My favorite holiday. All Hallow’s Eve, the day when the veil between the worlds is thinnest.
I love trick or treat. Growing up in a suburb of Chicago in the 50s, we used to go out trick or treating immediately after school with a pillowcase to put the candy in. No little hollow plastic pumpkins to carry the candy! The houses were close together there and everyone – every house – participated or they’d get their windows soaped or worse. We’d go house to house until the pillowcase was full, then go home, dump it out, and go hit the streets some more. Our parents did NOT go with us, it was just us, just the kids, gangs of kids, in the dark. What a heady feeling! Yes, it was the heyday of Halloween, before the razor-blades-in-the-apples thing (I think that’s a myth, but it did irreparable harm to trick or treating). We made our own costumes, for the most part. It was great. Kids now have no idea what Halloween could be – or was. The vast majority of their lives are regulated and controlled by others. All day long they get told what to do by teachers and parents. There are innumerable things they can’t do or aren’t allowed to do. Their lives are regulated and they have no self-efficacy. So listen, one day a year – ONE DAY – let them have power. The power to dress up as something scary and go house to house demanding candy from strangers. They need this holiday, this experience. The spookier the better.
I am interested in the spiritual aspects of Halloween. The veil between the worlds is at its thinnest. So can we communicate more easily with the dead? Do psychics have an edge on Halloween? I think of Alden and his grandson in The Arts of Love and War, with his blind eyes and tarot cards. He brought knowledge to David and Susannah, gave them key pieces of information, information that Susannah, certainly, might never have known about her lover.
A good place to get a psychic reading is in Salem, Massachusetts. Of course, all of New England is at its best in the fall, with its stone walls, misty nights, fallen leaves, and clouds racing across the moon. But Salem is my favorite place. I’ve been there twice on Halloween, and it’s amazing and wonderful, with the streets closed to cars so that fantastically costumed people can roam at will. I wore a Medieval gown (of course). I went with my adult daughter. We got readings that were highly accurate, and one very serious and wonderful prediction came true for my daughter this year, the year – four years ago – that it was predicted to happen. It’s not quite as well attended now, since covid, but we went before covid and those two years there were some of the highlights of my life. Every conceivable costume, and some inconceivable ones as well. People go to great lengths. And I am happy to say that it was all respectful and merry and fun. The Flying Spaghetti Monster was there, and every kind of angel and devil. A guy with a sign “hugs from Satan” (yes, I got a hug). Two women dressed as pink jellyfish. Matt and his boombox and fabulous dancing. Skeletons, babies, aliens, dogs in costume, huge dancing Tyrannosauruses. The Angel of Death spreading dark wings. The Wiccan circle in the big field, with an altar and remembrance of the dead and dancing in an energy circle. The Ghostbusters, with incredible completely accurate costumes and equipment: “When the light is green the trap is clean”. Everything you can imagine. And we all have power that day. The power of fun and celebration of the imagination, which is the most powerful force on the planet. There in Salem we gave joy to the living and honored the dead, especially the witches who were hanged or pressed to death and lie sleeping in the cemetery that no one desecrates on this sacred night.