LETTERS FROM HOME: LOOKING FOR THE WOLFMAN ON THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

Oct. 30, 1997

Dear Leslie,

Somehow it seems wrong to wish someone a Happy Halloween. We're supposed to be reveling in our fears. I guess that makes people happy sometimes.

DC's stimulant of choice is disaster movies, preferably ones starring forces of nature. She loved "Twister," even though she spends every darkening spring day checking to see if a tornado's bearing down.

DC's not fond of watching the darker side of human nature in action, but Mother Nature is forgiven.

I'm drawn to movies like "Wolfen." Street people in New York City are terrorized by mysterious killings perpetrated with canine teeth. The killers could be shape-shifting Native Americans seeking revenge for the white man's destruction of the environment. Or are they an ancient pack of supernatural wolves protecting their territory?

When the film is shot from the killers' point of view the world appears as a photographic negative. It's all creepily fascinating to me. But why?

You wonder why the Wolfman myth sets off fear alarms. I suspect we fear and distrust the uncivilized part of ourselves, the growling beast we know is just below the surface of manners and politeness.

But the uncivilized part of us is our link to primal forces, the mysterious energies that spawn tornadoes and stars and make flowers explode into bloom. If we don't reach into this part of ourselves we are cut off from our source. Life is in the grunts and groans.

There's a Celtic legend that the separation between the living and the dead is at its slightest on the night we call Halloween. The souls of the dead are supposed to be able to return to Earth this evening.

That doesn't scare me. I get afraid when it's hard to tell the living from the dead.

The Wolfman in me was hiding when I was a child. I didn't smash any pumpkins or soap any windows.

One year I was in a group of boys who threw water balloons at cars. After one lucky toss at a motorist who slammed on his brakes and yelled, we ran for cover in the basement stairwell of the First Baptist Church. Breathing hard but euphoric, we suddenly were scared speechless when the church door opened.

Inside was a kind man who lectured us about the real dangers of throwing water balloons at cars before sending us on our still-speechless way.

My mother always made extravagant Halloween costumes for her children. One year I went to school as a monkey with a springy tail made of wire. I looked at mundane costumes and felt sorry for kids whose mother couldn't make a monkey out of them.

One Halloween when DC was in grade school, everyone was supposed to go home at noon to change into their costume. But one little boy didn't go home because he didn't have one.

Maybe he couldn't afford one or maybe his parents just didn't think it was important for him to have one.

That's OK, DC's teacher said, you'll have a costume. And during the lunch hour they made him one from bags and scrap material.

When the students came back from lunch, they voted him the prize for best costume because nobody could tell who was in there.

That's DC's favorite Halloween story.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.