On the turn of November, when the night leaks into our mornings and afternoons, we celebrate the darkest of all holidays. It is the night of witches, zombies, ghosts and all things dark and dangerous. In this last night of October we take our childhood fears and jump right into them. As much as fear and pleasure seem to be contradictory, at Halloween they are brought together in a riotous feast of darkness. Ever since the snake tempted Eve to eat the apple, evil has had something attractive to human kind. That that is scary and dangerous will always be desired as much as it is feared, and we might not always be able to tell whether we shivered in horror or pleasure. This is why we get on roller coasters, watch the Shining for the fifth time or play with fire. The feeling of danger reminds us of our mortality, and that makes us feel utterly alive.
The imagery of Halloween is dominated by classic triggers of cold sweat such as zombies, skeletons and witches – the more (fake) blood, the better. Those creatures and symbols embody human fears and for a long time people believed those mystic creatures to be personifications of the devil’s power. Wherever something was too horrible to explain it as a human crime, the devilish creatures stepped in to complete the picture. Where there couldn’t be a murderer among the God-fearing villains, there must have been a blood sucking vampire. Where an ordinary woman stepped up against the ruling values of the church, she must have been a viscous witch. In modern society the focus in the search of the evil changed. The devil is no longer feared and the daemonic creatures of old times are revealed as products of human imagination. Now we tend to look for evil powers in human beings themselves. With the rise of psychology the daemons are replaced by mental diseases. Along with that, new monsters enter the scene: Psychopaths. Modern crime fiction and horror cinema are full of them.
Though psychopaths are a far more real threat then werewolves and the undead, it seems as if evil has simply taken another deceptive shape. Psychopaths are not the answer to the question of the spring of evil. History has proven many times to what extend perfectly sane people – people who don’t have the slightest resemblance to a psychopath – are capable of doing the most disgusting things to each other. In fact, we learn this lesson everyday when watching the news or listening to the radio. What else is new, you might think. But let me ask you this: has it ever occurred to you, that evil is not only to be found in the murderers and robbers, the rapists and torturers, dictators and terrorists – but right there in front of you, in yourself? Evil is a part of every human being. It is a part of you. The power to do harm is in all of us – sometimes more obvious, sometimes more dangerous, sometimes more likely to be put to action. Political philosopher Hannah Arendt researched this very fact trying to understand the horrors of the Holocaust and realised how brutality sneaks into people’s hearts – growing slowly, calm and subtly. People can carry out the most abhorrent tasks completely unawares. The kind of self-deception standing behind that is present in everyday life: when you get the brownie on the way home from the gym; when you kill a spider; when you buy a jumper for a fiver at Primark.
Getting to know our very own power to do harm is part of growing up. As children, we behave carelessly towards others; leaving it to our mums to explain that hitting someone with a toy car is not the nicest thing to do. When we get older, we don’t need the explanation – we just know that it hurts. Most of us will learn this lesson in their teenage years. You get hurt and you hurt back. Our capacity to be evil is part of what we are and we can never fully escape it. Acknowledging it it is the only way of dealing with it. ‘Beware and behave’ is the ultimate (if at times uncomfortable) formula.
So when dressing up as a witch or a zombie bride, take a minute to look into the mirror and see what daemons you might find there – behind the make-up. Just a minute. That’s enough. Now go out and scare some strangers to death. Just try not to kill them.
Lisa Schürmann
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