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alien / demonic attachment

June 6, 2013

 

We Like To Be Scared!

by Paul Schroeder

alien / demonic attachment

 

The Haunting of Hill House”, by Shirley Jackson, titled,”The Haunting”, in its movie version terrified me and I have yet to see a scarier movie.

Goose bumps still have goose bumps when I recall this film horror and subsequent viewing still chills my bones to its marrow..

“The Exorcist”, touted and deemed the scariest movie ever made, however, fails “The Haunting’s” fear ‘test’, as almost all of Stephen King’s pop- culture-horror movies, also do.

Films of “Horror” fail, when the “thing to be feared”, is seen on film and is simply too explicit.

Horror films’ effects generally fail to deeply terrify an audience because the film depends heavily on visual special effects in order to scare the viewing audience.

The psychological trouble, with an audience’s lack of fear, not being scared by a horror movie, emerges when the viewer can clearly and actually SEE and OBSERVE that creature who is supposed to be scary.

Viewers watching a ghost or monster film, easily subdue and avert fear and internally say,”well, looking at it, it’s sort of ok, but not THAT scary…”

But we LOVE to be scared.

Delicious fear can be achieved and sustained in a film only and oddly if the monster or ghost or ghoul in question, remains mysteriously unseen/ unknown.

Now, fear blossoms as the viewer’s mind can engage imaginatively and creatively.

The scary but elusive unseen monster can now eat away and privately gnaw at the viewers’ imaginative minds.

As an example, the unseen movements of the shark, below the camera’s water line focus, in the movie “Jaws”, generates the most terror in the viewers’ minds and adds enormous weight to this ‘test”, a measure of terror, often ruined by the very graphic nature of most horror genre films.

There’s nothing left for the mind to imagine. It’s all there to be seen, in black and white or in color and thus, really not that scary, after all.

The sole exception, in Horror film genres, to this unspoken rule of scaring viewing audiences, is the first part, the first two hours of, the Stephen King movie,”IT”, a film beginning that is absolute in its terror and horror, despite graphic depiction of the demon.

But even the exceptions, prove the rule.

When the Monster, or ghost or demon is THERE, but unseen, always just around the corner, internal and real fear can begin to mount and blossom in the minds of an audience viewing a horror movie.

The movie, “The Haunting” does precisely this, and it succeeds in badly scaring the viewer and it violates the human pleasure of being able to control being just a little afraid.

Just like our minds’ enjoying action- theme parks which feature dangerous attractions and rides, the comparable human need is to be, safely afraid.

We will pay good money for fun houses, carnival rides, roller coasters, horror films and Halloween, to satisfy that need to be only safely scared.

The movie,”The Haunting”, discards that ‘safety’ aspect(the original, starring Julie Harris and Russ Tamblyn) and inspires viewer goose bumps, to have goose bumps.

“The Haunting”, differs greatly from banal pop culture monster/ ghost horror thrillers in every important way; we must completely imagine the monster.

The authoress, Shirley Jackson, stated that she, “never slept in her bedroom without the lights full on” and I suspect, as I do the same, that I know precisely what she experienced, that might have motivated her, to write that story into a book and to continue keep her overhead bedroom lights on.

Real discorporate evil is afoot, and any discerning psychic/ sensitive struggles with them, on some level, constantly.

Those who suffer less, know that free-floating anxiety, is the soul’s reaction to psychic trespassing, by demonics.

Some things really scary, repulse, in an oddly enjoyable way.

But in film,

juxtapose the impotent silly fear generated by the popular movie, “Halloween”, a Jack-in -the-box graphic ‘slasher movie’, popular with people who have likely never seen the film, “The Haunting”.

We like to be scared, safely.

For the same reason we like a roller coaster ride; although we are scared , we always feel sure that the horrific and life- threatening ride will certainly deposit us, safely, at the end, so that fear, notwithstanding, we can walk away, unharmed.

 

“The Haunting”, smashes this comfort zone and at curtain’s close, the evil, unseen One at Hill House, has claimed and swallowed yet another soul, that of Elanore..

We, as children, foisted our odd joy of being scared safely, onto the holiday of Halloween,

 a creepy harbinger of fear that is  pleasurable.

The Holiday Halloween traces back to ancient Celts in Ireland, who were very conscious of the sinister, surrounding, unseen, spiritual world, and who had bizarre ideas about how to gain access to it.

Halloween was when the curtain between the physical world and the spirit worlds becomes the thinnest, that evil supernatural forces were most active,  and that sinister ghosts and spirits of murderers were free to wander. 

“During this interval the normal order of the universe is suspended, the barriers between the natural and the supernatural are temporarily removed, the veil lies open and all divine beings and the spirits of the dead move freely among men and interfere sometimes violently, in their affairs”

(Celtic Mythology, p. 127).

The Celtic priests, called Druids, performed their rituals of sacrifices of crops, animals and of humans, to placate the gods and to guarantee that the sun would return after the winter.

As in many religions the first key religious element was to frighten away evil spirits before anything else.

To the Celtics, the religious bonfire was the symbol of the sun, and was used by the Druid in his fight against dark powers.

The term bonfire comes from the words “bones of fire,” literally, the bones of sacrificed animals and humans, piled in a field with timber and set ablaze.

All fires except the Druids’ bonfire were extinguished on Samhain, our precursor to Halloween; householders were levied a fee to relight their house fires within, with the fire which burned at Druids’ altars.

During the Festival of Samhain, fires would be lit which would burn all through the winter and sacrifices would be offered to the gods on the fires.

Blood sacrifices surely and bizarrely open sinister portals to the supernatural.

This blood sacrifice practice is strongly echoed, and mirrored, in its dark spiritual summoning, within Mayan, Aztec and Old Testament Hebrew religions,  requiring that blood be splashed upon all four corners of an altar, combined with burning of recently alive flesh, to open (evil and) powerful paranormal portals.

The ghoulish practice of burning human sacrifices, more modernly, was stopped around 1600, with an effigy sometimes burned instead.
“Trick-or-treat” comes from Samhain,  the supreme night of demonic jubilation.

Spirits of the dead rise out of their graves to wander the countryside, trying to return to the homes where they formerly lived, on that night.

Frightened villagers tried to appease these sinister wandering spirits by offering them gifts of fruit and nuts.

 Plates of the finest food and bits of treats were offered on their doorsteps, as gifts, to appease the hunger of the ghostly wanderers.

Spirits not placated, would kill their flocks or destroy their property.

Demons and other inhuman malevolent entities surfaced to walk, as it did in, “The Haunting of Hill House”. 

 To protect themselves, they tried to masquerade as one of the demonic hoard, when out and about, at night, to hopefully blend in unnoticed, amongst them.

Wearing masks, disguises and blackening their faces with soot were ways of hiding oneself from the spirits of the dead who roamed around.

Thus, the origin of Halloween, where one can feel safely afraid with one’s masquerade as a devil, imp, ogre , demonic creatures.

“Trick-or-treat” can be traced to a European custom called “souling”.

‘Beggars went from village to village begging for “soul cakes” made out of square pieces of bread with currants.

The more soul cakes the beggars received, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors.’

At that time, the Church taught that the dead remained in limbo, purgatory, after death, for a long time and that prayer, even by strangers, could elevate and thus guarantee a soul’s passage, to Heaven.

Those trapped within Hill House’s spiritually demented, ghostly dimension, surely needed  prayers.

In many parts of Britain and Ireland Halloween, was, ‘Mischief Night’, when

people were free to go into the village to play pranks and to get into mischief, without fear of being punished.

Many customs were taken to the United States by Irish and Scottish immigrants in the nineteenth century, to develop into ‘trick or treat’.

A delicious feeling of being safely afraid, can evolve into frightening cultural experiences.

“At one time Halloween was a time of such fear and dread that people would board up windows and doors and stand guard over their properties with loaded shotguns in anticipation of the wandering packs of youth that would terrorize their communities unleashing devastation and destruction in their wake.

From city to city, all across our great land, gangs of young men would go on the rampage, throwing rocks through windows, burning down fields, barns and homes, chasing off livestock and performing every imaginable prank against unsuspecting victims.

These individuals would justify their behavior out of hunger, anger, revenge, or just plain “fun”. At times the tricksters would wear masks, costumes and disguises to prevent other people from identifying them.

Sadly, this only made matters worse as people would blame their avowed enemies and reciprocate Catholics against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics, rich against poor, poor against rich, white against black, black against white People were traumatized, people were injured and many were killed”

                           (quotation from an article, by Mark Parsec)

 

Then, in later Church observances, Halloween, an amalgam of Celtic and Catholic, came from “All Hallows(Holy Saints) Eve”, an official Church holy day.

Fires were set and tended to by Church fathers and priests all night long to attract dark entities which were then prayed for to move them out of the darkness and into the light which was much appreciated and seen as service to heaven.

The very next(logical) day was “All Saints ‘Day” a celebration of those already elevated souls in the Church.

All Hallows Eve and All Saint’s Day were tied together in the Church’s mind as a linear evolution; first the ‘cleansing’ then, the ‘celebration’ of God’s eternal souls on Earth..

Vandalism and wanton disregard of others is common on Halloween night, as

police report a great increase in such activities on Halloween.

Can controlled fear just be repulsive and not at all delicious?

Horrifying accounts of poisoned candy and fruits booby-trapped with razor blades and needles on surface on Halloween, threats so real that many hospitals offer free X-rays of Halloween treats  to protect children. 

 We celebrate fear, just as long as it is safe and Halloween, to me, is personal:

..that my mother celebrated Halloween, too early, starting in early September,  putting decor of carved pumpkins, on the front porch.

The neighbors said, she had premature a Jack-o-Lantern..