It’s a day when the whole family can get together in one place and celebrate what really matters: PURE EVIL!

-Stan Pines, Summerween, Gravity Falls

Happy Halloween! If you’re like me and celebrate Halloween, then you know what comes next: a whole night of costumes, inflatable spiders, and nobody being able to tell you to stop eating that candy. Go on. Eat it. I won’t stop you. It’s not like I can. I’m probably at least a mile away from you.

SO, LET’S TALK ABOUT MONSTERS.

Nowadays, people have all these specialized costumes like “Evil Goatherd” or “Background Character D” or “Mildly Irritable Pencil Box”, and the original costumes like “Zombie”, “Frankenstein”, and “Dracula” are last resorts when you can’t be your favorite Disney character. So today, I’m discussing the classics.

Zombies

Green skin. Rotting flesh. Variable amount of eyeballs. Intense shambling. These are the hallmarks of the zombie, a classic undead monster with an appetite for your pink head noodles. Zombies are undead monsters who appeared so many times in horror stories, they’re not even that scary anymore. People today still dress up as zombies, but most people dress as specialized zombies like “zombie lawyer” or “zombie teacher” or “mildly irritable zombie pencil box”. The differences make the zombies all the more unique, on the concept that they were humans before being bitten and horribly disfigured.

COSTUME SCALE!

Some zombie costumes are good, and some are… not… good. HERE THEY ARE! (Scale: 1 – 10)

(Rating: 1) This guy just painted himself green. Is he even a zombie? Is he, like, the Hulk? Is he a stereotypical alien? (More on those later.) At least show some effort in your costume.

(Rating: 4) Classic zombie. This guy is a shambling, moaning, decomposing pile of flesh-kebab, but so obviously fake. Still, though, you have to admire his willingness to remove that much of his own arm. I mean… geez. That can’t be good for him. Poor guy.

(Rating: 8) Pretty good. This guy tried for an actual death method, with that bloody axe sticking out of his head. I mean, if I didn’t know better, I’d think he actually put an AXE in his head! Ha! But… but that would be crazy, right? Ha ha…! Yeah! Nobody… nobody would go that far, right?

(Rating: 15) I rate this guy 15 because he bit me and now my arm is green. Going to visit a doctor noBRAINSGGGGGGGGGGGG

Frankenstein

First, a word on the naming of this particular monster:

HIS NAME IS NOT FRANKENSTEIN, FRANKENSTEIN IS THE SCIENTIST DUDE WHO CREATED HIM AND HIS NAME IS FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER.

Cool? Cool.

Now remember that. OR ELSE.

Frankenstein’s monster was created in 1818, by author Mary Shelley.

Frankenstein’s monster is commonly depicted with screws in his head, stitches in the cavity where his brain was inserted, and a large square jaw.

People often try to do the “Frankenstein walk”(arms extended, loud clomping, don’t bend your knees), or moan in an inhuman way (obviously failing, because they’re just humans). In the original Frankenstein book, however, Frankenstein’s monster walks like a normal person and can speak very fluently, actually better than most people I know. This probably got started with zombies. The difference: zombies are like that old, worn-out pair of pants. Frankenstein’s monster is all of those old, worn out pairs of pants haphazardly cut up with a pizza cutter and then sewn back together with the back pockets on the front and the zipper on the left leg.

Maybe that’s why he became such a classic Halloween character.

Count Dracula

Now, vampire is a fairly generic costume, but with Dracula, you’re going somewhere. The Transylvanian terror has been around since 1897, when an Irish author named Bram Stoker had an idea: “BITEY BAT MAN!”

Dracula’s climb to fame has been expanding ever since. Guy drinks blood, guy turns into bat, guy becomes famous symbol of holiday.

…I wonder if that would work for me…

SO HERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT DRACULA!

1. Dracula could also turn into a wolf, in addition to a bat. The guy had skills. He could also talk to rats.
2. Dracula had white hair, in addition to a mustache. Yeah, I know. Most depictions show him with that famous pointy black hairstyle, but that’s not what Bram Stoker said. Dracula was an old man, and his hair matched his age.
3. Dracula was based off of a real person: Vlad Dracula, or “Vlad the Impaler”. Nice guy.
4. Drac never actually said “I vant to suck your blood” in the novels. That’s Hollywood’s fault, as are most other monster misconceptions.
5. I don’t actually know that much else about Dracula. I was just saying some stuff from the internet. LIST OVER!

Werewolves

Werewolves can be traced back to Greek mythology, when the ancient king Lycaon tried to serve the gods human flesh and Zeus turned him into a wolf in anger. Why did Lycaon think that serving the gods human flesh was a good idea? No clue. But he’s actually not the first mortal king to try to serve human flesh to the gods, so either human flesh was an ancient delicacy, or the ancient Greeks were just weird.

Anyway, Lycaon wasn’t a full wolf. Instead, he was a horrifying half-man, half-wolf creature, and honestly, that may have been the worst thing that Zeus could have turned him into, because he ended up doing even more harm as a werewolf then when he was a mortal king. Werewolves are called “lycanthropes” because of him.

Lycaon may have been bad, but his story created a whole world of good and/or bad: the modern werewolf, whose story changed over time to “bitten by werewolf, now changes at the full moon”. Some of the most famous werewolves are:

1. Remus Lupin (Harry Potter): This werewolf was a true hero. He defended his friends, his family, and his former school to the very last. Lupin’s lycanthropy prevented him from being near anyone every full moon, but his friends found a way to stay with him. Lupin was a true hero, lifting the stigma on werewolves worldwide.
2. Actually, Lupin is the only werewolf I know. Other than Lycaon and Fenrir Greyback (Another Harry Potter werewolf), I don’t really know that many werewolves. I’ll have to come back to this at some point.

Werewolves are often seen as evil, but lycanthropy is more like a disease. It shows up every so often, and the bearer of the disease must isolate themselves to prevent the disease spreading to other people. Lycanthropes are just seen this way because of the fact that they turn into HORRIFYING FLESH EATING CONTAGIOUS MONSTER WOLVES. Poor guys.

Skeletons

Bouncing off of the “dead people are scary” idea, they’re everyone’s favorite fleshless monsters: skeletons! Now, skeletons have been around for as long as humans have (for obvious reasons), but the idea of animated skeletons originated around the Middle Ages, and has stuck ever since, probably because skeletons are easy to defeat scary grunts who symbolize death and don’t actually die. That’s why they’ve been used as 1st level video game grunts and minions of the main villain in TV shows and movies for several decades.

Now, the weirdest thing about skeletons is that in most depictions I’ve seen, the ends of their bones don’t touch each other, they just float in midair. And if this was what skeletons were actually like, a little thing called gravity would cause them to become a shambling pile of bones on the floor.

Some skeletons are depicted making deep moaning sounds, but if their flesh has already disintegrated, then so have their vocal cords. Depictions of skeletons that make them chatter their teeth ominously are much more accurate.

Overall, there area a variety of problems with the modern skeleton depiction. But hey, it’s magic, right? It doesn’t need to make sense!

Witches

The idea of witches has been around since before civilization, as witches show up in Christian and ancient Greek stories alike. The idea of magic has always been around, but eventually came a time when the idea of magic-users came around, and that really kickstarted the whole thing.

Witches have been depicted with various roles in history, ranging from the benevolent witch who helps everyone accomplish their goals, or the malevolent witch who turns two thirds of the main cast into pigs.

However, in the 1300s, Christians blamed witches for a plague and turned the role of “witch” into a purely evil one. They burned several innocent women under the accusation that they were witches.

Nowadays, people know that the role “witch” is subjective to the bearer, and series like Harry Potter and The Owl House are striving to undo the idea of “evil witches”, but the image of the cackling green, warty witch with the cauldron and the broomstick and the creepy black cat has just stuck with us, whether we like it or not.

Generic Monsters

“Too many eyes? HA! Not enough eyes, I say!”

“Monsters” have been depicted in so many ways, from furry, to scaly, to so covered in spit, you can’t even tell what they were before. The title of “monster” is interesting, because some monsters are depicted as “good”, others are depicted as “bad”, and if we’re going by the primary definitions, some monsters are “humans”.

Sound familiar?

“Monster” is just a title we gave to those beings who weren’t quite like us. The title is generally rude. Would you call an adorable puppy a “monster”? Would you call a two-ton bear a “monster”? Would you call a human a “monster”?

Because if what we say about “monsters” is true, then goldfish are “monsters”. And so are chickadees, giraffes, bison, capybaras, koalas, anteaters, ladybugs, turtles, and literally any other animal you can think of.

So what is a “monster”?

A “monster” is different. A “monster” is unique. A “monster” doesn’t have to conform to what other people think, because a “monster” would be themself, whether other people like it or not.

…I’m not talking about “monsters”.

Welp, that’s all the space we have to talk about “monsters”. On to the next one!

Mummies

Unlike most Halloween creatures, mummies are real, though the interpretation of them as horrifyingly evil was probably not the intent of the ancient Egyptians.

Mummies are created when a pharaoh dies, and the pharaoh’s servants make the pharaoh look like a prune, then remove the pharaoh’s vital organs and give him a book. Nice trade-off.

The mummy would then be wrapped in linen, giving us the famous mummy idea of today.

However not just pharaohs became mummies. A certain animal was worshipped in ancient Egypt, and when it died, it was mummified too.

In other words…

Cat mummies.

Ghosts

It’s taken me way too long to get here.

Ghosts are spirits of the dead, an idea that has been popular since ancient Egypt. Mythology has created several kinds of spirits, because ghosts are cool. The idea of an Underworld has also always been popular, and you can find some reference to a below ground world of dead people in almost any religion.

Ghosts are mostly metaphysical, and are unable to interact with humans. They will commonly be partially transparent. Most ghosts are depicted with the ability to float, teleport, and walk through walls. They can also inhabit images, such as paintings and (potentially) phones.

Some ghosts can interact with the living world. This is either through a loophole or just because they are a poltergeist, a kind of ghost that can interact with the human world at will.

Ultimately, the spirit world differs through depictions. You can have ghosts that can touch you, and ghosts that can’t, and ghosts that can touch things that aren’t you, and ghosts with a fear of physical contact. But overall, one thing is clear: don’t mess with the dead.

Everything Else

We’ve gone through the undead, the almost-dead, the not-quite-dead, and the never-were-and-never-will-be-dead. But what about all the others? There’s a whole world out there full of aliens, cyclops, dragons, gourds, and most of all…

…Magic.

This Halloween, find the magic. Keep it. Because it’s Halloween, after all…

…and you never know what lurks around the corner.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

[maniacal laughter]