Halloween Decay

When I was little, I would attend Halloween parties with my family and go trick-or-treating with my brothers.  We also had school parties, and sometimes costume parades.  To me, Halloween was about costumes, trick-or-treating, candies, and haunted things.  As I grew older, I also carved jack-o-lanterns, and my family started putting up Halloween decorations.  That job was eventually handed to me and my brother.  Later, haunted houses came into the picture, and we visited some of them.  I went trick-or-treating until 10th grade.  After that, I was busy with school and lost interest, so I usually just passed out candies.

Halloween is actually All Saint’s Day Eve, with November 1 being All Saint’s Day, and November 2 being All Souls’ Day.  This holiday was originally for honoring and worshipping the dead, especially our ancestors, which probably led to souls and spirits, giving rise to ghosts.  People usually see ghosts as scary things, and that was possible how Halloween turned into a holiday of haunts.  Over the centuries, Halloween has become a time where people dress in costumes, scare others, and visit haunted houses and parties, with children trick-or-treating or parading in costumes.

Over the past few years, this holiday has become corrupted with scary things that are nasty, improper, unrelated to Halloween, and a bad influence to society.  Now, haunted houses have workers dressed in scary and nasty costumes, hiding, then jumping out to shock visitors.  Decorations and haunted events are mostly about murder, crime, mental illness, and other so-called "adult" themes.

When I attended a Halloween Haunt event last year, I thought it would just be the usual: ghosts, goblins, witches, broomsticks, black cats, bats, and pumpkins.  I did not expect it to be all scary, nasty, and a bad influence to society.  Ghosts and monsters are not really scary, but many people are because they are complicated, able to betray and hurt others unexpectedly.