“AUTUMN EQUINOX 2015”
09/23/2015
“Nature is indifferent to men. It is not nature that is haunted, but men. It is not nature that makes murder, but men. The one hope is that men also make mercy.” - Phillip L. Simpson
Today marks the Autumn Equinox of 2015. Fall is by far my favorite of all seasons!! it’s changing of colors, temperature change, wardrobe changes to hoodies and jeans with the chance to eat calorie enriched food to prepare for the long upstate winters. Autumn brings the excitement of a druid holiday known as Halloween.
I love Halloween! the candy, the decorations and songs. I can remember the in school class parties every year and going trick or treating with my friends. The hardest part was trying to deicide what costume to get each year. On hallows eve every neighborhood, town, county and state had either that one house, farm, penitentiary, hospital, mansion, graveyard or structure that was closed and “haunted”. 
These places could be haunted the other 364 days but only on this night would it matter! It’s always the spirits of some poor restless soul who was murdered and tirelessly looking for the souls of children to eat in vengeance. (I can stop now if these memories sound familiar? i’m sure 98% of us have at some point encountered something close to this). Like most other kids in America, we either laughed or we screamed and looked away and ran fast as a haunted ghost or murder house is scary and ugly.
Fast forward 2 hours later, when we would return from our candy pilgrimage you would find that while you unwrapped your candy and shoved it down your gullet that you would turn on the beautiful 80’s 90’s wood floor tv console and be watching whatever slasher flick that was on that Halloween night. YES!! more scariness!! more horror for the sub conscious. That is what makes the holiday of Halloween great! (until you get in your teens and you get drunk off you ass at Halloween parties)
I find myself asking what is it about haunted houses and in particular ghosts that grab the attention of us so much. The perception vs reality is astounding. Now I am not a bible thumper or a high horse judgement bearer. I love to be scared and I am fascinated with the paranormal and the tragedies behind them as well. It’s almost as a living piece of history that reminds us that if the tragedy does exist, it’s there so it may not happen to someone else.
If I was to play devil's advocate for a moment and switch hats…let’s look at a different perspective of the whole haunted location/murdered restless soul situation. That ghost (if you do believe in ghosts) was once a Human being who had a name, a heart, loved someone, cried, had talents and most likely dreams they were aspiring to. But something happened.
They were robbed of life, that's right, simply put…they were Murdered. Now, without getting into great detail, perception vs reality can play a big number on our psyche. For example, I work in an Emergency room and I have seen first hand human beings take their very last breath and die. It is by far the most hardest thing to see..the sound, smell and sight is something you can never forget or get out of your mind. The perception is in movies is that the passing is a romantic or heroic thing, but in reality it’s gut wrenching and leaves you without words to see someone die in front of you.
Now, death is part of life. That is how it is and I understand that. Prior to my work in the ER I would watch slasher movies and games where the goal was to kill and the kill streak was what mattered. There was an idolization in society for the perpetrator even if it was a fictional character. Do I still watch these movies? yes. Do I still fire up the xbox one and play the witcher and cod? omg yes! but I’m more concious now about not only the life lost, but the life taker.
I grew up during a time when pretending to be Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers was fun to do with your friends. I still see it with my son who will be 9 with his friends. (the trend is more zombies now). It’s normal part of life and boyhood to grow up with your friends taking turns being dominant or the murderer of the group. Just as there is also the hero of the role play and sadly, the victim. The perception vs reality begins from the moment we are born. we idolize what we believe through visual images, stories both read and told.
It wasn’t until just recently as an adult that I saw the dead or a victim and my 30+ years of perception of what I believed to truth in the moment of a persons death became the true reality. It isn’t the heroic fallen, symphony accompanied background piece that I was conditioned to believe in my subconscious. While death is nothing to fear as we will all die, I think the experience of seeing someone cross from the living to the deceased made me aware to how others perceive or joke about death.
In close, when I pass a haunted house now that is rumored to be inhabited by the spirit of a murdered soul. It is not that spirit of the victim that scares me. Oh no, what scares me more and is far more sinister is the thought that another human being could willfully and consciously take that person's life! especially after seeing first hand for myself the traumatic events of end of life.
Be safe, eat candy, hug your loved ones during scary movies and remember to celebrate life!..not destroy it.
Mark.
