Halloween is the celebration of terror,
the celebration of all of the ways it can feel through our bodies.
It is like a dessert plate of horror,
samples of all the emotions under the umbrella of terms that we call “fear.”

In line for a haunted house,
my best friend by my side.
This fear feels almost electrified.
The terror is widespread and expressed loudly,
expressed through idle, meaningless babble to calm yourself.
As long as you are with a friend,
whatever you feel is manageable.

We wait,
and wait.

My unease rises,
and rises.

We talk more frantically,
to try to tame our emotions.

Finally,
the door opens.
We are the first to go in.
We move to another form of fear,
this one more intense than before.
My gut is churning,
feeling like my dinner is rioting in my stomach.
No matter how ecstatic we are,
we realize,
we are truly afraid.

We walk into a dark room.
Everything is quiet.
The suspense is overwhelming.

CRASH!

A scream.
A man leaps out from the corner.
But something has happened.
With the breaking of that tension comes something new.
Our screams have turned to laughter,
our terror
to joy.

We creep hesitantly through the corridors.
Our breath tinged with nervous giggles.
Sometimes something surprises you,
like a werewolf from a corner.
Sometimes it makes goosebumps crawl up your skin,
like the words “save me” written in red on the walls.
But it doesn’t matter.
Our dread has turned to adrenaline,
and we are barely even scared.

Until

We reach the last room.
A man is laying under a sheet.
The only sound is our hesitant, anxious breaths.
We wait for a moment.

Suddenly, he springs up.
An ugly clown mask with yellow teeth on his face,
and a roaring chainsaw in hand.
In the fire of emotion in that moment,
we think his weapon is real.

We run.
And run.
Until we make it outside.
We only stop after we are 25 feet out of the door.
Far away from any of this imaginary danger.
We stop and look at each other.
“That wasn’t that bad.” She said.
“Yeah.” I respond. “It wasn’t.”
And then we laugh.
And somehow we feel free.

Halloween is the celebration of fear.
But it is also the celebration of overcoming our fears.