From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

Are you ready to have fun being spooked on Halloween? Every October 31 many of us love to celebrate  Halloween with pumpkins, black cats, ghosts and witches decorating our homes. It’s time to dress in a costume and go trick or treating.

Grownups are already buying bags of candy at the store to treat neighbor kids, who’ll dress up like witches in tall black hats, fat pumpkins and frightening ghouls. Some will throw one of Mom’s old white sheets over their body and become a wailing ghost. They’ll take a pillow case from the linen closet to stash their load of Halloween candy. It’s a night of fun for kids and parents accompanying their little tykes dressed in pumpkin and dinosaur outfits.    

Halloween makes me wonder why some folks enjoy frightening others, even scaring themselves? Not me. I’ve never understood why so many people enjoy reading Stephen King’s frightening novels, go to scary movies like “Psycho,” take frightening rides on rollercoasters…why do some folks get a thrill out of being scared? I get cold, sweaty hands and an upset stomach just imagining those things.

Frightening thoughts bring to mind that Halloween horror character Ed Gein. Remember him? Everyone had stories to tell about Wisconsin’s grave robber and killer, who disembodied and skinned his victims in the 1950s. He stretched human skin to form lampshades…that was the story going around school. Ed Gein inspired three villains we can’t forget: Psycho’s Norman Bates, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Leatherface and The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill.

With Halloween approaching, I remember SQUEEZE, my neighbor Suzy’s huge pet snake (now deceased) that she bought wiggly rodents for him to gulp down in one swallow. On Halloween Suzy would dress in a black witchy costume, wind the pet snake around her neck and greet trick or treaters at the door. She’d invite the little trick or treaters to reach into a bowl of “eyeballs,” which were actually peeled grapes, but you get the picture. She had those kids getting scared, shivery feelings, but they loved it! Wailing noises and objects flying through the trees leading to her house were added Halloween treats. Every kid LOVED being scared on Halloween at Suzy’s house. They couldn’t wait for another year to go Halloweening down her dark, tree-lined road.

I’m totally spooked on dark nights with the tree branches and leaves swishing, wind howling, thunder booming and lightening cracking. I feel safer with pulled shades in my house; I don’t want to see a face looking in at me from the dark outside. Unexplained noises inside my creaking old house have the same effect on me. I’m real uncomfortable in spidery, dust-clogged attics and dank basements filled with cobwebs, narrow, creaking descending stairs and no light switch that works. Cockroaches, snakes and creepy music give me the willies. Just thinking about these spooky things is unnerving.

Articles on fears list things people are frightened of. Here’s a few from the list:

* Astraphobia: fear of lightning

* Katsaridaphobia: fear of cockroaches

* Musophobia: fear of rodents

* Nyctophobia: fear of the dark

* Ophidiophobia: fear of snakes

* Phasmaphobia: fear of ghosts

Most of us have a few common fears like rats and snakes. Even tiny baby mice make me squeamish. Halloween is a few weeks away. Truthfully, you don’t have to be scared. There’s nothing to worry about. Your friends are just having fun trying to scare you. Happy Halloween!

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.