Amid the now typical state of the world during a pandemic whose grips we are still very much vested in, Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance’s annual Halloween celebration– “Skeleton Fest”– was made predominantly virtual this year, with many of the events being adopted to an online and social media format in which community members were encouraged to partake in a variety of activities and challenges and send in their results, photos, etc. for a chance to win “Downtown Dollars”. 

While the cancellation served as a stark reminder of the sad realities and presence that COVID-19 has perpetuated mercilessly for nearly two years, it has also invited a level of introspection and engagement with ourselves and the world from a fundamentally different perspective which has required more empathy and flexibility than ever before. 

Given that, and “Skeleton Fest”’s inclusion of a three location haunt tour of locations that are historically “haunted,” I think this also encourages us to further explore the context of haunted locations and the often deeper terrors, human vulnerabilities, and history they embody beyond the cultural interpretation of ghosts, spirits, and things that go bump in the night. 

One such perspective is trauma, both in the entities that are “haunting” and those being “haunted.” 

When we look at haunts that, say, advertise the location as a previous Civil War site– as most of the locations in the “Haunted Harrisonburg” Tour do– or feed off a location’s darker history, like being an asylum or prison, we’re immediately cognizant of the potentiality of the location’s hauntedness and why it may be so. Aside from the more immediate creepiness of that past who may be still lurking in spirit, there’s also a residual fear from the knowledge and context of the location, and the often disturbing events and cultural periods they represent. 

A historical and/or haunted location is not scary because there may be ghosts, it’s scary because it’s a reminder of the traumas of our past and the lasting impact of those traumas on society, culture, and people. A Civil War haunt is a reminder that not too long ago, we killed each other in cold blood and brutally enslaved an entire race. Likewise, the fear of a haunted asylum comes from the internal notion that at some point-in-time people were experimented on, mutilated, and assaulted for possessing mental illnesses or for being something deemed socially reprehensible, which also not too long ago was homosexuality and depression. In a way, the ghosts are the least scary part because they represent the people who have suffered at the hands of these conditions. The conditions we have historically and continually emboldened are legitimate horror, and many “ghosts” seem to haunt them because their voice and story were never heard in context to what they suffered.

I find it interesting that the focus of fear is placed so predominantly and maybe apathetically on the ghosts themselves rather than the contextual history and story of the location. To me, if they are indeed real, ghosts serve as the everlasting reminder of the nature of the human spirit and the atrocities and emotional fragility we are capable of. Ghosts seem keen on holding us and society accountable, to achieve some form of justice, and we owe it to those who have suffered in the name of neglect, violence, discrimination, and every possible “ism” to understand their history, not mystify it. While it’s certainly fun to go to haunts and “be scared,” the experience should also be a sobering reminder of the people and conditions we are “having fun” at the expense of and the fear we should actually investigate. 

When my family moved into our house, they found a photo of a little girl in one of the bedroom closets. They threw it away, as it was likely just a remnant from the previous owner. The next day the photo was in the same place, and they noticed I had begun talking to and consoling someone. I was only five so they thought nothing of it, other than that I was having more than playful conversations. One night I woke up in their bed, proclaimed that there were dead people in the backyard, and went back to sleep. The next day they dug up the backyard and found tombstones, and from that point forward I never talked to an “imaginary” friend again and the photo no longer reappeared. 

I recount this story because at one point in time I found it scary that we were “haunted.” Now, I find it scary that I don’t know what that little girl in the photo was trying to communicate, and why she was trying to alert people of what was presumably her death. I find it scary that I don’t know what happened in my, in her, house, and that there are people every day who die at the hands of or experience injustice and broken human nature, and who go unaccounted for.

 So, while enjoying the spirit and fun of Halloween, don’t forget that “horror” and “fear” are deeply rooted in very real social and cultural issues and history, and in being “scared” we must also be reminded of what we should actually be scared of.