Halloween Is More About Fun Than Fear
It was a bright and sunny day. We scheduled the interview for noon, and I was walking up the driveway to the Studio City ranch-style home, when I noticed something on the lawn.
It was a lantern, lying on its side, and it was attached to something. Wait. No, not something. Some body. Somebody was holding it--but the somebody wasn’t there! It was just a lantern, a hand and an arm!
Ree! Ree! Ree! Ree! The sound reverberated inside my skull. Took a second to recognize the “Psycho” theme.
Moments later, I confronted the young man of the house. “Oh, that,” he said dismissively. “The rest of the person is in the back yard.”
Gary Corb is a friendly fellow, but then so was Norman Bates. Every Halloween, this 35-year-old free-lance film editor goes through a transformation. Some people turn into werewolves; Corb becomes a kind of homespun Hitchcock who turns his folks’ suburban front yard into a nether world spooked by the spirits beyond. Corb takes pains to explain that blood, gore and loose body parts really aren’t his cup of tea. He bemoans the fact that make-believe horror has become as subtle as a Texan wielding a chain saw. A student of the old school, Corb prefers the ghostly sound of a disembodied voice to the ghastly sight of a dismemberment.
The arm on the lawn, Corb assured me, was a work in progress--”the beginning of a shrouded human form.”
The next night, I dropped by and saw the shrouded grieving parents, the lantern held aloft over the grave of a small child. A few steps later, I heard a little girl’s voice, and I then saw her ghost, shimmering inside her nursery.
*
As holidays go, Halloween has always been one of my favorites. My affection survived the trauma I experienced some 30 years ago, when a teen-ager on a Schwinn Stingray pedaled off with my hard-earned candy. Boiled down to its essence, Halloween is a ritual that transforms fear into fun. Adding to the fun are some of the scariest people on the face of the Earth--humorless sorts who wave Bibles and insist that Halloween is an exercise in Satanism and devil worship. They are a distinct minority, however, and we can thank God for that. Or perhaps you-know-who.
In my trick-or-treating days, the candy mattered more than the history. Halloween, my handiest encyclopedias explain, is rooted in a Druid ceremony that honored a god of the dead. This pagan festival was adapted into Christian ritual; it’s called Halloween because it occurs on the eve of All Saint’s Day, or “All Hallows.”
“The souls of the dead were supposed to revisit their homes on this day,” the Encyclopedia Britannica states, “and the autumnal festival acquired sinister significance. . . . It was the time to placate the supernatural powers controlling the processes of nature. . . . It was the only day on which the help of the devil was invoked for such purposes. “
The devil, you say?
The italics are mine. Irish immigrants introduced the secular customs of Halloween to the United States in the 19th Century. Irish mythology about elves and fairies making mischief on this day inspired boys and young men to engage in such “tricks” as the overturning of outhouses. Everybody who has ever gone trick-or-treating owes a debt of gratitude to those hooligans of yore.
It’s a day to confront and overcome our fears. The other night, I took my friends Jenny and Christopher, ages 7 and 5, through the “Spooky House” on Friar Street in Woodland Hills. This one featured a large cast of young actors dressed as monsters and ghouls. A giant foam-rubber tarantula landed on my head. There was a fair amount of bogus blood and gore. At one point, I saw a familiar psycho in a hockey mask.
“Hey, it’s Freddy!” I said.
The psycho lifted his mask and whispered: “I’m Jason. Jason. “
OK, so I don’t know Elm Street from Friday the 13th, but Jenny and Chris don’t either. They entered boldly, but when they saw the living dead, they stopped in fear and wanted to turn around. With some gentle coaxing from the spirits, they hustled on through.
And then, of course, I praised them for being so brave. That’s part of the ritual too.
*
The crowds have lined up outside Gary Corb’s house for years. Inspired by Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, he staged his first haunting at the age of 13, a modest exhibit with eerie sounds from one set of speakers. Now Corb and his friends work for days to stage the production, with its 40 speakers and elaborate lighting. The walls of a crypt seem to breathe, and his homemade special effects enable Corb to project the spectral images of the little girl and a skeleton playing a harp. Corb, a songwriter, composed and recorded a spooky melody on a church pipe organ. He also sang Gregorian chants. “Nobody’s corrected my Latin,” he says.
A couple of years ago, one visitor was so impressed that he presented Corb with “a severed hand” from a novelty shop. At first Corb wasn’t sure what to do with it--until he used it for a new creation, the statue of an angel in prayer.
Corb isn’t sure why he does it, year after year. “It’s a calling,” he says. For three nights, hundreds of visitors line the street and take up all the parking. Studio City is suspiciously fond of the tradition. The negative reaction has come not from neighbors, but from those occasional folks who insist that Corb is in league with the Prince of Darkness.
Well, there was one neighbor who complained about the noise, but that was years ago.
Nobody’s heard from him since.
Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, 91311. Please include a phone number.