It's that time of the year in America when witches and black cats whizz by, especially on full moon nights. All the spooky things one can imagine make Halloween successful on October 31. We are in the month of celebrating the spirit world; take it with humour or solemnity. Spirits are out there, and they may choose to visit us on Halloween. Other countries such as Germany, Ireland, Scotland, and Mexico have versions of celebrating the spirit world.

Going to shops around the town reminds me of the spooky days. Halloween decors of all sizes in scare adorn the shops. Scarecrow, witches, Dracula, and haunting figures catered to age groups fill the racks. Harry Potter and Frozen Inside Out costume characters have younger shoppers running across the shops. Children's voices can be heard, such as "Mummy, I want to be the Light-up Witch" or "Can I be the unicorn?" Many shop windows have giant fake spider webs with monstrous spiders on them. And, of course, the carved Jack-O'lantern décors tops them all. Meeting friends and family cannot happen without a word or two about the spooky season. "Have you got the Halloween costume for the kids?" The question arises inevitably.

Has a black cat crossed your path recently? Well, you might Google and find out how good or bad an omen is. Superstition grips us from time to time despite being realistic in life. Before Google came to our reach, in the village of Bongaon in Sylhet, the villagers believed that the spirits lived in the fan palm and the tamarind trees. While growing up in Bongaon, every time I passed a fan palm tree, I noted the large round leaves swaying with their frayed ends that reminded me of ghosts' hands. They were like the pictures of ghosts that my childhood fairy tale book had.

On the other hand, the tamarind tree didn't seem that convincing because I wasn't sure if the spirits liked the extremely tangy taste. But whenever I crossed the fan palm tree, I ran for my life, imagining a slimy creature climbing down the tree to get me. The villages had superstitions handed down to them, and with every generation, the version changed for the better or worse. By the late '60s, they became much gender-based; women could not step out of the house at night for fear of "petni" or evil spirits catching them, and women were not allowed to walk outside with loose hair for fear of catching the devil's attention and so on.

Leaving behind the village life, I made a leap to Belgrade, the capital city of former Yugoslavia, with my parents. It was the late '60s and my first winter with Halloween and Christmas celebrations. It was the first time making Jack-Lantern with my classmates and the black witches' masks. All the imagination I had left of spooky things in the village life seemed to be being crafted with hands in the new country. 

On Halloween nights, one has to keep stock of candies for children from neighbourhoods to come in their Halloween costumes for "Trick or treat." Then there are the bonfires, visits to haunted houses, and the searches for demons, ghosts, and witches through the night. With the countdown to Halloween, these are nights when you expect the witch's laughter to ring out from a place under your bed. You wake up hearing "Ha, ha, hee." from that dreaded place where all the demons of nightmares dwell. Haunted houses in cities in some cities that people plan to visit on Halloween or spooky train rides that carry passengers through dark tunnels where skeletons and ghosts lurk in the corners. In 1982, the Salem Witch Museum began the Salem Haunted Happenings for the Halloween weekend celebrations in Massachusetts. Every year, thousands of visitors throng to the place in and of the state, making it one of the autumn's awaited events.

Amidst the fun and frivolities of Halloween and the scary stuff, the horror of wars wrecks the mind. While some people cook up horror, in Palestine, Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan, people are facing horrific deaths. The fun on Halloween is ironic, where life is unpredictable, and millions of people are displaced by wars, where the world watches the killing of civilians by the Israeli government. According to Wikipedia, as of October 4, 2024, over 43,000 people have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war. What is scarier than humans killing each other for power and greed?

We celebrate Halloween to fill the children's hearts with joy, but the heart would not be in it while the pictures of maimed and dead children in Gaza flash in the inward eye.

May we have the courage to teach our children the difference between right and wrong, hoping they find a world where peace reigns? While providing children with seasonal delights, we are also responsible for educating them about the real horrors of the bigger world.

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Tulip Chowdhury writes from Georgia, USA