Halloween

Halloween is drawing near. It's never been my favourite holiday. There's something about the tinsel and snow of Christmas that can't be beat by kids in cheaply made costumes who take my candy. I mean, really. Which would you pick? (I ask this, of course, assuming you are not a five-year-old child, in which case the day on which you get to take candy from your neighbours is the best day of the year).
Still, I have a soft spot for the spooky fun of Halloween. Especially because, this year, I will be spending it with friends, having the living s**** scared out of me by various horror movies. I've never been a true horror fanatic, but I can stomach it, and it's fun when you're amongst good company. We have been trying to decide for a while which movies to watch for this get-together, and I have heard many, many summaries of different movies, all of which I apparently "have to see."
Now, I'm sure all the movies I have heard about have their own merit and are worth watching, but all this talking about horror movies has got me thinking about why we love horror so much. Why do we love scaring ourselves senseless? Why do we want to believe that there are truly horrible things - ghosts, werewolves, ax/chainsaw/fishing-hook -murderers - lurking just beyond our range of sight? It's kind of a counter-intuitive thing for a species to want to do, but I've come to the conclusion that horror movies are, in fact, much more comforting than they appear.
We want to believe in the paranormal, the gruesome, the unknown, for the same reason we want to believe in religion. Because if there is not the possibility, however slight, that there IS something hiding from us in the shadowy corners of a remote forest, something we could never even imagine, then what is there? There is just this, just what we know. There are trees all grouped together in a night poorly lit by the moon. There's no excitement in that; there is nothing to believe in. If there are no ghosts (or demons or gods, etc.), then all that happens after we die is that our bodies decompose in the ground and we are slowly, eventually, forgotten. If there are no demons, then there are just people who do bad things, not because they are inherently evil, but because there is something deeply wrong with the way their brains function - something that could happen to any of us, given the right circumstances.
People need to believe that there is something more to life than just what we can see, because what we can see is not movie-worthy, most of the time. It's standing in line at the grocery store and being $.50 off for a cup of coffee after waiting in line for fifteen minutes. It's having to clean up with a pounding headache and noticing obscure stains on the shirt that you JUST PUT ON five minutes ago. Most of the time, our lives are not note-worthy. If something terrible or scary does happen, it's not thrilling. It's sad and awful, and full of the tears of those close to the victims.
And there has to be, just has to be, more than that.