Halloween Haunts: Ghosts Of Hallowe’ens Past by Darren Madigan
Hallowe’en never really meant that much to me when I was a kid… well, not when I was a teenager, anyway.
I was born in late 1961. My childhood, as it turned out, was one of above average mobility — not as rootless as that of a military brat, certainly, but due to the vagaries of my single parent mom’s social life, as well as our extreme poverty, we tended to move around a lot. We didn’t cover a lot of geographical distance… I don’t think I ever left Western New York State until I was an adult (other than one brief sojourn to Germany, where my mother’s first husband — not my father — was stationed in the military at the time, and where my younger brother Sean was born, and which I have no memories of at all, as I was two going on three at the time). But we changed school districts every 24 months or so. I spent my early grammar school years in the Watkins Glen school system, then did a year or so in the neighboring Montour Falls district, then back to Watkins for another year or so, then off to Waterloo for about that amount of time, then back to Watkins again… and then, finally, off to a small town named Holland for the tail end of 6th grade up through high school graduation.
I don’t remember too much about the Hallowe’ens that happened prior to the move to Holland. It was 1972 when we moved there, and I was 10 years old. The 70s were an odd period in American history, at least, in the American small towns I grew up in. Holland, like Watkins Glen and Montour Falls and Waterloo had been during the 60s I can vaguely recall, was a deeply isolationist, fervently racist and matter of factly homophobic small town… and I was very nearly as unaware of these things as carp are aware of the murky water they live immersed within. I didn’t know any non-white people, I sure didn’t know anyone who admitted to being homosexual (for an adult to do so would have meant utter ostracism and blatant hostility from everyone else in those towns – for a kid to do so would have meant violent, vicious bullying that would almost certainly have resulted in grave physical injury if not death).
Holland, where my first clear memories are situated, had no police force of its own. We were occasionally and lackadaisically patrolled by a deputy from the county Sheriff’s department. When I got to high school, the newspaper in nearby Buffalo would shock all Holland’s adults by publishing a story indicating that drug abuse (especially marijuana) was rampant in our district, but it came as no surprise to me… I wasn’t a stoner myself (I didn’t even drink, and still don’t) but I sure knew plenty of kids, and some teachers, who were. (Pot use/abuse was rampant in America in this time, including and especially in the U.S. military. This was an era where the disillusionment, spiritual and emotional damage, and rampant corruption of the Vietnam era had eroded discipline in the various military branches to a point where officers did not visit enlisted men’s quarters without an armed escort.)
Many of the adolescent boys I went to school with looked upon Hallowe’en as an opportunity to vandalize, steal, set fires, beat up younger, weaker kids and steal their candy, and, generally raise hell. It was like that in nearly every township in our county and the counties surrounding it; the vastly overstretched police departments tended to patrol the more affluent neighborhoods two or three cars at a time and leave everyone else to their own devices. That meant that as an adolescent, I stayed off the streets during Hallowe’en, as the last thing I wanted was to run into any of these vicious packs of wannabe alpha males without adult supervision around. I do remember riding along in the car when my younger brothers went trick or treating, and that was exactly how smart parents did the trick or treating thing in the ’70s… they drove their kids from house to house, and kept a very vigilant look out for lurking packs of teen marauders.
I do remember, though, one earlier Hallowe’en in Watkins Glen. I couldn’t have been older than four or five, and I have no doubt my mom must have stuffed me into some ridiculous costume that I now have no memory of. But one of my uncles had taken me out trick or treating, and I recall, as we walked along the sidewalk from house to house, being scared half out of my very young wits by what seemed to be a gigantic figure, lurching along the sidewalk straight at me, with something large and round tucked under its arm. My eyes first noted that the large, round thing was a jack o’lantern…. whether an actual carved, hollowed out gourd or a plastic replica, I don’t know. But it had some kind of light in it, which was what drew my attention.
And then my childish gaze wandered up the front of the shambling giant, and I realized…. he had no head.
I realize now that these costumes are fairly easy to create, and, when an adult creates one, tend to make for a very large and looming figure, because, of course, the shoulders of the costume have to come up to cover the head of the person wearing it, who is usually looking out through judiciously placed viewing slits in the costume’s ‘chest’. And I also realize that the reason the huge figure seemed to be lurching or shambling down the street in such a menacing way was that such costumes tend to be very difficult to see out of or move easily within. But at the time I had no idea that people could create things like this, and I was terrified by the the apparently headless body lumbering up the walk towards me. I started screaming and didn’t stop until I was safely at home again. And for years afterward, I was convinced in my heart that the supernatural was real, and monsters did exist, because I’d seen that headless man carrying a jack o’lantern on Hallowe’en.
So, there… there’s a Hallowe’en anecdote for you, I guess.
After I went off to college, Hallowe’en came to mean a little bit more to me. I went to one costume party my freshman year dressed as Saturday Night Live’s Father Guido Sarducci, because an older guy I knew was going as Jesus Christ and he thought we’d make a good team. The entire party he’d come up to me occasionally and ask loudly how sales on indulgences and various other spurious religious artifacts were going, and I’d advise that the Shroud of Turin swatches weren’t moving at all, but we were going to have to order in more pieces of the One True Cross because the rubes…. ah, I mean, the Faithful… couldn’t get enough of those fuckers, they were eating ’em up like goddam Corn Pops. These little vignettes never failed to amuse the drunken upperclassmen standing around us, and the fact that I wasn’t struck dead by lightning during any of them has fueled my lifelong agnosticism as much as any other factor.
Much further into my adulthood, I’ve come to enjoy decorating whatever house I’m living in for Hallowe’en, and when I’m lucky enough to be living in an area where we get any, passing out candy to trick or treaters. I had a brief period where my stepdaughters were still young enough to be taken around the neighborhood, and that was always fun, but now my youngest is 15, so those days are most likely past, until some grandkids rolls in.
It’s probably worth noting that Hallowe’en, as well as American small town culture, figures largely in my horror novel Harvest Night. The book is about a small town named Redhaven that seems lovely and picturesque and decent and proper, everything an old fashioned American small town should be… but the truth is, Redhaven was founded and is still secretly run by a cult of demon worshipping, cannibal serial killers. Most of the year all seems delightfully normal… or pretty normal, anyway; the more violent and murderously inclined ‘devotees’ do their hunting across state lines, far away from Redhaven, due to the Mayor’s strongly held and strictly enforced maxim that ‘we don’t shit where we eat’.
But Hallowe’en is historically Redhaven’s original Harvest Night, and has come to be the beginning of the yearly Harvest Time… when each cult member must make their yearly sacrifice to their nefarious demonic patrons. During Harvest Time, all bets are off… it’s open season on ‘gentiles’, although the mystical restrictions that require a victim to enter the place of his or her sacrifice willingly mean that, generally, kidnappings are only done recreationally. Harvest Time parties proliferate in Redhaven, with the brightest and most beautiful of the town’s blissfully ignorant newcomers being invited into the wealthiest and most affluent of Redhaven’s homes… and never emerging again.
Although the farms around Redhaven are famous for the quality of their savory smoked and sugar cured meats. That’s probably just a coincidence, though.
This year’s Harvest Time will be not be business as usual. Over the past six months, half dozen or so FBI undercover agents… the last survivors of the previous Chief Executive’s ultrablack, extrajudicial Presidential Task Force on Occult Criminal Conspiracies and Corruption have come to town. Known to the scumbags they stalk as ‘the Regulators’, these world weary, hard bitten, tough as nails special agents have spent most of the previous decade expunging the horrors of the MKULTRA conspiracy, root and branch, from every aspect of American life. Now the last living members of this elite unit have arrived in Redhaven with one mission: to take down ‘the congregation’ and all its works.
And they’re not coming to arrest anyone, read them their rights, or make sure they get fair trials, either.
This year, as every year, the streets of Redhaven will run red with blood… but this year, it won’t be the blood of the innocent..
This year, the predators will be the prey…
TODAY’S GIVEAWAY: The HWA is offering one copy of Blood Lite 3. Enter for the prize by posting in the comments section. Winners will be chosen at random and notified by e-mail. You may enter once for each giveaway, and all entrants may be considered for other giveaways if they don’t win on the day they post. You may also enter by e-mailing membership@horror.org and putting HH CONTEST ENTRY in the header.
D.A. MADIGAN could be arguing in his spare time. He’s certainly writing in it, which his full time job, brilliant wife and three amazing daughters leave him very little of. He lives in Louisville, KY, where he has been voted Louisville’s Best Local Author, and has been a Finalist in the Best of 502 Writing Contest. He is a full Active Member of the Horror Writer’s Association and his most recent short story, “Hunter’s Moon”, appears in the anthology FLESH LIKE SMOKE, edited by renowned anthologist Brian M. Sammons. Another short story, “Burning For You”, is scheduled to appear this fall in NOTHING SACRED magazine. He has written 15 book length items, all science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror, which can be regarded with awestruck wonder at www.damadigan.com. His best selling horror novel HARVEST NIGHT recently broke into Amazon’s Top 100 for Occult Horror. He is totally committed to making fetch happen.
HARVEST NIGHT can be found at http://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Night-American-Horror-Novel-ebook/dp/B00JLYEX6I
Excerpts from HARVEST NIGHT may be read at www.daharvestnight.tumblr.com
