First Frost Josh

Alas, Halloween has ended. It is time to compost our pumpkins, pack away our spooky decorations, and shelve our desire. Halloween is fleeting—it feels like October just began yesterday. Which makes sense. Autumn is a transitional holiday, a passage to heights we never thought we could reach. This transitional nature is nothing new, embedded in the history of the holiday itself. A history that reaches back to before even the Middle Ages.

During the Halloween season, atmosphere is everything. Every mundane activity must be transformed into a dark undertaking befitting the season. Taking out the garbage at dusk transforms into a perilous journey spent dodging shadowy corners and imagining escaped lunatics lying in wait behind every tree. Washing the dishes becomes an exercise in inescapability as you watch bleak clouds of grey slowly overcome the bone-white sun. Interlocking scattered puzzle pieces turns into solving a ghostly mystery concealing deeply buried secrets of yore. In my opinion, there is no better way to evoke atmosphere in otherwise ordinary situations than by listening to music. And what music is better to elicit a spooky mood than a good horror movie soundtrack?