Several years ago we had an exchange student from Spain named Lourdes living in our home. One evening I was sharing the traditions of Halloween with her. I was excited to tell her about all the events surrounding this holiday and the amount of fun children have with their imaginations. When I finished explaining these things to her, she looked at me with a confused expression on her face and then she asked.
“Are you telling me that you dress your children up like monsters? You send them out into the dark streets at night and while you wait at home, they go to stranger’s houses asking for candy?”
“Ummm yea...pretty much.” I replied.
Obviously, there was something lost in translation, because Halloween didn’t sound nearly as fun and exciting when she said it back to me! I had planned on telling her about the spooky carved faces on our pumpkins and how we decorate with bats, witches, ghosts and goblins, and put tombstones in our yards, but I kept that information to myself (I didn’t want her to think we were going to suck the life from her veins while she was asleep in our home)! I took off my witch hat, put down my broom and changed the subject. What made me think of this experience with Lourdes was a call I got yesterday from my daughter. She relayed a frightening experience my three year old grandson had earlier that morning. They were on the computer together looking at Halloween cartoons when she left the room for a moment to answer the phone. He clicked on something that scared him half to death! He started screaming in holy terror and scrambled up the flight of stairs into her loving arms. My daughter was taken aback by his response and went downstairs to see what had frightened him so severely!
She saw that he had clicked on a clip from The Nightmare Before Christmas and the background music was a scary Halloween song being sung by the groveling, demonic voice of Marilyn Manson! It had scared him out of his wits; imagine having a voice so intense that it resonates fear into the hearts of little children and they flee in holy terror. My daughter said she had to put soft angelic music on to neutralize his brain!
Don’t you remember being scared to death as a child? Boy I do. Once I was frightened from infinity and beyond! When you’re a child, that level of fear is short of a lobotomy and it stays in the mind forever.
The most frightening thing in my life was one Halloween night when I overheard my older brothers and sisters telling a horrifying story. It was so scary that it shattered my sense of well being and sent chills riveting down my spine! This was a legend that had been handed down from generation to generation in my neighborhood; there was no way I could ever escape it’s ugly grasp. This scary monster was so frightening that the very mention of his name sent a wave of trembling fear from house to house and even my dog was so terrified that we hid together underneath the bed!
This frightening tale was that of a dead man called Booger John, who made the Wolfman, Frankenstein, and Dracula look like cake decorations. Booger was from the grave and the mental images that formed in my mind were wild and vivid. His clothes were torn and covered with dirt, he had worms crawling around in his eye sockets and the rest of his face and body was oozing with rotting flesh. I don’t know where this legend came from, but I can tell you where it went!
Booger John was a walking corpse right out of the cold, damp grave. He was buried alive by a man with a patch on one eye and had only two fingers on his right hand. (Now, if Booger John didn't scare the jaheebees right out of me, the man with one eye and two fingers did, because he was wandering around out there too!)
That fateful night when Booger was being buried alive by a man with one eye, there was a child who took a short cut through the graveyard and witnessed the shocking scene! The legend has it that Booger John is still looking for answers. He waits until dark, slips out of his grave and wanders aimlessly through the city looking for that one child and believing this child has the answers to the murder. Booger John searches endlessly, night after night and it's just a matter of time before he finds your house!!! Wait! It gets worse, the one eye man is afraid of Booger John finding him, so he hides in your closets and under your beds!
OKAY, OKAY OKAY! There is nothing more vivid in detail than a child's imagination and Booger reigned fear and terror in mine. The image of him was permanently etched in my brain with a hot branding iron and some of the scar tissue is still there today!
Now that I'm an adult, I realize there are bigger boogymen in the world I live in today than Booger John, such as the IRS, collection agencies, poverty, illiteracy, discrimination, politicians, war, and the list goes on and on. I am no longer afraid of graveyards, (although, I am in no hurry to reside there) it’s the living that present the dangers in life, not the dead. I still love, love, love Halloween and believe there is a little child in all of us screaming to come out and play.
by, Linda Sumner Urza, One Fine Day
