dunwich.  Dunwich is a Wiccan High Priestess and she dispels a lot of the myths surrounding Halloween.  She sheds light on the history of Halloween and its folklore.  Included are spells to the Sabbat rituals, recipes, and lots of interesting facts and customs of yore.

The second book of non-fiction that I highly recommend is Lesley Pratt Bannatyne’s Halloween: An American Holiday, an American History.  It also gives some background to Halloween’s origins, but, as the title suggests, it sticks mainly to the holiday’s history here in the USA.  Between these two books, I learned a lot, and was corrected in some of what I thought I knew.