Halloween Haunts: My Father’s Holiday by Jay Wilburn

Halloween is such an oddly pseudo-religious, family friendly, mildly inappropriate for children, cross generational, community oriented, unrecognized national holiday. It has all the bizarre mixtures of a surreal story element. If Halloween did not exist and an author invented it as a device for a story, it would surely push the story into the realm of weird fiction. It is a holiday which encourages children in taking candy from as many strangers as possible. There is an implied and encouraged threat of vandalism based on a child’s judgment of quality of treat and adult homeowners’ choice of participation in some Lord of the Flies version of justice. It embodies conflict with religion, but from an equal though opposite religious stance – If All Saints’ Day is the holiest day of the year, what is the logical conclusion of coming the rest of the way around the calendar again? Churches are working hard through Fall festivals and “Trunk-or-Treat” activities to reclaim the day from the implied forces of darkness. It is about children with a vague cut-off line of appropriate participation somewhere in early adolescence, but then participation is reopened somewhere in late adolescence or early adulthood through parties, drinking, slutty versions of costumes, and costume parties that extend into the latest reaches of adulthood. Christmas and Halloween are the only holidays in Americana that reach these levels of unlimited decorating possibility with prizes being awarded in celebrating the classy and the tacky. Subcultures of people for both holidays follow the obsessions of bigger and greater displays. Who would believe it, if it were not reality?

My father was a religious man who loved Halloween the best of all the holidays. He loved to decorate, but this was the late seventies and through the eighties in neighborhoods in the South where the notion of over the top decorating hadn’t quite come into the culture for Halloween. The crazy people around where we lived did all their super decorating for Christmas. The fake graveyards and home haunted houses were down the road a ways both in location and time. My father also had some legendary mishap with putting up Christmas lights before I was born that ended outdoor decorating. My family used the stick-on window decals, plastic indoor stand-ups, and carved the jack-o-lantern.

He put great thought and effort into selecting the pumpkin and designing the face. We took long drives into the North Georgia mountains ahead of Halloween to pick up apples, boiled peanuts, and the perfect pumpkin. Pretty much my contribution came down to selecting a happy face or a down-turned mouth. He did all the knife work and gutting.

Some in our family and church would suggest that there was darkness in the celebration, but my father waved them off without a discussion. He was about ghost stories on campouts and the belief that the veil of reality was thin and full of the unknown. He also believed Halloween was fun and full of imagination. He did not live long enough to see me become a professional writer paid for horror and science fiction. Occasionally, he does make an appearance in my fiction as some whisper or ghost of himself in one of the characters.

Happy Halloween, Dad!

JAY WILBURN lives with his wife and two sons in the coastal swamps of South Carolina in the southern United States. He left teaching after sixteen years to care for the health needs of his younger son and to pursue full-time writing. His work appears in many anthologies including Best Horror of the Year volume 5 with editor Ellen Datlow. His novels include Loose Ends and Time Eaters. His work is featured in the collections Dragonfly and the Siren and in Zombies Believe in You. Follow his many dark thoughts at JayWilburn.com and @AmongTheZombies on Twitter.

Jay Wilburn Amazon author page.

Hazardous Press page.