Hallowe’en and Our Fascination With the Dead

Hallowe’en and Our Fascination With the Dead

Lewis Coyne

...The interest Hallowe’en holds for us, in both its ancient and modern forms, is clearly driven by the deep-seated human fascination with – and revulsion at – the dead. Death itself, and the dead body in particular, exercises a power over our minds from childhood onwards, and the decorations and dressing-up we engage in every Hallowe’en is surely a way of broaching death without confronting it.

But perhaps we should confront it – at least more than we do at present. For one thing, how can we understand our own mortality without first encountering other people’s?...