Autumn

October first, it's finally getting cold enough for me to be sitting wrapped in a blanket, and it's beginning to smell like autumn. In thirty days, all over this country people will be dressed up as ghosts, devils, animals, and any number of other things.

There are a number of versions of what Hallowing was in the beginning, some more rooted in fact than others, but what matters today, what is really important is what Halloween has become. Halloween is many things. It's a chance for people to make more money, and it's a chance for kids and adults to dress up. It's a chance to indulge in candy, and a little make-believe. It has also become a chance to dwell for a moment on the supernatural, to ponder the afterlife and the many tales we have heard since we were young. It is a chance, for some of us, to revisit the notion that perhaps the world does not work the way we've come to believe.

For some, the holiday will be spent watching horror movies, and for some it will not be celebrated at all, but regardless of your theology, this is a holiday in the middle of Autumn, a time (in the northern hemisphere) in which death is unavoidable. Trees are losing their leaves, and animals are preparing for the winter. The bright colors of the summer are replaced by those of the fall, and soon those are chased away and the world fades to grays and whites, and cold begins to seep in.

Maybe it's the cold that brings it out, more than falling leaves or barren trees. We are a species dependent on warmth and when we have none, we die. Regardless of the reason, death and autumn go hand in hand for us and death is the gateway to the Great Beyond. Where do we go when we die? It is not death itself that we fear, but a sudden change, the result of which we don't really know.

"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil..."

The unknown is what is truly unnerving - what may be hidden in the darkness, or under murky water, or in the heart of a mountain. The noises we do not understand, the lights where darkness belongs.

Out of this reminder of death comes a time for stories of the supernatural. Tales from long ago, dreams that seem to be something more. What have YOU witnessed, and explained away?
What memories from your childhood have been glossed over as dreams, or false memories?

Make a story this Halloween, for yourself, or for others; from your past or from your imagination. Stray outside the realms of reality and take yourself into a world of ghosts and angels, magic and mystery. For a month, take some time to forget what you know, and dare to believe that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.