Catch the Spirit
Samhain. It’s my favorite, whether the witchy Sabbat, or the mundane Halloween party. Seeing the orange and black Spirit stores pop up overnight in the strip malls brings a maniacal smile to my face. Yes, it’s true that Halloween’s a monster of an industry. But it’s more than that. It’s magic in the truest sense. A time when all bets are off, and we can act out, children and adults, without restraint or fear of judgment. We can part the veil and talk (yes talk!) With our dearly departed, and there's a good chance they'll answer.
This holiday is the dark aesthetic blended with romance, myth, and rebellion. When the leaves change and the evenings go chilly, I’m transported back to running the neighborhood with my pals in Zorro capes, witch’s hats, and black cat costumes complete with swishing tail. I recall a knot of children screaming on a front porch when the homeowner, a normally mild-mannered adult, opens the door in full wolf’s garb and growls, “Do you dare ask for candy?”
On this one extraordinary night, we willingly run into the dark rather than away from it. We grope in the pitch black field of cornstalks, brittle and bleached white like bones in the light of a crescent moon. We pay to scream with strangers in dark haunted houses, stuffy with billowing fog.
Wait! Listen: I think I hear something scratching outside. Halloween waits. Let’s have some fun. You coming?
#1 Zombie Walk. Unearth your inner ghoul. An evening of bloody good times, Zombie Walks have risen in nearly every major metro area from Toronto to Tampa. There’s even a Route 66 Zombie Crawl in Galena, KS, population 3,000. Many of the walks are family affairs with special activities for kids, even pets. Non-zombies are also invited to attend. After all, you can't have a proper zombie apocalypse without victims. Don't know how to become a zombie? No problem. There are often makeup artists on hand at the event to make you look appropriately rotted. Or find instructions for your look online. Then claw your way out of the grave and stagger out to join me.
#2 Witch’s Ball. Granted, Salem and New Orleans hold the granddaddies of these fetes, but witch’s balls have sprung up everywhere. Be warned though, you may not find an announcement in your local paper. I googled ‘witch’s ball’, ‘Halloween ball’ and ‘All Hallows masquerade’ for Phoenix and found a plethora of costume parties to choose from. Pick one that features not just costumes, but a psychic fair, dumb supper (see #4 below), or an Underworld journey to visit the dead, so you can experience the full flavor of the event.
#3 Ghost Hunting. Many towns have places reputed to be haunted. Sign up for a tour and try your hand at paranormal investigation. The tours often provide you with detection equipment, and bring your digital camera to capture orbs, shadows, apparitions and other phenomena. 
#4 Hold a Dumb Supper. I follow this ancient tradition with my family every Hallows Eve, to commune with the souls of our loved ones on the other side of the veil. Transform your covered patio. Divide a long table in half with black material hung from the ceiling, to designate one side for the living and one half for the spirits. Put pictures and mementos of your loved ones on the spirit side, along with offerings of their favorite foods. The meal is conducted in silence, so we can concentrate on opening our heart and soul to those who may cross over and visit. Serve the meal course backwards, including the placement of everything down to the silverware, as a means of weaving your earth-bound participants down into the Shadow World of the spirits. Have a pencil and paper ready to do automatic writing and capture any messages from the beyond.
#5 Throw a Tarot Spread. Samhain, the witch’s version of Halloween, is also considered the perfect time for divination. Here’s a fun reading called “Haunted House.” In dreams, a house often represents you, the chambers and passages symbolizing your own inner dwelling place. So light your candle, open your mind’s creaky door, and peer into the darkened corner of your own Halloween haunted house!
Shuffle your favorite tarot deck in your usual way. Lay out seven cards as follows:
1. The Forbidding Foyer:
What has been trying to enter your life (for good or ill) that you have been warding off?
2. The Perilous Parlor:
What aspect of yourself do you need to spend more time getting to know?
3. The Lurid Library:
What lore or study is calling to expand your esoteric knowledge?
4. The Atrocious Attic:
What neglected treasure should you dust off and use now?
5. The Chilling Cellar:
What should be stored away and allowed to ripen for future use?
6. The Ghastly Garden: What needs to be weeded out?
7. The Twisted Oak Tree: What needs to sink roots and deepen?
Now, draw one more card for a message from an otherworldly visitor to your Haunted House. Boo!
#6 Visit a Corn Maze. The corn maze is the epitome of Samhain, the last harvest season. They have become popular tourist attractions and a way for farms to create additional income. Many are based on artistic designs such as movie characters or current events, and some are even created to tell stories or to portray a particular theme. Most have a path, which goes all around the whole pattern, either to end in the middle or to come back out again. In Arizona, my annual go-to spot is the 10-acre maze at Schnepf Farms. Last year, my son resorted to GPS on his phone to get us out. If you’d like a real challenge, go on Oct. 16 and navigate by full moon instead of flashlights. Or combine the maze with a really scary haunted house. 
#7 Corpses for Sale. A full-size corpse, nicely decaying head, moveable extremities. Blue eyes. No, brown. Or maybe empty sockets. Every year, www.corpsesforsale.com packs a dozen or so of them on trucks for delivery to film makers, collectors and the odd person who wants to drive around with one in the passenger seat of the car. Since 1991, creator and proprietor Jaime Di Stefano has crafted unlife-like corpses from chicken wire, wood, latex and cotton. Of course, he thinks of them as art projects, not stiffs. Don’t you want one?
#8 Give More than Candy. Do something extra for trick or treaters. Over the years, I’ve set up a Severus Snape Potions Lab in our garage, complete with Veritaserum (hot cider in a carafe surrounded by fog). The whole family has dressed up and posed in the front-yard cemetery, rising up to greet trick or treaters as they come up the driveway. I’ve done tarot card readings at the local Halloween carnival; thrown chicken bones for divination around a neighborhood fire pit after we put the kids to bed; read palms by candlelight. You have a latent talent buried within. Unearth it this Halloween.
9. Make a screamer. These cloth mache monsters are a lot of work, but boy are they fun! I’m making three witches to circle the cauldron in our front yard.
9. Make a screamer. These cloth mache monsters are a lot of work, but boy are they fun! I’m making three witches to circle the cauldron in our front yard. For instructions, see the easy step-by-step instructions in this book.
10. Practice Psychometry This is the ability to sense or “read” the history of an object by touching it. Impressions may be images, sounds, smells, tastes, even emotions. A practiced psychometrist can hold an object—an antique glove, for example-- and be able to tell something about the history of that glove, what the owner was like, what they did and even how they died.
Perhaps most importantly, the psychic can sense how the person felt - the emotions of the person at a particular time. Emotions especially, it seems, are most strongly "recorded" in the object.
Don’t believe me? Try it at your Halloween party. Have each guest bring one or two items that have a strong history and sentimental value. Take turns exchanging tokens. Hold one in your hand and relax. Share the impressions you get, and let the owner tell you how close your information was at the end. If you’re having trouble picking up information, silently ask yourself questions to help trigger information such as, “how many owners has this object had?” “Where was this object purchased?” “Was it given as a gift?” “Did a male or female give you this object?” And so on. You may be surprised at the accuracy.
11. Make a Will. If you don’t have a will or living trust, do one this month. Why is this activity in my list? Our society spends most of its time trying not to think about death. Samhain, on the other hand, celebrates death. It fills our imaginations like no other day. Take advantage of that openness. Get it done. Then make a point to review and update if needed on future Samhains.
This holiday is the dark aesthetic blended with romance, myth, and rebellion. When the leaves change and the evenings go chilly, I’m transported back to running the neighborhood with my pals in Zorro capes, witch’s hats, and black cat costumes complete with swishing tail. I recall a knot of children screaming on a front porch when the homeowner, a normally mild-mannered adult, opens the door in full wolf’s garb and growls, “Do you dare ask for candy?”
On this one extraordinary night, we willingly run into the dark rather than away from it. We grope in the pitch black field of cornstalks, brittle and bleached white like bones in the light of a crescent moon. We pay to scream with strangers in dark haunted houses, stuffy with billowing fog.
Wait! Listen: I think I hear something scratching outside. Halloween waits. Let’s have some fun. You coming?
#1 Zombie Walk. Unearth your inner ghoul. An evening of bloody good times, Zombie Walks have risen in nearly every major metro area from Toronto to Tampa. There’s even a Route 66 Zombie Crawl in Galena, KS, population 3,000. Many of the walks are family affairs with special activities for kids, even pets. Non-zombies are also invited to attend. After all, you can't have a proper zombie apocalypse without victims. Don't know how to become a zombie? No problem. There are often makeup artists on hand at the event to make you look appropriately rotted. Or find instructions for your look online. Then claw your way out of the grave and stagger out to join me. #2 Witch’s Ball. Granted, Salem and New Orleans hold the granddaddies of these fetes, but witch’s balls have sprung up everywhere. Be warned though, you may not find an announcement in your local paper. I googled ‘witch’s ball’, ‘Halloween ball’ and ‘All Hallows masquerade’ for Phoenix and found a plethora of costume parties to choose from. Pick one that features not just costumes, but a psychic fair, dumb supper (see #4 below), or an Underworld journey to visit the dead, so you can experience the full flavor of the event.
#3 Ghost Hunting. Many towns have places reputed to be haunted. Sign up for a tour and try your hand at paranormal investigation. The tours often provide you with detection equipment, and bring your digital camera to capture orbs, shadows, apparitions and other phenomena. #4 Hold a Dumb Supper. I follow this ancient tradition with my family every Hallows Eve, to commune with the souls of our loved ones on the other side of the veil. Transform your covered patio. Divide a long table in half with black material hung from the ceiling, to designate one side for the living and one half for the spirits. Put pictures and mementos of your loved ones on the spirit side, along with offerings of their favorite foods. The meal is conducted in silence, so we can concentrate on opening our heart and soul to those who may cross over and visit. Serve the meal course backwards, including the placement of everything down to the silverware, as a means of weaving your earth-bound participants down into the Shadow World of the spirits. Have a pencil and paper ready to do automatic writing and capture any messages from the beyond.#5 Throw a Tarot Spread. Samhain, the witch’s version of Halloween, is also considered the perfect time for divination. Here’s a fun reading called “Haunted House.” In dreams, a house often represents you, the chambers and passages symbolizing your own inner dwelling place. So light your candle, open your mind’s creaky door, and peer into the darkened corner of your own Halloween haunted house!
Shuffle your favorite tarot deck in your usual way. Lay out seven cards as follows:
1. The Forbidding Foyer:What has been trying to enter your life (for good or ill) that you have been warding off?
2. The Perilous Parlor:
What aspect of yourself do you need to spend more time getting to know?
3. The Lurid Library:
What lore or study is calling to expand your esoteric knowledge?
4. The Atrocious Attic:
What neglected treasure should you dust off and use now?
5. The Chilling Cellar:
What should be stored away and allowed to ripen for future use?
6. The Ghastly Garden: What needs to be weeded out?
7. The Twisted Oak Tree: What needs to sink roots and deepen?
Now, draw one more card for a message from an otherworldly visitor to your Haunted House. Boo!
#6 Visit a Corn Maze. The corn maze is the epitome of Samhain, the last harvest season. They have become popular tourist attractions and a way for farms to create additional income. Many are based on artistic designs such as movie characters or current events, and some are even created to tell stories or to portray a particular theme. Most have a path, which goes all around the whole pattern, either to end in the middle or to come back out again. In Arizona, my annual go-to spot is the 10-acre maze at Schnepf Farms. Last year, my son resorted to GPS on his phone to get us out. If you’d like a real challenge, go on Oct. 16 and navigate by full moon instead of flashlights. Or combine the maze with a really scary haunted house. #7 Corpses for Sale. A full-size corpse, nicely decaying head, moveable extremities. Blue eyes. No, brown. Or maybe empty sockets. Every year, www.corpsesforsale.com packs a dozen or so of them on trucks for delivery to film makers, collectors and the odd person who wants to drive around with one in the passenger seat of the car. Since 1991, creator and proprietor Jaime Di Stefano has crafted unlife-like corpses from chicken wire, wood, latex and cotton. Of course, he thinks of them as art projects, not stiffs. Don’t you want one?
#8 Give More than Candy. Do something extra for trick or treaters. Over the years, I’ve set up a Severus Snape Potions Lab in our garage, complete with Veritaserum (hot cider in a carafe surrounded by fog). The whole family has dressed up and posed in the front-yard cemetery, rising up to greet trick or treaters as they come up the driveway. I’ve done tarot card readings at the local Halloween carnival; thrown chicken bones for divination around a neighborhood fire pit after we put the kids to bed; read palms by candlelight. You have a latent talent buried within. Unearth it this Halloween. 9. Make a screamer. These cloth mache monsters are a lot of work, but boy are they fun! I’m making three witches to circle the cauldron in our front yard.
9. Make a screamer. These cloth mache monsters are a lot of work, but boy are they fun! I’m making three witches to circle the cauldron in our front yard. For instructions, see the easy step-by-step instructions in this book.10. Practice Psychometry This is the ability to sense or “read” the history of an object by touching it. Impressions may be images, sounds, smells, tastes, even emotions. A practiced psychometrist can hold an object—an antique glove, for example-- and be able to tell something about the history of that glove, what the owner was like, what they did and even how they died.
Perhaps most importantly, the psychic can sense how the person felt - the emotions of the person at a particular time. Emotions especially, it seems, are most strongly "recorded" in the object.Don’t believe me? Try it at your Halloween party. Have each guest bring one or two items that have a strong history and sentimental value. Take turns exchanging tokens. Hold one in your hand and relax. Share the impressions you get, and let the owner tell you how close your information was at the end. If you’re having trouble picking up information, silently ask yourself questions to help trigger information such as, “how many owners has this object had?” “Where was this object purchased?” “Was it given as a gift?” “Did a male or female give you this object?” And so on. You may be surprised at the accuracy.
11. Make a Will. If you don’t have a will or living trust, do one this month. Why is this activity in my list? Our society spends most of its time trying not to think about death. Samhain, on the other hand, celebrates death. It fills our imaginations like no other day. Take advantage of that openness. Get it done. Then make a point to review and update if needed on future Samhains.
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