Halloween

After three years in Philadelphia and much chatter about going, H and I finally ventured to the carnival-esque Terror Behind the Walls phenomenon at the Eastern State Penitentiary this Wednesday.  We live within an easy walk to the site, and we've never even been there in the light of day, let alone at night, so it was definitely due.  It was more of a raucous good time than the terrifying thrill that the site's FAQs promised, and H complained that they should have let only a few people in at a time, leaving us to wander the cell blocks alone. How scary, after all, can something be when you're filing through it shoulder to shoulder like school children filing to the bathroom?  We gave it an A for effort and theatrics though, and I was glad we went.

I never considered Halloween a favorite holiday of mine until recently.  When I was seven years old, my parents, innocently nurturing my love of classic American musicals, brought home Little Shop of Horrors from the video store, and popped it into our VCR without a second thought.  I remember very vividly hiding under a giant pink and yellow flowered blanket with my then best friend Amber as we watched, giggling and screeching.  At the time it seemed like innocent fun.  But, as I'm sure we can all testify, fun and games when we're with other people can turn into dark rooms and creepy basements when we're alone, warping in our little imaginations to fanged funhouse jaws that are ready to eat up our souls whole.  To a seven year old, this is especially true.  I spent the next two years of my life terrified that we had an actual man-eating plant in my basement.  Nightmares aplenty, I would run frantically up the steps whenever I had to be down there, absolutely sure that there was a green tentacle following behind me, ready to wrap its rubbery slime around my skin and yank me back into the abyss.  I think the trauma of such associations (and, weird movie as it is to be afraid of, there WAS trauma) led me to firmly believe that I was a terribly easy scare, and I steered myself away from horror movies, haunted houses, and Stephen King novels for years after.  It's a shame, because, as I've been gradually discovering as an adult, I actually really like these things.  Ah well.  Better a late bloomer than never - there will be plenty more Halloweens to profit from in the coming years, and plenty of quiet nights just waiting for a good horror movie.  Just maybe none featuring giant, flesh-eating plants.