The Ghosts of Halloween Past

The ancient Halloween custom of Trick-or-Treat seems to have fallen out of favor.

The fashion these days seems to be to be the Halloween Party.

Lots of churches hold Halloween Parties, and a few clubs, and no few Highly-Engaged parents. The basic premise is that, instead of wandering the darkened streets, kids dress up in store-bought costume and sit around in a large, noisy, well-lit rooms gorging on Safeway cupcakes and getting cherry Kool-aid all over their rented outfits. Call me crazy, but that sounds a lot like every kids birthday party I ever attended, and not particularly spooky.

Another growing alternative to traditional Trick-or-Treat is that of the mini-mall variety. Instead of wandering around the darkened streets, kids get to march down straight, noisy, well-lit sidewalks and gather discount treats from merchants. Maybe I’m missing something, but accompanying my parents to the grocery store doesn’t seem to jibe with the holiday’s profound mystery. And note to merchants: Any coupon, even one for free stuff, is not a “treat”, it’s a marketing trick.

One espoused benefit of the Halloween Party/Mall Crawl vis-a-vis genuine Trick-or-Treating is that they provide secure environments in which childrens’ intake and behavior can be more easily monitored and controlled. Another is that, because the events are narrowly scheduled, participation can be more easily penciled into parents’ day-planners. Most often cited, however, is the perceived safety to be found in large numbers, tightly confined. Safety is, after all, the greatest of the modern virtues.

It’s also a shame.

When I was a kid, Trick-or-Treat was Halloween.

Sure, then as now, that curious holiday is a mental process that begins with the bone-deep thrill that comes when you see the season’s first TV commercial featuring a Jack-o-Lantern, or a vampire bat. But the thrill I felt was not rooted in anticipation of bobbing for apples or standing in line in front of Radio Shack, but on the vivid memory of Halloween Night, the strangeness of being outside, alone after dark, the weird anonymity I felt, and the excitement of blood-curdling possibilities that I utterly believed could happen, but didn’t really believe ever would.

Halloween should be macabre, not manufactured. Trick-or-Treat is Halloween on a kids’ own terms. On that night, after the sun went down and the Jack-o-Lanterns came out, I was filled with a delicious, giddy apprehension. All the weird and horrid things that seemed like excellent fiction the rest of the year suddenly seemed plausible, even probable.

On Halloween Night, the universe was off its plumb. Quiet neighborhood streets were haunted by the unseen, the cavernous shadows between homes populated by imaginations running on over-drive. Neighbors’ houses I knew very well became mansions of menace, each one watched over by short, squat demons whose breath carried the secret smell of scorched pumpkin. Pressing the doorbell took a mischievous kind of courage one could only feel on Halloween, and there was an odd thrill of triumph each time a friendly grown-up opened the door and presented candy instead of drooling fangs.

It was all just make-believe, and we knew it. But it was also very real, and we knew that, too.

Even today I can’t catch a whiff of burning pumpkin without flashing back to little knots of my costumed contemporaries appearing out of the darkness, and disappearing back into it just as quickly; to housewives wearing witches’ hats and door handles festooned with fake cobwebs; to scary records playing on outdoor speakers somewhere across the valley; to demonic flaming eyes glaring down from porches set back among the trees, luring me to certain destruction, or maybe a full-sized candy bar, or maybe something in between.

Anything could happen. It never did, but it could, and that was a powerful difference.

Halloween was special because it wasn’t just a party, and it wasn’t just free candy, and it wasn’t just TV Jack-o-Lanterns and rubber vampire bats. It was a nightmare come to life, but one that unfolded along known lines and could be met, and mastered, by a child without the interference of adults.

Removed from malls and multi-purpose rooms, Trick-or-Treat is the imagination set free, terror on a leash, your darkest and dearest dreads pressing up against a thin, black curtain. It is fear, and enchantment, and independence, and discovery.  It’s the beating heart of Halloween, and without it the holiday is a tame and toothless affair.

And that’s a shame.

Mountain Macabre – Taking a walk on Morrison’s weird side

Like many a small, Western town, Morrison wears much of its pioneering history on its face. Basking in the golden light of late afternoon, picturesque brick storefronts, rusty, weed-bound rail beds and moldering sheds, shacks and shanties bespeak the town’s busy, sometimes boisterous past. But night falls swiftly over that comfortable wedge of clapboard and sandstone bounded by high, rugged hills and, with the dark, a less casual, more secretive aspect is revealed. And revealing Morrison’s dark secrets is the not-too-serious purpose of the Morrison Haunted History Tour.

Forays into the town’s spectral dimension, hosted almost nightly during the witching season, are the province of Colorado Haunted History, a semi-formal partnership of three young ghost-hunters with a shared fancy for phantoms. Complete strangers at the time, Monica Ferrel, Renee Nellis and Joel Chirhart took the Morrison tour several years ago with spirit guides Dee Chandler and Beaux Blakemore. They soon became fast friends and, when Chandler and Blakemore decided to lay down their spectral chains two years ago, took on the frightful, delightful burden themselves. Of course, all three have day jobs since leading ghost tours is a precarious vocation, at best.

“It’s a hobby, really,” Ferrel says. “We all love ghosts. You know, ‘are they real?’” This is as much fun for us as it is for them.”  During the last couple years, Colorado Haunted History has hunted apparitions from Wyoming to New Mexico but, supernaturally speaking, they found pay dirt in Colorado.

Haunted

“We like to say that Morrison is the most haunted town in America, per capita,” Chirhart said, a plausible statement about a town of 450 (breathing) souls living amid the residue of 150 years of psychic turmoil. Still, Chirhart and his associates try to edify while they terrify. “It’s not just ghosts,” he says. “We try to give a lot of other interesting history about Morrison.” The town’s ghostly character, he admits, is based largely on anecdotal evidence and, while the partners’ researches have yielded little hard evidence of howling wraiths, they’ve uncovered plenty of salty morsels about Morrison’s unruly founders.

With reservations (the formal-arrangement kind, not the sensible, I-don’-wanna-see-no-ghost kind), the ghoulish trio will lead a tour in any season, but October is boom-time in the spook trade and nearly two dozen fearless metro-area citizens gathered at Morrison’s war memorial Thursday night, keen to sample the town’s spooky fare. It was a hardy crowd – sadistic parents escorting youngsters who just knew they were about to shake hands with a dancing skeleton, blissful lovers for whom the clubs on the 16th Street Mall are just too scary, and older couples who were going for a walk anyway and figured downtown Morrison was as good a place as any. Oh, and there were some gals wearing red hats.

Pre-haunted

“These are the ladies of Chapeau Rouge,” said a moderately dignified woman wearing a bright red cape and crown, “and I am their queen.” You know your tour is going places when royalty shows up. Though her majesty did not deign to explain how she came to lead her chapter of the Red Hat Society, she graciously disclosed her imperial moniker. “I’m Queen Cleora,” she said, proudly. Then, winking, “that’s Cleopatra without the ‘pat,’ if you know what I mean.” Alas, your magnificence, I do not know what you mean, and it is my fervent hope that I never do.

Shortly after 7 o’clock, following a brief recounting of Morrison’s 150-year-old origins, the three escorts led the group away from the relative security of the lighted street, across a narrow bridge and into the sinister, woody darkness beyond. Ancient cottonwoods loomed menacingly overhead, fallen leaves slushed mutely underfoot, and Bear Creek whispered like the furtive conversations of restless shades. It would have been absolutely terrifying if it weren’t so delicious.

After a short walk on a gravel drive, the party collected at the Horton House Bed & Breakfast, a charming, sprawling, pink clapboard manor and one of Morrison’s oldest structures. The inn’s densely-wooded yard teems with sculpted figures and artful trellises that, in daylight, give the property a friendly, occupied appearance. On a moonless night, by wavering lantern-light, they produce an eerie confusion of stealthy, three-dimensional shadows. In the late 19th century, Nellis explained, the lodge was home to a young woman named Amy whose passions included demon rum and crippling depression. Amy hung herself in the carriage house behind the lodge and, according to local lore, now drifts aimlessly through the rooms and corridors of Horton House, a benign, though sometimes mischievous, presence and a regular topic of conversation over crepes.

Definitely haunted

Ambling through downtown, it seems every one of Morrison’s celebrated restaurants and bars carries its own spectral freight, a convenience that allowed Chirhart, Ferrel and Nellis to provide a lot of town history without wandering off topic. Red Rocks Grill, Morrison Inn and the Morrison Holiday Bar are all said to be infested with unquiet dead, though patrons are rarely the target of ghostly pranks. In nearly every case, the bartenders – hard working professionals who diligently perform an honorable office and merit only the highest praise and gratitude – bear the brunt of phantom displeasure.

One extreme example deals with the angry spirit of a young girl purportedly murdered long ago in the building that currently houses Tony Rigatoni’s. Animated by hatred for all manly people, she is said to ambush passing Mars-type barkeeps with a small, swinging gate, vindictively focusing her attacks on their poorly armored nether regions. Now, that’s scary.

Totally haunted

To hear the guides tell it, Morrison’s north side is replete with haunted localities. Custodians flatly refuse to enter the old Town Hall after dark, they say, and two phantoms of indeterminate identity and motivation play havoc with the inventory and wiring at Lacy Gate’s Antiques.

Of course, in a town as haunted as Morrison, some ghosts are forced to visit terror in less comfortable surroundings. Witness the haunted stump, a twisted, gray remnant of the town’s “hangin’ tree” slowly rotting into oblivion in a dark corner of a dirt parking lot. There are some, Renee assured Queen Cleora, who will not traverse the lot after sundown, lest they attract the stump’s malicious attentions. A hundred yards away, historic Cliff House is said to be the eternal abode of a young man who, like poor Amy, hung himself in the barn. Why he would hang himself in a smelly old barn when a perfectly good tree was available for that specific purpose is an enduring mystery.

Hangin' haunted

Hella haunted

The summit of the high ridge defining Morrison’s northern edge features a long row of sharp, uneven stones, like witches teeth. Atop that menacing crest, legend says, the troublesome Ute chief named Colorow can sometimes be seen on moonlit nights, silhouetted against the sky. Also, up there somewhere, the Hatchet Lady of Red Rocks bides her wicked time, waiting to take an ax to disobedient children who meander near her foul cave. According to local myth, she is naked when she dismembers her misbehaving prey, proving that folklore can satisfy every taste.

The Morrison Haunted History Tour, an enjoyable combination of history, humor and horror, wound up at 8:30, but could have easily gone longer. Despite the spine-tingling October chill, nobody was in a hurry to leave, not even when an eerie wail arose from the dense, dark hollow along Bear Creek. “It’s probably just a raccoon,” Queen Cleora said, valiantly maintaining her royal composure while the blood drained from her face. That’s right, a harmless raccoon, nothing more.

Haunted, haunted, haunted...

It was surely no accident that the party broke up next to Red Rocks Grill. After the last tourist had disappeared into the night, Chirhart, Ferrel and Nellis went inside for a richly-deserved nightcap. Hopefully, they remembered to tip the bartender.

 

 

 

 

www.coloradohauntedhistory.com.