The Battered Suitcase - October 2008

78p full issue of The Battered Suitcase, October 2008

Whether you prefer to call it Samhain, Night of the Dead, Mischief Night or All-Saint's Even - the death of summer is upon us and Halloween approaches. Ancient tradition celebrated Halloween as the night when the dead walked the earth and the misty veil between the real world and the afterworld became tenuous.

Halloween is the night we reach to the other side and take a short, frightened peek at the inevitable. We surround ourselves with gruesome images; monsters, predators, scenes of horror and death. Sometimes we make cartoon caricatures out of these grim visions - dancing skeletons, "friendly" ghosts - laughing at our fears or making light of the tragic. We tell horror stories to each other and play rude pranks on strangers. We encourage our children take candy from strangers.

Perhaps it's our way of dancing with death, a formalized reel. A flirtation. It could be our ritual introduction to the inevitable. A way of removing the terror and a means of accepting the natural end of things.

Like all human rituals that we use to express our hopes and fears, Halloween provides a wealth of inspiration for art and storytelling. It is our hope in this issue to provide a taste of the bizarre, the frightening and of course, the humorous.

Whether you spend the holiday in a sacred grove, spend it dragging a second grader from house to house, or even spend it hiding behind the couch with all lights out until the kids stop ringing the damned doorbell - we hope you find a few Halloween thrills in these pages.

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