A Study in Terror By Dr. John Grant, PhD, MBA, JD, SPCA
For the unenlightened (i.e. you), Halloween may simply be a day in which hot women dress as maids and cats (assuming cats generally wear tight black leather fetish suits), but for the enlightened (i.e. me and Steven Hawking) Halloween is a celebration of getting your eyeballs plucked out with a spoon.
Most experts trace Halloween’s origins to pagan festivals in the earliest days of the Roman Empire. In days of yore, Romans would dress up as Power Rangers and demand candy, or a “treat,” from total strangers. If the strangers did not provide them with candy, the Romans would then typically play a “trick” on them. This generally involved dragging the strangers through the streets and crucifying them on the side of the road. Sometimes they might also TP their villas.
In modern times, people have matured to the extent that Halloween is generally celebrated by watching movies about people getting hacked up by psycopathic killers. Indeed, movies were not always this way. Initially, scary movies were studies in psychological terror. Fear came not from what you saw on screen, but from what your imagination conjured up. A creaking door, a dark corner, a villain’s face half-revealed in moonlight were thought to be the most terrifying things ever shown on screen.
Then people realized how stupid this was. A creaking door was not half as scary as a guy in a hockey mask holding a chainsaw in your closet. Aha! Perhaps you did not catch the subtle mistake there? I didn’t think so. You see, a guy in a hockey mask holding a chainsaw in your closet is not scary. A guy in a hockey mask holding a chainsaw in MY closet is very scary. If he is in your closet, then it is quite frankly not as big a deal – and can be vaguely amusing.
And that’s what’s important – amusement. I feel the best celebration of our own humanity is watching other members of humanity getting their brains forcibly evacuated from their skulls by a deranged clown. It brings us all together. Think about what we would learn about ourselves if we were to find ourselves in a horror movie. Love can be kindled between two teenagers by finding your best friend stabbed to death! Families can be brought together by finding your neighbor’s head in a toilet!
So my friends, as you prepare for another spooky night of candy, costumes and disembowelment, remember that what makes it special is that human beings are sick, sick creatures. It is only normal people such as myself – barricaded in a basement with canned food and a loaded shotgun – who will earn a rightful place in the spaceship coming for us in the tail of Halley’s comet. See you in hell, suckers.
Happy Halloween.