When Pumpkins Grin

It’s that month again. Like all major holidays since I was a kid, Halloween has expanded its domain. It now rules the entire month of October and stretches Cthulhu-like tendrils back before the equinox all the way to Labor Day when Halloween candy suddenly appears on supermarket shelves. (For non-American readers, Labor Day is the first Monday in September.) Though Halloween did not originate in the US, the American way of celebrating it (well over a century old) has become popular even in places (such as Japan) completely removed culturally from the holiday’s Celtic origins. Perhaps this is not surprising. Around the world there are parallel notions of a time of the year when the boundary between the living and the dead is permeable and ghosts walk the earth more freely than usual, such as the Day of the Dead in Mexico or the Hungry Ghost Festival in East and Southeast Asia. Some celebrations of those parallel holidays are hardcore, such as ritual disinterment of the remains of family members for home visits in Indonesia. (See From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty for a description this and other death-related rituals.) I can see how carving pumpkins, dressing up spookily for fun, and cadging candy could make inroads as alternative activities – or at least as additional ones. Many Halloween costumes seem far removed from the influence of the graveyard, but cavorting with ghosts and tweaking the nose of Death still remain at the core of the holiday.

Ghosts are part of the mythic heritage of every people on every continent. What surprises those of a skeptical bent is how much they remain a part of modern belief systems. In a 2019 US study 45% of adults admitted to believing in ghosts, defined as spirits of the dead who can manifest to living people. (A solid majority believe in spirits if you count spirits who have moved onto someplace else.) Another 20% are unsure. This is pretty typical of advanced countries including ones that are highly secular in the usual sense. This may be an undercount since some people are embarrassed to admit to believing paranormal things. Counterintuitively, belief in ghosts rises with education. In a 2006 study by Bryan Farha at Oklahoma City University and Gary Steward Jr. of the University of Central Oklahoma (reported in the Skeptical Inquirer) 23% of college freshman believed in the general gamut of the paranormal including astrology, clairvoyance, and ghosts (40% believed in haunted houses specifically, with another 25% unsure), while 31% of college seniors did, and 34% of graduate students did. Science majors were no more skeptical than other students. From Science Education is No Guarantee of Skepticism (2012) by Richard Walker, Steven J. Hoekstra, and Rodney J. Vogl: “Across all three samples, the correlation between test scores and beliefs was non-significant... In other words, there was no relationship between the level of science knowledge and skepticism regarding paranormal claims.”

Choosing a seat at my
kitchen table

Ghosts have never been a part of my personal belief system. As a child my parents told me they didn’t exist and I believed them as uncritically as I believed their story that Santa Claus did exist. By the time I was able to think more critically for myself I saw no reason to change my mind – about the ghosts, that is. Yet, around half of my friends (including highly capable professionals) to this day are believers or at least are unwilling to say they are disbelievers. About a quarter tell me my house is haunted with two claiming to have seen apparitions. My house in the woods makes a lot of creaking, knocking, and groaning sounds as it heats and cools; the floorplan and lighting result in odd shadows – some of them cast through windows from trees that move when the wind blows. I don’t think about the sounds and umbrations except when teasing guests, e.g. “Don’t worry, the troll downstairs gets restless but he is securely chained.” Not all of them are amused. There is at least one grown man who doesn’t like to go to my basement alone.

I’m not immune to the creepiness of shadowy houses at night. The scariest Halloweens of my life have been in them. My dad was a builder and construction sites have a special appeal to marauding teens on Halloween (and the night previous). They don’t always confine themselves to spreading toilet paper and soaping windows. They sometimes did substantial damage including breaking windows, spray-painting obscenities, and slashing tires on construction vehicles. So, by my later teens I had been drafted into guard duty at unfinished houses on the last two nights of October. If you want to experience a spooky Halloween, spend it alone (with no cell phone) in a dark half-built house on a wooded lot at night. It wasn’t ghosts that worried me, of course, but the possibility of confronting beings with pulses. They are always the greatest hazard at any place or time.

In my own home, no ghost ever has done me harm, so if I’m wrong about their nonexistence, I figure at least they are friendly. Perhaps they’ll even do me the favor of scaring off some marauders with pulses.

 

Bessie Smith – Haunted House Blues (1924)