The Scary Season

With Spook Night almost upon us, it's time to ponder the universal fascination with the uncanny and the supernatural that blooms every year at this time. Ghost stories, for example. Every culture in existence has ghost stories, folklorist Bill Ferris explains, because they give voice to a fundamental human mystery: mortality. Some say the ancient Celts, from whom we supposedly inherited Halloween, believed spirits of the dead roamed the earth on October 31st. Few of us would profess to believing such a thing nowadays, but a well-told ghost story can still send shivers up and down our spines. Glimmers of the supernatural touch something primal in the human psyche, causing the adrenaline to flow. The plain fact is, we love being scared to death — figuratively, of course — otherwise, witches, ghosts and monsters would have long since vanished from our vocabulary.