podcast

21. Halloween (Holiday Series #6)

 

October 15, 2025

 

Listen to Anthro.mp3

Halloween (Holiday Series #6)

Join Lea and Sophia this episode as they discuss Halloween traditions throughout the ages and Halloween’s role in contradicting the impacts of religion and societal expectations on self-expression!

Sources:

Transcript:

L: Hello friends, and welcome back to anthro.mp3. We’re students from UMass who love anthropology. Anthro Hub is a website we help run that’s full of all things anthro. Make sure to check it out to look at some incredible blog posts and creative works made by students from our school and others. My name is Lea, and I’ll be one of your hosts for today’s episode.

S: And I’m Sofia. And today we’re going to be talking about Halloween! A little bit about the history, mythology, symbology, and how it’s celebrated today. First of all, I love Halloween. I watch horror movies all year round, and half of my dorm decorations are from Spirit Halloween. 

L: I think at some point, half my closet was also from Spirit Halloween? You could say I’m a fan. Plus, I watch Scooby-Doo Spooky Island multiple times a year. Since you could call me somewhat of a Halloween enthusiast myself, Sofia, drop that Halloween lore on me!

S: To start off with, Halloween is descended from the ancient Celtic festival Samhain, which marked the ending of the summer and the beginning of the long dark winter months. There is evidence of this celebration dating back 2000 years. And because of its association with the changing of the seasons and harvest, which could be life or death for our ancestors, it took on a spiritual dimension. It was believed that the boundaries between life and death became blurred during this time of year, so spirits had the ability to return and potentially cause trouble.

L: Yeah, so Druids, or Celtic priests, would build these huge sacred bonfires and hold large gatherings to burn crops and animals and sacrifice them to Celtic deities. People would wear costumes made of animal heads and skins and try to tell each other’s fortunes. Kind of sounds like a sick party if you ask me. But anyway, the fires and costumes were to ward Spirits away from causing mischief or harm.

S: Exactly. And obviously, it wasn’t just the Celts or Druids who took an interest in the holiday. In 43 AD, the Roman Empire, which had conquered a majority of Celtic territory at this point, combined two of their own holidays, Feralia (for honoring the dead) and the celebration of Pomona, the Roman Goddess of Fruit and Trees, with Samhain to create a three-day festival. As with many pagan festivals throughout history, the holiday would be transformed by the church in an attempt to christianize the people that celebrated it. So according to the Catholic calendar, All Hallowtide is a tridome of All Hallows Eve on October 31st, All Saints Day, or Hallows Day on November 1st, and All Souls Day on November 2nd. The Feast of All Saints Day was established by Pope Boniface IV as a kind of catch-all date to celebrate, as the name would suggest, all saints, as there weren’t enough days in the calendar year to celebrate them all. The original date was in the middle of May, close to the Roman Festival of Lemuria, which was another day for honoring past ancestors. However, this holiday was moved to November 1st in the 8th century by Pope Gregory III. The Catholic Church maintains that this was because it was meant to celebrate the consecration of a new chapel in St. Peter’s, but the timing happened to also perfectly coincide with the pagan festival. By that time, Christianity had spread into most of the Celtic territories. But old habits die hard, and people still wanted a day to celebrate their dead, even if it was under the auspices of Christian ritual. So in the year 1000, All Souls’ Day was established by the church for this purpose. The Christian triduum still incorporated a lot of elements inherent in Samhain, including feasts, fires, and overall parties.

L: So, we’ve touched on this in more of an ancient context, but what are or were Christian reactions to Celtic neo-paganism? 

S: So, I’ve talked about it before. The Catholic Church had the reaction of incorporating or overshadowing the holiday with their celebrations, and in the Catholic resources I looked through, many of the authors argued that the history of Halloween is actually the reverse of what I described previously – that Halloween originated as a Christian holiday and has been co-opted by neo-pagan movements. The historical record pretty much disproves this claim, as Samhain existed much earlier than All Hollow Tide. The claim persists in certain theological dialogues.

L: That’s so interesting! I was actually digging through an Orthodox Christian website for a religious perspective on this. And obviously, Christianity and all religions are expressed relatively and practiced by individuals, so there isn’t like a quote-unquote “right” Christian opinion on Halloween. But I was researching, and I found that Christians, at least according to this website and my personal religious experience, traditionally shunned Halloween since it’s rooted in pagan rituals. I feel like more traditional or conservative Christians will conflate pagan with causing damnation. And in this article on the Focus on the Family website, “Helping Families Thrive in Christ”, the author posed the question, “Is Halloween the devil’s holiday?” Before I give her answer, I want to know your thoughts on it, Sofia.

S: My thoughts? Well, I believe everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but I don’t really think Halloween is the devil’s holiday. Although it does address concerns about the afterlife in the form of spirits, its origin has nothing to do with the Christian conception of Satan or the devil and much more to do with the passing of seasons in the natural world. But what did the author have to say? 

L: Her answer was essentially that Halloween is in fact not the devil’s holiday, but that that doesn’t exclude its associations with death and paganism. She argues that although Satan’s origin has little to do with Halloween, the relationship between them exists for a reason. 

S: Huh. 

L: Yeah, I found that, like, worthy of discussion because you can find similarities between anything and make an argument. It just confused me that she’s using death as a theme to connect Satan and Halloween, but you can also replace anything in this context to give a similar message. I could replace Satan with, you know, funerals or something. Does that mean that the connection between funerals and Halloween is evil? I don’t know. I just found the argument interesting. She continues to say that the reason the devil and halloween have a connection has developed over centuries, because of the original emphasis on death and even more sinister elements. I don’t know what the more sinister elements are, since the original festival, like you said, was centered around harvest and protection.

S: Yeah, it’s much less dark and spooky than the horror movies would suggest. 

L: Yeah, anyway, based on her article, there are three main Christian reactions to Halloween—rejection, acceptance, and redemption. I want to focus mainly on rejection here. Her analysis on the rejection reaction is that it revolves around problematic supernatural practices. So, like, there are claims that other advocates of Wicca believe that Halloween is the best time to interact with the supernatural realm. She actually goes on to say that there are hidden traps within Wicca and it has become very attractive to our teens. And I’m not even going to dispute that because I did in fact think Wicca was really cool and I still do. Witches have drip, what can I say?

S: I agree.

L: Anyway rejectionism argues that otherworldly connections align with Satanism and that Halloween always maintained a relationship with occultism.

S: Which is funny because this basically insinuates that all non-Christian practices are Satanist, when Satanism is its own distinct religious practice. 

L: Say more!

S: So despite accusations of Satanism dating back centuries and often spurring witch hunts, which we’ll talk about later, actual satanism in the form of organized practice is super recent. Like from the last century. And as Christianity practices rejection of that which contradicts its teachings, Satanism rejects the teachings of Christianity. La Carmina in The Little Book of Satanism explains that most Satanists don’t really believe in the devil as a deity so much as a symbol of freedom from monotheistic Christian and Muslim control. And while practicing Satanists do celebrate Halloween as a significant holiday, it obviously didn’t originate with them. Which hasn’t stopped the belief that Satanism is the real root of Halloween and that this must be combated. Which brings me to what I think might be the most intriguing Halloween tradition: Hell houses! 

L: I have quite a few thoughts on those. In my opinion the more fun and light options are haunted houses. Like I’d love to go parading into one with my friends and then watch them scream at like a pebble or something landing on their shoe rather than going to a hell house. And I’ve never even been to a haunted house before! 

S: I need to take you to McRae’s haunted farm this year. For all the western Massachusetts folks out there, it’s a Halloween must and I love haunted houses. Thankfully I don’t have many opportunities to be genuinely scared in my day-to-day life so it’s kind of fun microdosing that emotion in a safe setting. Which is why I think a lot of people like them. But hell houses are something different altogether. 

L: Alright we’re planning an anthro.mp3 haunted house day. But anyway if you don’t know hell houses are spin on haunted houses that center around religious themes and the concept of eternal damnation. They relay religious messages through interactive horror scenes with commentary on society and the consequences of not following Christ‘s teachings. The psychological impact here is that it has the potential to frighten visitors into conversion. Like the point of haunted houses is that they’re scary in order to be fun. There’s no intricate message other than feeding into American consumerism. There’s also the argument that health houses promote a simplified theology of actual rich Christian lore. It narrows it into a skewed view of fear.

S: Yeah I watched an episode of Fundy Fridays which is a channel on YouTube about them and some of the hell houses seemed really violent. Which I mean is like a haunted house but based in reality. Like when I go to a haunted house, I want there to be ghosts and zombies. Not like drug overdoses. But while researching for this episode, you mentioned that you know about some of these things firsthand. 

L: Yeah I actually speak from personal experience with this since I wasn’t allowed to celebrate Halloween growing up. In the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t matter, but I think it adds to my lore when I tell people the first time I really wore a costume aside from a church anti-Halloween party I went to once, was in college and that I’ve never been trick-or-treating. There was actually this one time when I was a kid and I can’t believe I’m admitting this because it’s so embarrassing, but a family came to my house for trick-or-treating and I was fed a lot of fear about Halloween that I genuinely thought these people were evil for celebrating it. So I ran up to the front door, spun around, and braced it with my back as if they were gonna break in or something and then I yelled at them to go away. 

S: Oh my gosh. 

L: I know, like I was seven, I should not have been afraid of a mom and her two kids asking for candy. I was also always so ashamed of being sad that I couldn’t participate in school trick-or-treating or costume contests. When kids would swap candy, I’d have to sit in the hallway and wait for it to be over. My family isn’t American, so the concept of halloween was one, foreign, and two, devilish. But yeah I had this guilt for wanting to celebrate halloween and i was really jealous of friends who got to share that time together. Being an adult now and looking back, I obviously love halloween and i see it as a form of self-expression. Especially at such a pivotal developmental stage. Kids can show their favorite characters figures or create something entirely themselves. It’s also such a beautiful bonding experience. I was a really weird little kid so I probably would have dressed up like my favorite youtuber or something.

S: I dressed up as a witch a vampire or a zombie on rotation for pretty much my entire childhood. The most creative costume i think i had was when i was nine i went out as Little Dead Riding Hood. Which was my take on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. My mom let me rip up one of my shirts and paint it red to show that she was eaten by the wolf in the end.

L: That’s kind of crazy, but you were kind of cool for that.

S: Thank you.

L: And I actually want to touch back on something I said earlier about how rejectionists of Halloween relate otherworldly connections to the devil. It really makes me think about Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. There are similar pre-christian roots to Dia de los Muertos like Halloween, that make people see it as a Mexican version of Halloween. That statement really frustrates me so just an FYI Dia de los Muertos is not Halloween or a version of it. It evolved as its own thing. It goes back to the Aztec and Anahuac, who saw mourning the dead as disrespectful since deceased family members were still part of the community. Dia de los Muertos celebrates the return of the dead to the physical world on November 1st and 2nd. Honestly it’s very much the opposite of Halloween. It’s light and colorful and it’s a celebration. Around October, lots of Day of the Dead motifs pop up in stores like skulls or calaveras, some made from sugar and decorated with frosting with those cool little cookies. If you’ve seen the movie Coco, which I think is a really great first introduction to Day of the Dead for kids, there are lots of ofrendas and marigolds as part of the story and art. Ofrendas are essentially altars that welcome the spirit back to earth. There’ll be photos of the deceased loved one or ones on it along with candles, food and water to replenish them after their journey. Marigolds can be used in a variety of ways: placed on the ofrenda or arranged as a path for spirits to find their homes or place a burial. The first day of November is when the spirits of children return to their families while the second day is for adults and the elderly. And there’s actually been a relatively recent swing in marking October 27th as the day for deceased pets to return too. These ofrendas will usually include photos of the pet, personal items like their favorite toys, blankets or collar, and traditional items like marigolds and candles. 

S: That’s so sweet! 

L: I know! And speaking of symbolism or common indicators of a holiday. We can definitely list off quite a few for Halloween like: 

S: ghosts

L: pumpkins or jack-o’-lanterns 

S: candy, 

L: black and orange, 

S: bats

L: And how could we forget black cats? 

S: Of course black cats! Who doesn’t love a black cat? So what’s the history behind them? How did we start associating things like a black cat with Halloween and where did we even get trick-or-treating from? 

L: Those are some excellent questions and I’ll tell you all about it. So, there are some theories about pumpkin carving and jack-o’-lanterns but, get this, it might have something to do with this guy called Stingy Jack. While I was reading about him I kept thinking, his name was Stinky Jack so I’m trying really hard not to say that. Anyway, the legend of Stingy Jack is an Irish folk tale. It said that Jack, who is known for his trickery and mischief, repeatedly trapped the devil and only let him go on the condition that Jack would never go to hell. But, when Jack died, he learned that heaven didn’t want his soul either so he was forced to wander the earth as a ghost for eternity. 

S: Man.

L: Yeah I feel bad for the dude neither one wanted him. But then the devil gave Jack a burning lump of coal and a carved out turnip to light his way. Locals eventually began carving scary faces into their own turnips to frighten away evil spirits. So we now think that people eventually replaced turnips with pumpkins and frightening evil spirits with, you know, outshining your neighbor’s decorations. I also kind of envision Stingy Jack as Lewis the pumpkin from Target, do you know what i’m talking about? 

S: I think I’ve seen him on a meme. 

L: He’s very cute. Anywho, can you guess why ghosts are related to Halloween? 

S: I think I can make a lucky guess. For one, if jack-o-lantern turnips were meant to scare away spirits, then that already makes sense. Then there’s also, you know, the whole history of Samhain: when spirits would walk the earth during the festival. Oh, and also when Christian missionaries began celebrating All Souls day in place of All Hallows Eve and Samhain.

L: That was such a great lucky guess! I can’t believe you had no prior knowledge of this at all! 

S: Thank you.

L: But yeah, similar to that, we still dress up for Halloween since during the traditional festival of Samhain, participants would wear animal skins as costumes to avoid and deter terrorist spirits. 

S: So what about trick-or-treating?

L: There are actually three theories on the origins of trick-or-treating. One dates back to Samhain, when Celtic people would put out food to appease traveling spirits. They soon began dressing as earthly beings in exchange for similar offerings. The second relates to the Scottish practice of guising, or a secular version of souling. Children and poor adults during the middle ages would collect food and money from local homes in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day. Guisers ended up dropping prayers in favor of non-religious practices like songs, jokes, and tricks. The third one ties American trick-or-treating back to bell snickeling, a German-American Christmas tradition where children would dress in costume and call on their neighbors to see if the adults could guess their identity under the costume. Anyone who couldn’t be guessed was sometimes awarded food or treats.

S: That’s really sweet. So what about Halloween and its color scheme? Black and orange? 

L: Yeah, this is a long one, so buckle up. It dates back to Samhain, shocker I know, when black represented the death of summer while orange was the autumnal harvest season. 

S: That’s it?

L: Yeah, it’s not really a long one at all actually.

S: It’s really interesting how so much mythology and ancient rituals shaped such a fundamental holiday and nobody really knows about it. Bobbing for apples and apples in general as a motif for fall dates back to the Roman festival honoring Pomona in October, the goddess of fruitful abundance and orchards. There is a courting ritual during the festival where young men and women would predict their future relationships based on the results of bobbing for apples. Apples, the symbol of Pomona, also represent fertility, so that practice essentially blended into Samhain after Roman expansion as well. The large bonfires made to burn crops attracted insects which in turn attracted a lot of bats to circle the festival. Spotting them ended up being associated with Samhain. There is also medieval folklore that ties the eeriness of bats with the superstition that they are harbingers of death.

L: And bats aren’t the only animal associated with Halloween. I’m sure we all see displays of black cats with witches or even Halloween costumes of black cats. Now this one is actually a long one, and I have a lot of feelings about it since I’m the proud parent of two black cats (their names are Ghost and Lua, meaning moon in Portuguese). And shoutout to my calico cat, Nala. So I get heated about this correlation.

S: Elaborate.

L: Black cats are at the center of a lot of superstition. For one, there is a superstition that seeing one brings you bad luck. This is completely untrue because clearly the medieval Europeans who made that up have not experienced the joy of coming home to a black cat. This superstition stems back to the European history of witch hunting—witches were accused of having cats, particularly black ones, that acted as both pets and familiars. But cats have both a good and bad rep in history: in ancient Egypt, cats regardless of coat color were considered sacred; in Greek mythology, Hecate (the goddess of magic, sorcery, the moon, and witchcraft) had a cat as a familiar and pet. The positives of black cats took a sharp 180 when in the 13th century Pope Gregory the 9th issued an edict or a papal bull called Vox in rama (translated from Latin as “a voice was heard in rama”). This decree arose from rumors of satanic cults in Germany. Konrad of Marburg, who had to deal with the cults, had the full support of the Pope and Archbishops in driving them out. The vox portrayed the devil that was worshipped by these witches as a shadowy half-cat, half-man figure. The underlying goal though was to reshape the view of the cat in European society in general, morphing it from a pagan sacred animal into an agent of hell—kind of similar to the church’s attempt of replacing the Celtic festival of the dead with a church-sanctioned holiday, enveloping it into something secularly approved. The demonization of black cats actually leads some scholars to believe that their violent persecution in the 1300s depleted their numbers so much that they were prevented from officially killing rats and mice, maybe even allowing the spread of the bubonic plague. I also want to tie in the hate of cats, especially black cats, with misogyny. Stick with me now. 

S: Ok.

S: You know the stereotype or association of cats with women and men with dogs. Caridwen Falling Star, a Wiccan priestess, says that witches honored the natural world and had deep respect for plants and animals. Since there was affection between human and animal in the eyes of witches, this was then seen as diabolical. She goes on to say that cats, like the women accused of witchcraft, tend to exhibit a healthy disrespect for authority—they don’t fawn like dogs upon even the unworthy in the church. Independent women and independent animals were to be tolerated. I totally agree with her point here. Like I love dogs, don’t get me wrong, but she just points out the “man’s best friend” thing here. A lot of distrust or hate for cats stems from the fact that they don’t immediately owe you love. They act, at least in a human view, as independent creatures who don’t have to thrive off your attention. Witches and witchcraft in general viewed the natural world as something to honor and not take advantage of. There’s also an emphasis on practicality in witchcraft, which is why she argues that pairing of witches with cats (nearer to black cats) since they probably made better mousers, given that they can’t be as easily spotted at night and have a hunting advantage.

S: Ok.

L: Going back to the Ancient Egyptian reverence of cats, they were also linked with fertility, an equally sacred thing. Bastr, the goddess of the home, fertility, women’s strength, and protection, is depicted as a lioness or domestic cat. Ultimately, this reverence for fertility and womanhood was skewed by Christian expansion and witch hunting. Women who did not conform to societal norms or were seen as too independent were labeled as witches, having feline companions as a malevolent power. Cats embody stereotypical feminine traits, in my opinion: aloofness, mystery, independence. Whereas dogs are seen as loyal and subservient. Cats are seen as acting unpredictably, are self-sufficient and indifferent. I think these adjectives really go to show how society can see women. You act on your own accord for your own self-preservation. A cat doesn’t want to be touched so it hisses. A cat may like to be alone, away from noise and keep itself safe, but is labeled as annoying or incapable of companionship. Similarly, a woman can say no to dates, be a feminist and have opinions that honor herself as an individual woman and one part of a group, but is labeled as too sensitive or standoffish. There are also the crazy cat lady stereotypes. Where an undesirable older woman uses cats as substitutes for human relationships. But she stands as a caricature for women who don’t conform. Cats and femininity are deeply intertwined and I think the hate for them, especially black cats, is rooted in the misogyny that stems from witch hunting. So I both like and dislike that they’re symbols of Halloween. For me, I see black cat decor as a celebration of them, not as something spooky. So yes, I have a mini black cat rug all year round in my house that I got from the Halloween section of Marshalls. What about it?

S: Yeah, what about it? So, you’ve touched on it a lot thus far in this episode, but I’d like to sort of expand on the idea of witch hunts and as we live in Massachusetts, we would be remiss not to talk about the Salem Witch trials.

L: True!

S: So, very briefly, I will sum it up here. Between 1692 and 1693, more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft and 19 people were executed. This was after the heyday of the European witch hunts, which were mostly from the 1300s to the 1600s. The rampant fear of the devil’s influence and societal tension sparked by limited resources would ignite one of the most infamous episodes of the so-called Satan panic in American history. It started off with just three accused: Tituba, a Caribbean enslaved woman; Sarah Good, a homeless woman; and Sarah Osborn, an elderly woman—all of whose social marginality made it easier to point fingers at them. They were interrogated for days, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn maintained their innocence, but Tituba confessed to being a witch and said there might be others. Tituba was pardoned, Sarah Osborn died in prison, and Sarah Good was hanged not long after she gave birth to a daughter, Mercy, who also died in prison. In all, 19 men and women were executed, most of whom maintained their innocence to the very end, and as many as 13 people are believed to have died in prison related to the trials. Pardons for others who were accused were issued later, but obviously there was no taking back what was done. And that’s horrible. Obviously, so I think it’s kind of interesting the way we choose to memorialize the event. Nowadays, because of works like The Crucible, Hocus Pocus, and Bewitched, Salem, Massachusetts has become THE destination for Halloween celebrations. Thousands of people flock there every year for festivals, tours, museums, and shops all dedicated to the ooky spooky associations with Salem. And I’ve been there myself in October and let me tell you, the crowds at Disney have nothing on it. It was crazy. And if I’m being honest, I was there for just about the same reasons as everybody else. I love Hocus Pocus, it’s one of my favorite Halloween movies, so I was excited to see where it took place and to visit all the filming locations. But being there just kind of felt off, especially at the memorial where it lists everyone’s name and ages. Most of the victims died protesting their innocence, and so it’s just kind of strange that this is how we choose to remember them.

L: Yeah, I’ve also been to Salem quite a few times actually, and I always love it in the fall as a beautiful spot to go to. But I think that it does commercialize off of the suffering of people, and unfortunately, that’s something that happens a lot in our society. I think that it’s become a very kitschy kind of like „make witches into a caricature thing“, and less of remembering that these women and men were actually accused of being witches, and that was not a good thing.

S: Yeah, and there can be a whole another episode made about the memento mori way we treat some of the darker aspects of our history in America. To sort of cap this conversation off about Salem specifically, ultimately, the witch hunts have become a stand-in for a fruitless search because they were. Witches like the accusers imagined did not exist, and so a lot of people died for nothing. The hunts themselves have been long considered another form, as you said, of social control for unruly populations like women, minorities, and social outcasts. Which is why it’s doubly interesting why the holiday Salem epitomizes tends to be incredibly popular with another contemporary minority community. The LGBT community in America has a long and colorful history of Halloween celebrations, and as early as 1935, Alfred Finney, a black gay man in Chicago, was throwing shindigs like the country had never seen. His Halloween parties had hundreds of attendees and were recorded in city newspapers. Historian Mark Stein states that carnivalesque holidays like Mardi Gras, Carnival, and Halloween tend to be popular with the queer community because there are times when rigid social boundaries become more flexible. Take gender expression for an instance. There were laws against cross dressing in the United States until the 1960s, but for one night a year these rules were more lax and people could experiment with how they chose to dress and express themselves. Gay Christmas, an adaptation of Bitches Christmas, excuse my language but that’s the actual term, originated in the mid 20th century in Philadelphia, where queer people would go from bar to bar following drag queens. Ultimately Gay Christmas in Philadelphia was shut down for everyone not long after it was started. But every party that was put down more erupted to replace it. The 1970s and 80s saw the rise of queer Halloween celebrations in New York and San Francisco and they were a way of maintaining positive momentum in the face of the AIDS epidemic outside of just Pride Month. And here again we see that theme of resistance. 

L: That’s really cool.

S: Yeah it is. And in my personal opinion I think another reason Halloween might be so popular generally is that because unlike most other holidays around this sort of time of year, it isn’t really associated so much with family or tradition. You don’t have much family or you don’t speak to them? Halloween isn’t necessarily a bummer the way Thanksgiving or Hanukkah might be.

L: Yeah I think it really is totally dependent on that kind of found family thing as you get older, you celebrate it with the people you love, you have those group costumes, you go out, you stay in, be cozy. It’s just, it’s a great holiday. 

S: It’s just about having fun basically and there are so many ways to celebrate. Some people throw parties, visit haunted houses, go trick-or-treating but if you’re anything like me you spend the whole month of October binging horror movies.

L: Oh yeah!

S: So horror movies have been around for a very long time. The first was, and I apologize for the pronunciation, Le Manoir du Diable, which was released in the U.S as The Haunted Castle in 1896. It is the first recorded horror movie that we know of. Many horror classics came out in the so-called golden age of horror in the 1920s and 30s. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, which is a German expressionist film where a hypnotist and his subject get pulled into a mystery surrounding a murder in a heightened reality version of a German town, inspired many other films both of its era and more contemporarily. It would inspire Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands and also the minds behind the 1922 film Nosferatu. And fun fact Nosferatu is essentially the same story as Dracula, but tweaked a little bit because the filmmakers could not access the rights to adapt the book. But other studios have more success with Dracula. Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Count Dracula in 1936 has become a defining feature in our imagination of vampires. The accent, the cape, the swagger, a lot of it comes back to him. And other prominent characters brought to life in this era are The Mummy and The Invisible Man. Then we move on to the 1950s and 60s and we get Alfred Hitchcock. Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo. All of them, my grandparents’ favorite scary movies. We also get Godzilla and Invasion of the Body snatchers in this era as well as the 1958 remake of Dracula with Christopher Lee playing the titular character. The 1970s gave us the scariest movie of all time through The Exorcist, which shocked audiences worldwide. And odd happenings surrounding the production have fueled the speculation that the film was cursed. We also see the rise of the slasher film which is a genre that gave us The Halloween Franchise, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Slumber Party Massacre. And the 1980s saw the rise of Stephen King adaptations like Cujo, The Shining and Children of the Corn as well as Stephen Cronenberg’s iconic body horror films. His most well-known probably being The Fly. In the 1990s we see more family-friendly films like Casper, Hocus Pocus and Halloween Town, which opened the door to non-dramatizing ways for kids to enjoy this season on the big screen and in between my horror movie binge fest I watch all those movies too. We also started to see a sort of tongue-in-cheek horror in this era through The Scream Franchise, which satirizes a lot of the most common horror movie tropes, which itself was spoofed by The Scary Movie Franchise. Nowadays, we are seeing a slew of remakes, reboots, prequels, sequels and the like of pretty much all movies i just mentioned. Some have been more successful than others. I personally like the recent additions to The Hellraiser and Evil Dead franchises, but not so much the Halloween reboot. Not to mention the dozens of new horror movies that come out every year to enjoy. My personal favorites being The Conjuring universe and almost anything that comes out of Blumhouse. And if i missed anything in this incredibly condensed summary I apologize. Horror is a very dense genre. But that being said, what’s your favorite horror Halloween movie and what do you like about it?

L: That’s a big question. I think every time someone asks me my favorite something, I always blank. But recently I watched Sinners and that was beautiful. I think it was honestly, I mean it was kind of scary, but less in that way of like a Halloween movie and more of a beautiful scariness, I guess. I love when horror movies have religious themes. Same with As Above So Below. Great movie. 

S: I love it 

L: I love it so much. 

S: I like it when horror movies, like Sinners, they’re sort of allegories for social issues. It makes it really interesting. I mean, I love a dumb slasher movie as much as the next person, but reading into themes, like a lot of A24 films coming out right now, you can sort of analyze the layers of what the filmmakers are trying to say and that’s really interesting to watch. 

L: Yeah, it’s very fun, not just getting scared, but also getting scared and thinking about it. But like I said before, I also really, really love Scooby-Doo: Spooky Island. 

S: Oh my god, yes. I love Spooky Island. And then I do probably tend to favor the goofier movies as well. I think my favorite is Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, which is about two guys trying to go fishing in their cabin on the weekend, and a bunch of teenagers who’ve seen too many horror movies, get up to shenanigans around them. It’s a really fun ride I recommend for people who maybe don’t want to go super scary but want a good ride for Halloween movies.

L: And thank you all for tuning in to our show today! Another thanks to our team members and our collaborators with Anthrohub, especially our tech crew. To stay connected, you can find us on Instagram @anthro.mp3. You can also find our sources, transcripts of each episode and more in our Anthrohub show notes. I was one of your hosts today, Lea, joined by our other host!

S: Sophia

L: And our tech crew! If you enjoyed this episode, you’ll love our next one! Keep an eye out on our Instagram for future updates on shows, specials and events! Catch us next time and have a great day friends! 

Back to the Podcast

Pin It on Pinterest