There Goes the Neighborhood!

Everywhere I look, it’s a wacky parade of blood and guts. If you’ve ever attended a funeral, you know that death isn’t the most amusing stage of our lives, yet every year we get Halloween, a time to raise the dead and hang bodies from the ceiling and smear blood all over our faces.

To me, it’s like doing shots with O. J.

Americans are a funny thing. We turned the resurrection of Christ into chocolate eggs and the Easter bunny, and every October we celebrate butchering one another.

Perhaps there’s psychosocial value in Halloween. Perhaps we are, on some level, striving to sublimate that part of our psyche that we don’t fully understand but must address lest it surface in other areas––no, it’s just bizarre.

Walk down the street on Halloween, and you’ll see bodies in the trees, bloody lawns, serial killers, melting eyeballs, stray appendages, divorce attorneys. And we say, "Oh, that’s cool."

I, a man who roots for the villain on TV, don’t understand it.

Last year, I visited the London Dungeon in, uh, London. Here’s a place that showcases the Dark Ages and the Reign of Terror as they actually existed. It’s perpetual Halloween, and it’s all true.

Scattered through the halls of the London Dungeon, like artwork, is a sample of all the misery mankind has inflicted upon itself.

In the west wing, you’ll find witches––women with opinions–– burning at the stake, replete with shrieks of horror and flickering flames. In the east wing, a man is having his fingers removed one-by-one with a machine designed for that purpose. Along the way, you’ll enjoy other attractions such as impaling, castration, lynching, beheading, and you get the point.

Below each exhibit is a factual explanation of the event and the date on which it occurred. To think that 200 years ago we were still drilling holes in people’s heads to free the demons when all they needed was a dose of Prozac.

Lurking in the shadows of the Dungeon are oversized monks in hooded robes. They represent the church, the most frightening mass murderer of them all. The monks stroll the halls, looking for an opportunity to startle you.

At one point, I was engrossed with a story about a child being dragged to the gallows before a cheering crowd, when a monk came up and cackled in my ear. I shrieked like a little girl and nearly wet my pants. I wanted to punch the guy in the nose, but I couldn’t reach it.

For me, fear and terror are feelings that I only want to experience if fate wills it. They aren’t something I want to go through because someone thought it would be entertaining. I was going to write a column about practical jokes, but now it’s a moot point because it would turn out exactly like this column. The practical joke is just like Halloween—it’s supposed to be droll, but it usually comes from a pretty cruel place.

I’ve got an idea: Why don’t we throw Chuck’s mother out the window and videotape his expression as she hits the ground…

When a giant monk sneaks up behind me and makes me squeal in fear, he is doing me a great disservice. He may as well have come up and cursed me with constipation.

I’m still going to dress up this weekend and attend a Halloween party, but only because that’s how to get free beer.

I’ll be the guy wrapped in tin foil and labeled "leftovers."

But I just know that I’ll find myself looking around at all the blood-letting and have to shake my leftover head because I’ll never truly understand it.