As most of you know, I am a big fan of Halloween. I have been so since I was a small child growing up in rural south Texas - a place filled with ghost stories, old houses, and little else in the way of entertainment. My brothers and I used to create our own "haunted houses," and then charge the local children a dime to enter. Actually, my brother Robert was the special effects genius. I remember a ship's commode that was the centerpiece of one of his numerous spooky props. Lifting the lid, and gazing through the wax paper you could see my brother's head eerily lit in the bottom. The children found it chilling and the adults just seemed to laugh.
Being a fan of Halloween and scary stories, I relished reading spooky books such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and other such tales of terror. My brother Allan and I kept a collection of horrible masks that luckily could be used throughout the year to frighten guests and each other. My parents often got into the act as well. My mother's specialty was teasing her hair into monstrous proportions and then waiting behind a door to shriek as soon as I entered. Funny, some people would be traumatized by the experience. I just loved a good scare. Like all children, I wondered what it would be like to be a vampire; prowling at night, the power to change into a puff of smoke and enter a lock room or to fly as a bat against a moonlit sky. How cool was that.
Looking back now, I realized that the problem with the Dracula character is that he survived only by sucking the life out of others - by exploiting them for his own benefit. In a recent talk I spoke of the American fascination with vampires and wondered if there was something about our culture that made this story so appealing to us. Despite this being a European tale about European characters in a European setting, the Dracula story is not that popular in Europe. I have two friends who are newly arrived from Romania - a character from their history supposedly the basis for Stoker's Count Dracula -, and they tell me that many Romanians hate the fact that Vlad Drakul has been turned into an evil character. What is the American fascination with the Count?
Now I realize, of course, that American's have always enjoyed horror stories - much to the consternation of our friends around the world. Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Aliens, ghosts, and demons are standard themes for American movies and television - not so for our European counterparts. It could be argued that our own culture, relatively free from the real horrors of war, poverty and political villainy that rocked Europe during the birth of film and television, liked a good shocker, just as much as Elizabethan theatre was filled with blood and guts. But late at night, I wonder if we sometimes too much identify with Dracula - not as any childhood fantasy, but an admiration for his lusty desire for life at all costs.
During my talk I wondered what a culture made up entirely of vampires would look like? They would consume more than they ever produced, they would have a destructive fascination with youth and beauty rather than maturity and wisdom, and they would have a policy of exploitation - of draining away the life forces of the nations around them for their own benefit. Now, honestly I don't see America as a "vampire" nation, but I do see a movement in some sectors of our culture to deplete life and our natural world rather than adding to it.
As someone who believes in Ethical religion, I would counter that to live an ethical life is to live in such a way that others - and the natural world - are increased by an interaction with you. That we must foster life, not bleed it away. Is this you? Are you a source of life, or a drain on the vitality of others? Do you live in harmony with your natural world - a choice for sustaining resources, or is your consumption for you and you alone? The Ethical life requires that we ponder whether or not there are vampires in our closet.
In the meantime, I hope you had a wonderful Halloween and that the fresh air has revived your spirits. We have such a great year ahead of us! And a little extra something from my own pen;
Halloween
Halloween sits brooding in the far corner of October.
A crimson specter draped in fallen leaves,
smelling of withered earth and cider.
This hallowed eve flickers through carved smiles,
Calls forth sudden starts, and eerie harmonies
recorded through the short hairs of the nape.
Halloween a hole in darkness we pour childhood fears.
A storage receptacle of the bewitching memories of long dark hallways,
sulking forests and grandmas engulfing chiffarobe,
the veiled mirror a passageway to enchantment.
The shibboleth of Halloween arises quickly,
spooked from the back of the throat by a shriek.
Ah, Halloween, Halloween.
- Curt Collier