The first time I celebrated Halloween was probably in college. I never got the chance to go trick or treating or dress up when I was a kid because, you know, demons. But that didn’t mean we didn’t have fun! And by fun, I mean nightmares. Here is a collection of short anecdotes: Halloween seen from the perspective of a homeschooled fundamentalist Christian kid.

 

We bounced around endless churches during my childhood, but one that we spent a considerable length at was Love and Grace Fellowship. It probably had a congregation of around two-thousand, and we had two extended multi-year stays of attendance there.

Every year, the Sunday before Halloween, Love and Grace would have a special service about the horrors of Halloween and how it was a gateway to evil. Halfway through the service, the pastor would wheel out a big cabinet that housed a giant TV; the old school tube TVs that weighed a kilo for every inch of screen size. And every year, the pastor would pause his sermon to play a clip from a horror movie – Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc. – but with the cabinet doors closed and the house lights down. He’d make the kids over age five stay in service instead of going to children’s church, and then we’d sit there in the dark while slivers of chaotic light shined out from the cracks of the wooden doors covering the TV screen and music and screams of massacres blasted out through the church’s sound system. He would then preach about how awful it was to let that kind of demonic content into our lives. “Imagine what exposing yourself to that kind of evil can do to you,” he would say. Meanwhile, his antics terrified me so much that I dreaded going to that service every year and would have nightmares about it throughout most of my childhood

 

 

One year, at a much tinier church, our Pastor was asked to be a special guest on a small-town news show to share his side of why Halloween was evil. The word went out to the church to call in and give support during the viewer calls and comments segment. Pastor John (who is still preaching to this day and has a glorious silver mullet down to his back) spent the first ten minutes discussing portals to hell, druids, the sick origin of bobbing for apples, and so on. Then the phone lines opened up and one after another, trashy rednecks from our church (which was located in a strip mall next to a horse veterinarian and a muffler shop) called in to voice their agreement with Pastor John. I called in as well. The exchange went something like this:

    Host: We have another caller.

    Me: Hi.

    Host: What would you like to add?

    Me: Halloween is evil.

    Host: OK, why do you say that?

    Me: (long pause) IT JUST IS. [click]

I was terrified and hung up immediately. My heart pounded for like an hour afterward. I understood beyond a shadow of doubt the reason why; Satan and his demons were filling my heart with terror to get back at me for speaking out against the kingdom of darkness.

 

 

A weirdly traditional service that carried across most of the different churches we attended spoke to the dangers of satanic cults, witchcraft, and animal sacrifice. Years later, I discovered this was actually a nationwide trend in the 80s – people were terrified of satanic cults, hidden messages in records, witchcraft, and the occult. We had many services about that stuff throughout the year, but it especially ramped up in October.

There were always talks of animal sacrifices – cats and dogs being killed and arranged in patterns. The funny thing is that every story and rumor always had these sacrifices found in the same place; on a golf course. So somehow we’d end up with grown adults scaring the hell out of everyone telling stories about decapitated pets arranged in a pentagram around the tenth hole at Fairview Lakes Country Club. And somehow, no one ever actually saw these with their own eyes. But you can be damned sure they knew someone who knew someone who had.

 

Another craze of the churches of the 80s and 90s was the threat of the antichrist and everyone being paranoid about the number of the beast. We were all constantly on the lookout for the beginning of the end times, and at some point word spread that the customer service number for Proctor and Gamble had 666 in it. At first, our church refused to believe it, but soon enough someone brought in a bottle of shampoo and there it was, clear as day. Their 800 number did indeed have 666 in it. We immediately began a boycott of everything P&G and since we had discovered this just before Halloween, it surely was a sign that October 31st, Satan, and Downy fabric softener were about to combine forces and usher in the book of Revelations.

 

 

Love and Grace was also the home to the annual bonfire to destroy demonic possessions. Now, before you say “well that doesn’t sound too bad,” you must keep in mind that for fundamentalists, there are only two categories. If something isn’t of God, meaning something designed for the sole purpose of worshiping the kingdom of Heaven, then it exists to worship Satan. That list then includes, well, pretty much every fucking thing that exists that isn’t overtly Christian.

So we’d have this giant bonfire (which is hilariously ironic in itself, because we were taught that bonfires were satanic, getting their starts as bonefires where druids would throw bodies and burn them to the bone), and people would bring in their Beatles records, and their video games, and their perfumes; essentially everything interesting, exciting, or worth having.

My mom was brokenhearted when someone told her that beloved Fozzie bear stuffed animal had a satanic correlation (I can’t remember why, and none of the other muppets seemed to qualify), and so she had to throw her favorite stuffed friend that my father had given her for their anniversary right into the fire.

 

 

Then there was Halloween night itself, where we would turn all the lights off in the house and hide in mom and dad’s bedroom, ignoring all the kids who came and knocked on our door looking for candy. We’d pray in tongues for the souls of all the kids who visited, increasing our volume with each knock to the door. I’m sure that didn’t sound weird from outside.

 

But hey, people make mistakes, and now that we live in an age where one could easily find out about golf course animal sacrifices epidemics, or satanic customer service numbers, or bonefires opening portals to hell, or people spending all their savings on tithes and offerings and hoping God will make them rich vs. people who work smart and hard, we’ve become much more enlightened and better as a society. Right?

 

Bonus: We were forbidden to say the word “weird” for about five years. It apparently was invented by witches and could cause us to seize up and die instantly if uttered. It was “strange” or “odd” most of the time unless we wanted to get spanked. Then one day I said “weird” again and nobody said anything about it so I assume they all just forgot.