“Nothing beats a haunted moonlit night on All Hallows Eve…on this fatal night, at this witching time, the starless sky laments black and unmoving.  The somber hues of an ominous, dark forest are suddenly illuminated under the emerging face of the full moon.” – Kim Elizabeth

The Witching Hour, Samhain, Beggar’s Night, or All Hallows Eve – whatever name you choose to call October 31st it is synonymous to us today as the night of candy and costumes.

The screeching and hollering of “Trick-or-Treat” by costumed children is our celebration of the ending of October, the ending of the harvest, and the forthcoming advent of winter.

Although we think of Halloween as the night of tricks or treats, its origins come from the all too familiar and universal desire to protect oneself from harm.

Stemming back to ancient times and the desire to ward off the fear of the night, darkness, and evil, the beginnings of Halloween are based on pagan tradition.

Tracing its roots back to early Celtic religions, All Hallows Eve originally developed as a celebration of the fall harvest and a ritual to ward off those spirits who might try to stay with the people on earth throughout winter.

Using bonfires and the carrying of lighted turnips or pumpkins around as a form of ritual cleansing, the idea of the Jack O’Lantern stems from early attempts to ward off evil spirits.

The “guising” or dressing up as creatures traces its roots to early paganism and the idea of disguising oneself as a way to hide from spirits still roaming earth for one last act of vengeance before All Saints Day.

What we today call “trick-or-treating” comes from the 16th century tradition of traveling to neighbors homes to recite biblical verses in exchange for food.

From early pagan times, through the development and influence of the Christian Church on pagan religion, the fear of being haunted by those already gone, and finding oneself in the presence of evil, has both tortured and fascinated mankind.

Keeping and developing upon these early traditions, October 31st has come to celebrate the manifestation of one’s fears and the haunting of one’s mind.

From Shakespeare to Shelley, to Stephen King every generation has had a fascination for the spooky, scary, macabre, and horrifying.

Since the time of paganism the possibility of witchcraft, spirits, and the walking dead have plagued mankind.  The ancient rituals of warding off unwanted spirits have been present in every culture – across every era.

However, terrified as we may be of the mystical and the unknown, we find ourselves manifesting our greatest fears through stories, movies, costumes, and other forms of entertainment.  This creation of creatures of the dark, those that possess the power to destroy humankind, manifests our greatest fear: our demise.

Although we are terrified of what, or who, might be lurking within the shadows we are drawn to watching our greatest fears be played out for us on the stage, screen, and storybook.  Our attraction to that which terrifies us is almost unnatural; the normal animal reaction to fear is the fight-or-flight response.

Yet, rather than withdraw from our fear, or attempt to dispel it through protective rituals, we propagate it and surround ourselves within it every autumn.

According to research done by Jeffrey Goldstein, a professor of social and organizational psychology at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, we choose to entertain ourselves because we want the emotional response of the entertainment to affect us.

Accordingly, those who choose to entertain themselves through the manifestation of their fears in reality want to be scared.  The emotion of fear causes different reactions such as an adrenaline rush, the distraction from a mundane life, and the ability to watch horrific events happen knowing all the while that we are safe at home.

This last reason, knowing our own safety, is what I believe drives our desire to be scared.  Our understanding of the world comes from science and the ability to identify why events happen; the ancients lived within nature and a limited grasp on the world.

They ultimately relied on the supernatural to explain what they themselves could not.  For the Celtic tribes and medieval Christians, the rituals of All Hallows Eve played a very real and important role in safeguarding themselves and their society.

Their fear of the unknown came from the idea that they could realistically be harmed.  Today we are able to explain each bump in the night, so although we “fear” vampires, monsters, witches, and ghouls, we understand that in reality nothing is going to harm us.

As a result of our grasp on what can and cannot harm us, we find entertainment in what we know is impossible.

Knowing that we shall never encounter fantastical creatures such as Dracula and Frankenstein, we crave the ideas and stories that allow for us to believe in the supernatural, even if just for a minute.

Unlike the ancient developers of Halloween, we wish to be frightened; we have continued celebrating and manifesting our fears on the night of October 31st as a way to partake in the macabre, chilling, ghostly, and horrific which we assume shall never be otherwise encountered within our lives.

Celebrating the night of October 31st with glee and an overabundance of candy, Halloween has become for us a holiday of fun.

However, perhaps we should take heed of the warnings from the ancestors of this holiday and still be cautious of what lurks in the dark; for when the moonlight shines in the black of night and as Shakespeare writes, “’tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world”, can we be so certain that what we tell ourselves is the shadow of our imagination is merely our minds fabrication?

Or is it possible that something – or someone – else is out there with us?