Halloween Iconography: the Witch

DISCLAIMER: Despite what people who have known me for years might think, this is not going to turn into one of those rants where I draw the ire of every alternative religion community on my head.  Probably.  This is more a look at Halloween witchery with a little history thrown in.  The concept is far too complex for a mere blog post.  I promise to be civil.

Depending upon your point of view a witch is a practitioner of an ancient nature religion, a pagan, a crone capable of riding brooms and casting spells, or a suburban house wife who is actually a member of an immortal species divided along gender lines.  The latter works magic primarily with nose twitching.

In the days when men were men, women were women and mothers-in-law could turn you into a monkey by using "jazz hands"

Pop culture witches, as seen today in America, are a product of a few centuries of historical witchlore, plus modern sensitivity toward Wicca, plus witch-oriented television shows such as Bewitched, Charmed, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  In the current genre climate it is hard to find a monster show without at least one witch in it.  While the previous shows did, at times, feature creatures like faeries, goblins, demons or monsters, it is the current crop of MONSTER MASH shows that really work with this concept.  Vampire Diaries, The Gates (cancelled after one season), and True Blood are good examples of this sort of show.  Comic books have had such monster mix-ups for a very long time and are a good source for our Halloween witch purposes.

EC Comics's "Old Witch" the host of the Haunt of Fear horror comic

Witches have been associated with Halloween in America for quite a long time.  Vintage Halloween postcards employ witches that are ugly, scary, pretty, happy, and various points along the line.  It is clear with just a little research that concepts of witches are varied, but certainly associated with Halloween.

It takes me literally minutes of blood sweat and tears to churn out these diagrams for you folks

Witches make for a popular choice in Halloween costumes and have for decades.  With a wide variety of masks, costumes and make-up kits (including prosthetic choices) available, it is easy to conjure up a witch costume.  Admittedly some witch costumes barely look like witches at all (I am speaking of the popular Halloween witch concept).

So what makes a Halloween witch?
Glad you asked.  The Halloween witch could have any number of characteristics, but we need a visual shorthand to tell us, instantly, that we are seeing a witch.
Observe:

No questions there, right?  Now what tells us she is a witch?  Pointy hat, dark garb, hag-like face, broom.  All "classic" witch characteristics.  How did that happen?  I've seen plenty of artwork on the internet showing witchcraft studies through the ages and what I don't see is pointy hats.  I see mostly uncovered heads or head scarves.  Black garb?  Again, not so much.  Brooms I see in a fair supply, but mostly from middle ages onward with the witch hunting manuals and demonology books.  Stripey socks seem a good characteristic as well.  Again, not sure how, but stripey socks are cool.
The problem with an accurate witch costume is that it is dependent upon time period, location, belief system and ultimately explanation.  That's right, you'd end up having to explain yourself to everyone.  That's no fun.
Halloween costumes should be funny or scary.  Yes, many people like slutty costumes, but the idea is to scare away or blend in with the spirits, not get them all hot and bothered.  Of course some people in their slutty costumes would scare a ghost to death, so maybe that's fair.  While the Wicked Witch of the West up there may be "insulting" to Wiccans, I would ask that we not make a sodding political issue out of every single thing we see and just enjoy the spooky.  Funny or scary, spooky or ooky, that's what Halloween is all about today.

See, go to a Halloween party as any of these witches and you will spend the whole night explaining yourself.  And what about the Puritan "witches" in Salem?  Or other early American witches for that matter?

Me?  I am Sarah Good, unjustly accused and executed during the witch trials in Salem.  Hey, where are you going?  Okay, no I'll just wait here.  Damn, lost another one.

See, again you are going to be called Pilgrim at best and "that weird girl over by the punch bowl" at worst.  Trust me, I know.  One Halloween I decided to make a fairly accurate, but cool, Highwayman Outfit.  Yeah, so I combined elements of two different costumes with a shirt my friend stitched up.  I had a waistcoat, puffy shirt, knee breeches, long socks, buckle shoes (I still have the socks and shoes), a cape, hat with feather, rapier, tied off mask to cover my forehead, eyes and nose (you know, a Dread Pirate Roberts affair), and black powder pistol.  What did people think I was?  Go on, you'll never guess.
Of course you will.  Pirate.  A sodding, bloody, pirate.  Hey, I love pirates, but I was being a highwayman.  Even my "stand and deliver" line did not help.  I kept having to explain it.  Not good.  I thought I was giving the visual shorthand cues, and maybe I was, but the audience was not clued into it.  The same thing is true with a witch costume.  The pointy hat and broom are visual cues that instantly tell us what the costume is.  Now with the Harry Potter crowd this could also mean Wizard and females in the Wizarding World are called Witches, so that's fair, but Harry Potter costumes are fairly easy to spot.  So when Halloween rolls around if you are looking for a witch costume, I'm afraid that playing to stereotypes is your best bet, lest your joy be drained away by small-minded folk who have already made their decisions based on less than a second spent looking at your hard work.
If I sound bitter it is probably because I really thought I was on to something with that highwayman thing.


Anyway, Witches and Halloween, a classic combination.  I love the movie Hocus Pocus and consider it a Halloween classic along with those Halloweentown films.  You know, maybe you can get away with a witch look without having to use the pointy hat.  Witches are the official "magical representative" of Halloween appearing in cartoons, poems, songs, movies and books.

Loony Tunes own Witch Hazel

Oh sure, the odd wizard may show up now and then, but I'm afraid the ladies really have the magic act cornered when it comes to Halloween time.  In this way the witch gets to be good and evil, scary and comforting, she gets to be our protection and the villain that causes all the trouble in the first place.
But then there are warlocks...


Eh, maybe next time.
Keep your pumpkins lit and your cauldrons boiling.  Oh yeah, I forgot about cauldrons...

Halloween Music: My Mix CD Edition

Oh, but the wonderful music available at Halloween.  Not near as much as Christmas, I admit, but there are still many choices available to the festive.  Every year, toward the last two weeks of October, the Sounds of the Seasons music channel on my cable television starts playing Halloween tunes.  Prior to that they will play polka because of Oktoberfest.  I have nothing against the polka.  Then, around 2 AM Eastern Time on November 1st the music will abruptly switch to Christmas tunes and stay that way until sometime in January.  Again, I have nothing against Christmas music, but can't we at least get through Dia de los Muertos first?

In recent years (okay, it's been something like 10 years at this point) I have seen a gradual increase in the available Halloween music CDs.  A quick Amazon.com search will reveal well over a dozen pages of CDs and MP3s that fit the descriptor of Halloween.  These selections include soundtracks, compilation albums, sound effects and children's music, and many of them leave much to be desired.  I have never attempted to hide my scorn for Drew and his inexhaustible supply of "party" CDs.  It would seem that a person could build their entire library of semi-classic hits simply by purchasing a Drew's party CD.  What's the most egregious of Drew's sins?  The HIT CREW!  Fie upon the HIT CREW.  Hey, Drew, think you missed a letter "S" there, bud.

Just to be clear, the HIT CREW are studio musicians.  This means that any given Drew's CD may be okay or total shite.  Some vocalists are easy to copy, stylistically, but if you aren't Michael Jackson we are going to know about it.  A HIT CREW cover of Thriller is just awful.  Not only does one have to accept a poor Michael Jackson imitation, but the Vincent Price rap, arguably the best part of the song (apart from the video, which was, if not the greatest of all videos, certainly the video that raised the bar so high on videos that all other artists took a hiatus for a bit just to admire it) is in no way comparable.
As long as I am griping about Drew, allow me to provide an example:

Drew's Extremely Ironic Halloween CD, more like it.

Here is the track listing for the above CD: (with my comments)
1. Soul Man (a good song, but not really Halloween-y)
2. Boogie Oogie Oogie (um, no thank you)
3. Hot Hot Hot (another great song, I love the tune, I love David "Buster Poindexter" Johansen, but again, not really a spooky ooky Halloween tune)
4. Bad Moon Rising (I am going to allow this one under the auspices of its use in American Werewolf In London)
5. Great Balls of Fire (There is nobody as rockabilly as Punkinstein, but I'm calling foul on this, sorry)
6. I Love the Nightlife (Oh, I get it...see this is a Halloween party CD and monsters 'love the nightlife' because they, um, like to boogie?  Yeah, I don't know either)
7. Cat Scratch Fever (Hey now, there are kids at this party)
8. Brick House [Zombie Remix] (That would be Rob Zombie, who is very hip to the Halloween vibe.  On the other hand this funky number, while great for parties, is not a Halloween tune)
9. My Sharona (Okay, this is getting bad...just assume that I am not approving of the tracks and I'll meet you on the other side)
10. Black Betty
11. Smoke On the Water
12. Bad to the Bone
13. Haunted Halloween
14. Boogie Fever
15. Doin the Mash

Now while any of these tracks are good in their own right and are rightly speaking "party music", I feel that a good Halloween party CD should be, and correct me if I am out of line here, Halloween oriented in some way.
I know why this occurs, by the way.  See there really are scores of songs for Halloween out there, some in the public domain.  I have a few CDs that are devoted to them.  Most of these songs are novelty songs and novelty songs are just not as popular as the Top 40 hits.  That's a fairly obvious statement.  Drew makes "party music" CDs, and at a party people don't want to sit around and discuss the deeper meaning of The Wall, they want to drink and dance and get a leg over with somebody.  So I understand the Drew thing...I just don't accept it.  Not with so much good music out there.
On the other hand, there are the HEAVY METAL HALLOWEEN type CDs.  Another, made by the Hit Crew but not sporting a Drew sticker has 14 of your favorite heavy metal songs on it (more or less).  "Don't Fear the Reaper", "Psycho Circus", "Shout At the Devil", and "Number of the Beast" are just a few, all covered by that ubiquitous Hit Crew.  The problem with that CD is the same as the Drew CD above: the songs just aren't Halloween-y.
Let's take a moment here to reflect on the time that Alice Cooper hosted Headbangers Ball for Halloween and featured Horace Pinker (from the film Shocker, which was a new release at the time) and guests.  Alice showed heavy metal videos (it was Headbangers Ball, after all) and interacted with guests and it was all very cool.  I had it on VHS and watched it quite often in my youth.  This would have been about 1989 time-frame.  The point is that heavy metal is sort of always horror music.  Any fan of heavy metal, or more appropriately psychobilly or horror punk, pretty much has Halloween music all the time.  It's not like we have Halloween carols ("It's beginning to look a lot like Samhain"?), so how is one song more Halloween than another?
Well the novelty songs of the Oldies Era (50's, 60's, and such) are more or less the way to go.  In an era of Monster Chiller Creature Feature Hosted shows spooky ooky tunes were at least enough of a rage to inspire novelty tunes.  With those and several years of Doctor Demento you can put together a fun, if not EXTREME, Halloween CD collection.
I own many of those tunes on various collections.  I also have put together my own "Mix CD" of tunes that I find seasonally appropriate, culled from other CD's I own that are not "Halloween" CD's officially.  I chose the tunes listed below because they were spooky, seasonal or outright monstery (copyrighted word), which is what you have to do really, what with a conspicuous lack of songs titled "Halloween Carol of the Bells" and shite.
The MIX CD:
1. Party Time LP version- 45 Grave (This tune was recut with different lyrics for the film The Return of the Living Dead, but this is the original lyrics.  I admit this is a poor choice.)
2. Surf Bat - 45 Grave
3. Riboflavin -45 Grave (Riboflavin Flavoured, Non-Carbonated, Polyunsaturated Blood...a fun little tune and totally appropriate)
4. Party Time Radio version- 45 Grave (What I said above still applies)
5. Teenage Frankenstein- Alice Cooper
6. He's Back (the Man Behind the Mask)- Alice Cooper (This tune was used in Friday the 13th Part V.  Tracks 5 and 6 are only 2 of Alice Cooper's long list of good songs, but only these two really fit my Halloween concept.)
7. Bag of Bones- Under Sunday (I got this track and the two other Under Sunday tracks from this band, who I discovered via some forum about the film series Halloween.  This is not really a Halloween song, so probably a poor choice.)
8. Bleed Halloween- Under Sunday (This is the track that got me interested in U.S.; this is a song about Michael Myers and the Halloween series)
9. Monster Stomp- Dead Elvi
10. Buddy Bought the Farm- Dead Elvi
11. I am the Loner- Dead Elvi
12. Wolfman's Wagon- Dead Elvi
13. Bone Daddy Shake- Dead Elvi (Tracks 9-13 are taken from the Dead Elvi album Buddy Bought the Farm.  The Dead Elvi are good for both holiday music and rockabilly/classic rock and roll and I felt these selections were particularly good for my mix)
14. Spongebob Scaredypants - The Ghastly Ones (This original retooling of the Spongebob Squarepants theme song can be found on the Spongebob album put out in connection with the television show.  It's a great little surf rock diddy by a spooky surf rock band)
15. Halloween- Helloween (German heavy metal from the 80s, which I love...but not really good party music, I admit and it is over 10 minutes long)
16. Dr. Stein- Helloween (A wickedly amusing track and more fun to dance to)
17. Regretful Wishes- Under Sunday (It's a total bummer and a poor choice.  I apologize...still better than a Drew CD.)
18. Prelude to Madness- Savatage
19. Hall of the Mountain King- Savatage (Halloween CD's featuring classical music often include Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt.  It's a great tune, short and powerful and inherently creepy sounding.  The symphonic metal band Savatage, from which Trans-Siberian Orchestra came, covered the Grieg piece, it is actually covered by Savatage as track 18, then immediately leads to the next track, which is a vocal piece, the names can be confusing)
20. Devil's Eyes- (I don't have the credits handy on this haunting melody, but it came on a CD of original music that accompanied the Halloween 25th Anniversary convention magazine "Return to Haddonfield".  It's a very moody and creepy track about, yes, Michael Myers...again...it's also the end of the mix CD.  Bringing it to a close on a downbeat.)
Still, better than anything by Drew.

So that's my jam.  I am only sorry that it is not live footage of me kicking Drew repeatedly in the junk for trying to make Halloween suck.

Until next time, keep your pumpkins lit.

Hauntings scarred me for life

I grew up in the deep south and every year I would venture north, a bit, with my parents to visit Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  Way back then Gatlinburg, while a tourist town, was less flash than it is today, but it had a few landmarks I'll never forget such as a Space Needle (with arcade), Fannie Farkels arcade/corn dogs/funnel cakes, Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum and a little hole in the wall called Hauntings.

Part of the classic tri-fold brochure that convinced me to enter the establishment

Aw hell.
I was young and apparently foolish.  I would look over the brochures we had collected and see if there was anything I wanted to do.  When I say young, I mean, young.  Not yet even a tween-ager.  My mother counseled against Hauntings, but I had braved the Mysterious Mansion and solved it with skills honed from years of watching Scooby-Doo, so what was this to me?  Obviously if you have live ghost shows "every 20 minutes" then either this is accomplished through tricks and special effects or these ghosts are professional performers.  I had nothing to fear.
Bullshit.
So on the day we decided to go we ate a late breakfast at the local McDonalds (back then you could buy character glasses made of actual glass...I got Charlie Brown) and we went to Hauntings.
Inside the single tiny room there were just us 3 and a young couple.  We were told not to sit on the front bench.  We sat in the dark for what seemed like hours.  I got scared.  I started shaking.  It was obvious because the Charlie Brown glass that I held between my thighs was rattling on the bench.
When the show started I was thrown into a dimension beyond fear and panic.  Looking back from this point it was nothing, but to my little mind it was pure HELL.
Let's have another look at the brochure, shall we:

That wicked cool ghost is what attracted me.  I mean, what does that say about me?  It says I was a little boy and little boys find stuff like the above cool.

This is what I expected, a person wearing a sheet and some glowing items "floating" with the aid of wires.

Yeah.  What I got was a strobe light flashing on a robed and hooded form swinging a chainsaw, smashing into the front bench and roaring "Someone must DIE!"
I recall to this day the words, "Not me!" being screamed by me because, as I've observed, kids are incredibly practical when it comes to such matters.

Oh, was I a wreck.  For the remainder of the trip I would not walk near that place.  I'd walk in the street to avoid it.  If I was on the other side of the street I'd start to get nervous as we got near it.  It was like the obsession people get with shark attacks or germs.  My psyche was scarred.  My father would later say that he felt horrible that they'd taken me and that he should have known better, but hey, I don't blame him.  I wanted to go.
For years whenever we would visit Gatlinburg (every year for Thanksgiving, because we really didn't want to see the whole family twice within 30 days, so we fled the state) I'd get antsy when we came near Hauntings and move as far away from the building as I could when we passed by.  That is AWESOME.  You can't plan for that kind of permanent mental marking.  I firmly believe my love for all this weirdness was born in that incident.  Bless it.

I don't have that Charlie Brown glass anymore, but I'll always have that memory until the day I die.

K.Y.P.L.

Walking Dead Season 2

Last year I reviewed The Walking Dead.  I didn't much care for it as evidenced HERE.
Last night the season premiere of Walking Dead season 2 came on.  We recorded it and I have just finished watching it.
Now I felt season one could be summed up by the words boring, stupid, boring, whiny, boring, and saccharine.
I will now provide a brief review of what I thought of the season premiere of Season 2.

Shit.
Damn.
Did you see that?  Holy shit, that dude's arm got ripped.
Shut up, blondie.  God, you whine.
Oh shit, go Rick, hit him again!

Yes, you may be a neo-nazi prick, but your Ranger skills are finally being used.

You tell her, she can't treat your husband that way.

Damn, zombies all over the place.  Gut rip.  Good sound.

So...you shot the kid?

I am totally impressed so far.

  

Prepping to Haunt

We did some work on the outside today in preparation for our annual Halloween bonfire (to ensure the safe return of the sun next year).

Chauncey is back looking a little more rustic (or worse for wear, if you prefer).  I think he deserves a new hat.

Close up of Chauncey and the front steps.  We've more crows this year.  I suspect Chauncey is getting lazy.

Winifred the witch overlooks the entrance to the party ground and her cauldron as we come around.

Close up of Winifred, you can see my first lawn gnome, Gnorman, is aiding in her works.

Into the back we pass a small graveyard

Which we can see here in close up.

I could not have planned this better, and I didn't.  We didn't realize the excellent position until we took the picture.

He's actually grown a bit since last year when he crouched in the mosquito plants.

After getting a new grill last year as a birthday present I salvaged the cooking grate from my old grill to serve this year's bonfire pit.  The chicken wire solution from last year was never ideal, I thought.

BONUS: An indoor shot of the ghost hallway.

Winifred at night.  The flash shows the details you'd otherwise miss, but washes out the cauldron which is now smoking and cycles through various colors of light.

Video footage of the front of the house at night and lit up.  It's very dark, however.

Grave Walk 1: Mostly dark, but an interesting werewolf shot in this footage.

Grave Walk 2: This is the clearer and far more amusing footage in which we can hear Frau Punkinstein's horror movie screen test.

There is still a bit left to do with lights and spider webs, but that is the gist of this year.  When the party night arrives we will put out tables with festive table cloths and decorated plates and napkins, but the hardest bits are taken care of.

The Legend of the Phantom Jack O Lantern

Of all the horrific things associated with this most horrific season, poisoned candy, misuse of hygiene products, and coupons in your trick-or-treat bag, perhaps the most horrific and least well-known is the legend of the Phantom Jack O' Lantern.  What is it, you ask?  I'll tell you.

Artist impression of the elusive Phantom Jack O'Lantern

We've all read about the source of the iconic Jack O'Lantern and we should all know that the original and traditional produce of choice for this totem was the turnip.  We are probably all aware that the New World fruit the pumpkin became the new Lantern of choice due to its plentiful supply and ease of carving.  However do we all know that the pumpkin was not exactly happy to be chosen for this role?
Ah, I see you are beginning to understand.
The Phantom Jack O'Lantern is the avenger of pumpkins everywhere.  A daemonic figure (well, daemonic for pumpkins, in the Greek tradition) that serves to get revenge upon the cruel humans for their mistreatment of that most wonderful specimen of herbaceous life.  Rising somewhere in the world every Samhain, the Phantom Jack O'Lantern seeks out a human offender, one who has been particularly maleficent toward the pumpkins, and exacts terrible revenge upon the transgressor by beheading that person, scooping out the head and sticking a candle in the offender's mouth.
Where will be arise this year?
Who will he strike?
Can he be stopped?
Well, thankfully there is an opposite to this entity of vengeance.  For while the Phantom Jack O'Lantern was born of the anguish of pumpkins wronged there is another who was born from the spirit of the pumpkins who understood their new role in this sacred event.  Unfortunately they look an awful lot alike so you never can tell who you are seeing until it is too late...

The Glorious History of the Bedsheet Ghost

It is as classic an image of Halloween and trick or treat as any Jack O' Lantern, hobo, gypsy or kid bleeding from the mouth after biting into an apple full of razor blade...the bedsheet ghost!

Cute, non?
Iconography such as cats, bats and pumpkins are common for Halloween and are culturally part of the American Halloween tradition.  Ghosts are a part of the Halloween tradition due to their connections with the spooky in general and the fact that Halloween has its origins in a festival wherein the return of the dead is a major part of the lore.
"Ghosts I get", you say, "but what gives with the bedsheets?"

Aha, I've got you covered on that one.  Despite being a complex, intelligent and linguistic species, humans do a fair amount of their communications through non-verbal means, including body language and visual imagery.  Images (pictures, signs, diagrams) act as a visual shorthand for complex concepts that might be too large to effectively convey quickly and succinctly.  The bedsheet with two black holes where the eyes should be is the visual shorthand for ghost.  Is this sensible?  Possibly, if we do a little research, which I have done for us.  

Belief in ghosts is, apparently, ancient and varied.  Culturally we can call them shades, spirits, phantoms, wraiths, or any number of foreign words I won't reprint here.  In Appalachia the term haint is popular (a corruption of haunt).  Anyone who grew up playing RPGs on tabletop or video may be familiar with many of these terms but may also be laboring under the impression that each describes a unique creature.

The one on the left is a shade and the one on the right is unfortunate.

I digress.  Various cultures have held various beliefs in the afterlife at various times, subject to their religious views, scientific knowledge, and superstitions.  A common belief that can be found in multiple cultures at various times is the notion that ghosts are composed of insubstantial vapors, mists, ectoplasm, or energy.  In some times or cultures ghosts appear in the clothing they wore when they died (complete with death wounds) and in others ghosts appear in their grave clothes.  In this case the burial shroud, a cloth that was wrapped around the body in lieu of clothing, would be represented as the grave clothes on the returned spirit.  This would, one reasons, be not unlike a sheet.

Truuuust meeeeee...I'm spooooooooooky.

The Wikipedia  says, in its article "Ghost", that in the 19th century theater the "sheet ghost" rose to prominence as the archaic "armored ghost" was no longer capable of providing the requisite "spookiness" it once commanded.

Read the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost#Depiction_in_the_arts

If we combine multiple ancient notions of shades being insubstantial, garbed in burial shrouds and unhappy, we can see how a sheeted ghost becomes a good visual shorthand for ghostly phenomena.  The total number and make-up of features changes, but a pair of eyes (or at least shadowy impressions where eyes should be) is de rigueur.  In order of personally observed frequency from greatest to least common the features are:

Eyes (most commonly a simple set of black holes, but can be made expressive or glowing)

Mouth (most commonly a black hole resembling a stylized O, but can be jagged, wavering or even smiling)

Nose (either an impression in the sheet suggesting something underneath or another hole, very rarely is it something else)

Hair (humorous facial hair or more rarely head hair, which is often used to denote a "female" ghost)

Ghosts having a meeting, probably to plot the violent overthrow of the household inhabitants, thankfully 4 Jack O'  Lanterns and a live pumpkin guard the living, thus the ghosts are stuck outside, talking shite and biding their time.  Note the O-shaped eyes and mouths.

Another reason, albeit a meta-fictional reason for ghosts in sheets is to make them visible to mortals.  In Beetlejuice the ghosts of the Maitlands don sheets with holes cut out for eyes as they cannot be seen by the adult mortals in the house, who they desire to scare away.  Not only do the sheets provide a form, draping over their spirit bodies, but act as a visual shorthand for "ghost".  That it does not work is part of the humor of the scene.  In Disney's Haunted Mansion dark ride the ghosts are invisible to the mortal riders' eyes until Madame Leota's seance brings their wispy forms into focus.  As the doombuggies take the riders into the graveyard dozens of "sheet ghosts" can be seen flying about the sky as a backdrop to the ghost "personalities" (such as the opera singer and the headless knight).  None of these were visible to the naked mortal eye prior to Madame Leota's establishing contact.  In this meta-fictional sense the spirit, invisible to the mortal, needs the "sheet" to be seen (but can presumably be "seen" by other spirits with no artificial aid required).

As ghosts go, the little guy to the left is atypical.  He has expressive eyes, an elongated ovoid mouth in a surprised pose and eyebrows (a rare quality indeed).  Clearly he's surprised, perhaps even spooked by you mortals looking at him.  The fingers are not uncommon either.  He's a cute little guy and I get the impression that this is his normal look.  The visual imagery we have is most definitely a ghost, we have no questions about that.  Is he friendly?  He certainly seems to be.  Why so vague a form?  We don't want to have to identify him with a single personage, which is the great thing about the bedsheet ghost; it can be anybody or nobody at all.  Yes, spooky pun! 




In Beetlejuice  and the Haunted Mansion rides the ghosts, when visible, look like normal people (bearing their death scars in the Burton film, although the Maitlands are not eternally soggy even though they died by drowning, which if the pattern of death scars held true they would be, or at least blue) or like stylized monsters.  For example, in the Haunted Mansion the fully visible ghosts are blue and glowing and look like humans, if somewhat caricatured and Betelgeuse looks like a disgusting clown-man, pale of skin, patches of mold on his dead skin, and disgusting hair and nails, while the Maitlands look normal.  Betelgeuse is  able to alter his form, change his clothes and alter his appearance drastically, while the Maitlands seem to wear only the clothes in which they died, save for when Otho summons them into their bridal clothes.  The ghosts in the Haunted Mansion all wear appropriate costumes and never change ever.

The bedsheet ghost is a contrast to this.  Rather than attempting to scare us with garish death wounds or date itself by wearing the appropriate period clothes, it is a formless blank, with only the bare minimum of features required to let us know it is was a person at all.  This is part of the great visual shorthand that immediately sums up all the notions of "ghost" without having to use the words.


This fellow to the right is a "scary bedsheet ghost" type 5, Wavering Moaner (all of these are classifications I just made up on the spot...cool, non?).  His features are simplistic and evoke both skull and Jack O'Lantern imagery, stronger with the skull.  The jagged mouth, gaping open as it does, tells us that he moans with a regularly oscillating vibrato.  Probably.






Some sheet ghosts work by going light on the details and allowing shadows and the mind to fill in the horror, others work by adding the blank staring holes-for-eyes that tell us much by their absence.  After all, if the eyes are the windows to the soul, what do the empty eye-holes of a ghost's sheet show us? 

This is a ghost costume with some unfortunate implications

So that's the bedsheet ghost in all his glory.  Possibly the single easiest Halloween costume any kid can ever make, yet immediately detailed in its simplicity and charming in its ancient evocations of memories we don't know we have.  Here in this modern age we have long since stopped using burial shrouds, yet year after year new children are conditioned into recognizing the bedsheet ghost, which makes it a classic piece of the lore, right up there with the Jack O'Lantern and superfluous bathroom amenity yard redecorating.  Whether it is cute and spooky or disturbing and ooky, the bedsheet ghost is a perennial favorite at Halloween and long may it remain so.

Taken from the classic brochure from the Gatlinburg, TN attraction that scarred me for life...

Until next time keep your pumpkins lit.