Horror Business

ISSUE #75

This is a spooky playlist you can use all month, whether you're driving to a corn maze or prepping for your Halloween party (you can find last year’s playlist here, if you want to combine them for a longer run time).

For as much as I love October, I never have much to say about it, probably because the season is about the things you can’t put into words. Halloween is all sublimation: we give our base instincts permission to emerge, we indulge in our ancient taste for spirits and specters, we put our real fears aside as we focus on the imaginary—the things that could never actually hurt us, but help us let off some screams.

Maybe I like Halloween because it's right in the middle of the fall semester, a welcome distraction from the drudgery of midterms. Maybe because it’s a time of independence; there are never any parents in horror movies, and as you grow older, you get increasingly unsupervised, left to venture out and experience the scary world one small dose at a time. Or maybe it's all in the punch. There’s always some like cool blood-punch-thing, at the parties. Severed hand in the middle of the bowl. Just more punch, please, for all of us.

Most likely, it's the history buff in me that loves this holiday. Ghostland author Colin Dickey said that ghosts are invented to be "attuned to a past you can't understand but can't ignore.” Those bumps in the night are just stories, begging not to be forgotten. Regardless of reason, Halloween is powerful because dark magic exists. It’s in mitosis and octopus beaks, in prime numbers and cocoons—and in these songs.