When One Can See in the Dark, Halloween NEVER Gets Old

Welcome to All Hallows Eve Week at The Cosmicomicon.

I just posted up a stale, fusty old primer on the history of Halloween, but I think we all know the Roman/Pagan backstory (and if not, google the hell out of it).  So, I deleted it in favor of pictures of the Grau Haus, and the fabulously infernal decor whipped up by my bewitching wife Ivy this past weekend.  We take our holidays very seriously at Grau Haus, and none more murderously serious than Halloween, which always runs neck and neck with Christmas as the most magical time of year 'round these parts.  The light and dark/yin and yang of what we hold near and dear, as it were.

In a mainstream sense, Halloween might be for the kids first and foremost, with its focus candy,  commercialism, and cocktail parties.  But for us devoted Dark Siders, it's also the time of year to revel in the supernatural, the weird, the spooky, and the horrifying.

The unknown, and the UNKNOWABLE.

It's about being a scared and excited kid again, shivering out in front of a haunted house, as the screams, thumps and sounds of chainsaws and rattling chains filter out into the chilled night air.  We don't do that anymore, but we don't have to.  There's enough horror left - hell, MORE horror left - in this world and other realms and cycles beyond to keep us a child in awe of the terrifying forever.  And that makes me happy...

Anyway, I've got the rest of the year to prattle on like a cracked out blowhard with a horror fetish.  Tonight, we go to the photos:

The Rue d'Auseil, overlooking our own personal cemetery moldering in the middle of our living room.

Ivy's ode to Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Price in Corman's "Fall of the House of Usher"

The bats swoop and dive, bringing good tidings of dark deeds to the streets of Paris

The smoking hellscape of my dreams