Are Halloween People Insane or Geniuses?

I’m really trying to figure something out about Halloween people. Maybe you can help me out. It seems now to be about a bazillion years ago I joined the Halloween-L email list. This was originally back in 2000 or so. This was the first time I joined you ask? Yes, I have joined several times and that begs the question, “Why did you stop being on the list at all?”. Well, for anyone who has ever been on this list what you’ll find at any given time between one to three thousand members from estimates I’ve heard. Of course, you say, it must be total mayhem with that many people active on the list. Well, actually, the active members are few – maybe thirty to forty. Really, you say?! Why so few, and what are the non-active members doing? Let me tell you the latter and you’ll understand the former.

They are lurking.

lurked, lurk·ing, lurks
1. To lie in wait, as in ambush.
2. To move furtively; sneak.
3. To exist unobserved or unsuspected: danger lurking around every bend.

So why would anyone be lurking on an email list they actually subscribe to and want to be on? I have my suspicions, but I can actually only speak for myself. Mainly I lurk because when I post it is either not acknowledged or the opinion differs from the clique Thus you are then belittled. In fact this can happen no matter what one says. I personally believe that if I said the sun would come up tomorrow I would receive no less than thirty responses: 3 in agreement, 15 in disagreement, 10 in total denial who question my integrity in some inane manner, and 2 from moderators threatening to ban me from the list. I may be exaggerating a bit but not much. This has happened to me before, and I have unsubscribed numerous times to get away from the ridiculous insanity. I always manage to come back though because about one in every one hundred posts is actually something very interesting and I’d hate to miss out on seeing something someone made or did.

Is this unique to the Halloween-L? Most assuredly not. Is it unique to the Halloween community? No to that one too. However, I have noticed that people in the Halloween subculture do tend toward some disturbing polarizations of viewpoints that lead to to the discomfort on the email lists. In fact just this week one came floating to the top of the Hall-L pus bucket. It was posted that Mike Bruner of the Monster Maze and more recently the Eastern Haunters Convention was booted from the Hall-L for SPAM about his event. In reality he only posted around ten times in a four month period and all of which were actually on-topic and valid Halloween information. It wasn’t so much that he was booted that made the controversy, but how people actually reacted to the news that he was booted.

It followed the scenario I laid out above. Some folks were immediately on Mike’s side. Some against. Some whining just to whine. And others ranted on and on in way more posts than Mike ever posted himself. Personally I found this a precious waste of time and energy. For years I’ve witnessed ridiculous and petty fights over little things like haunts with chainsaws versus haunts without, spooky haunts versus bloody haunts, Haunted Attraction Magazine and Leonard Pickel versus HauntWorld Magazine and Larry Kirchner, professional haunts versus home haunts, yard haunts versus garage haunts, automated haunts versus actor driven haunts.

It all becomes just so very tiresome. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world where we all realized that we’re on the same side here and that each one of has something in common? A love of Halloween and haunted houses should be the unifying theme in our endeavors, and I must admit that while I have my preferences in what I do I really do love it all. Heck, I even like the guy who puts out a bag of leaves that looks like a cheesy pumpkin. It’s all good man. Now, sometimes on this site I throw out an opinion, but it really isn’t meant to be taken as gospel. It’s just my opinion after all, except for the one about the Speed Racer movie – everyone should hate it just like me. Everyone has opinions whether it be one or a whole boatload. It’s OK to spout off, but some of these fights seem to go on and on and drive people apart in the haunt community for weeks, months, or years at a time. I’m not sure if it’s that Halloween people tend to be more high strung artsy creative people or that something about the darkness in Halloween – the very thing that draws us to watch horror movies, build gruesome props, and love scaring people witless – is the very thing that makes us so angry at one another over petty things. Maybe both are tied to each other like genius is to insanity.

Basically I just want to say this to any haunter out there who is holding a grudge against another haunter that doesn’t involve them stealing your money, destroying your livelihood, raping your dog, or killing your family in some horrific manner. Lighten the fuck up will ya! I hate resorting to cursing, but as you all know I do it from time to time. Nothing says it like a good dirty word. So I say it again – LIGHTEN THE FUCK UP! We’re all together here.

Oh yeah, and just because you can email someone, or a thousand someones, and trash somebody while under the guise of a pseudonym like ScaryPukerhead1313 doesn’t mean you shouldn’t conduct yourself with the same societal proprieties you would standing next to that person in the grocery store. That kind of anonymity is the shield most often used by cockroach-like pedophiles scurrying from the light and the law on Dateline NBC. Now, with that said, go out and subscribe to both magazines and visit a haunt you normally would because it was either too gory, spooky, cutesy, or whatever. Like your mother taught you about saying something good if you have to say anything at all go out and compliment someone on an email list or at a convention or gathering who spent hours or weeks working on their haunt or a prop. No one expects you to love everything and you can even judiciously disagree with anyone so long as you just acknowledge the love of Halloween in your fellow haunters. Aren’t there enough kooks out there who cause us problems every October stealing our stuff and protesting us as Devil worshipers that we don’t have to do it to ourselves?

May 9th, 2008