WHY NO LOCKDOWN CAN CANCEL MY HALLOWEEN. BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

 

WHY NO LOCKDOWN CAN CANCEL MY HALLOWEEN.

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

'Foul feet smell something horrible...'

'I must think of a brick wall...'

There's been a lot of talk this year regarding the 'cancellation' of festivals like Halloween and Christmas. True, the Paddy's Day parade and festival back in March were physically cancelled due to COVID-19, but no-one was banned from getting stinking drunk in the privacy of their own home in honour of our national saint and watching cheesy 'Oirish' films like Darby O'Gill and the Little People and War of the Buttons till their eyes went square.

That's what I'm saying. Any number of physical events can be, and have been, prohibited in the national interest, but no amount of legislation or lockdowns can cancel a feast day itself, or the good feeling it habitually engenders.

Halloween in particular is not just one calendar day. It's a feeling that you keep in your heart all year round, particularly if you're a big Halloween/horror fan like myself and my kids (one adult daughter; one teenage son).

You can summon up the spirit of Halloween at any time of the year by watching a scary movie, reading a creepy book or decorating your home with tiny ornamental headstones or a raven sitting on a skull perched atop a pile of old mouldering books, a particular ornament my daughter bought for me a few Halloweens ago and which I christened Alas poor Yorick.

Halloween starts in our house by putting on 'the Halloween CD.' This is a box-set of spooky music, of which my favourite disc is the one with all the best horror movie soundtracks on it: the music from Psycho, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Exorcist, The Shining, The Thing, The Omen, Poltergeist, Nosferatu and more is all featured on it.

It even has the theme tune from some horror television shows on it, like the music from The Outer Limits, The X Files and Tales of the Unexpected. When you hear this album being played in our house, you damn well know it's Halloween.

My son loves some old black-and-white vintage horror, nothing too scary as he's autistic. Every year we watch his two favourite movies of all time, Village of the Damned and its superb, if not even better, sequel, Children of the Damned. 

We usually round that off with a family screening of perennial spooky favourite, Carry On Screaming, often referred to as 'the best film Hammer never made.' It never fails to make us laugh out loud. 'Then we must explore Avery Avenue...!'

As a personal project this year, I've been watching and reviewing any Hammer movies in my collection as yet left unreviewed. These include Prehistoric Women, The Viking Queen, Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, Demons of the Mind, The Witches, The Plague of The Zombies and Frankenstein Created Woman.

There's a nice, satisfying sense of completion and fulfilment every time I tick one off the list, and I still have a few more which I hope to do before October ends. I don't have to be rigid about it, though.

Halloween can (and usually does) last well into November if I want it to. I'd be happy for it to last well into December too, but there's a certain point beyond which Christmas will no longer tolerate being ignored, and you just have to go with the festive flow, which is fair enough.

What's the certain point? Oh, well, I suppose when you can't walk down the street without being poked in the arse with pine needles from the Crimbo trees on sale at the markets would be a good time to surrender to all things festive.

The magic of Universal horror must be acknowledged during the season of the witch as well as the allure of Hammer. To which end, we all watch together the Bela Lugosi Dracula, Boris Karloff's The Mummy, the two Frankenstein films and Lon Chaney in The Wolfman. He's the saddest of all the Universal monsters, because he's the only one who never seems to get any glee out of his work, lol, the poor creature.

Finally, we have the whole world of horror fiction to choose from. From the old masters of all things frightening- Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, our own Bram Stoker, M.R. James and Sheridan J. Le Fanu- to the King of modern horror, Stephen King, you could be reading a different author every week and never run out of good scary stuff to read and think about when you're in bed and you hear a footstep on the creaky stair...

This year I'm reading for the first time Anne Rice's vampire masterpiece, Interview with the Vampire, and, as it's so deliciously gothic and reader-friendly, I'm strongly considering going the whole hog with The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned for afters. Let it never be said of me that I don't know how to keep Halloween well, goddammit...!

Halloween is a feeling, a love you hold in your heart all year round for all things horror. You can take it out and tap into it any time you like. This year in particular, we desperately need to be distracted by mummies (I just finished reading a gorgeous book of mummy fiction) and vampires and poltergeists and other things that go bump in the night. Anything to take our minds off real life. That's beyond scary. We only like it when we're vicariously scared...

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women's fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, 'THIRTEEN STOPS,' is out now from Poolbeg Books.

https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64