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= THE HAIR RIBBON =

a Halloween story

by John Argo


2.

title by John ArgoThe story of the hair ribbon, a Halloween incident, is a tiny little event in a vast and imponderable universe. Maybe because it is such a tiny thing, yet filled with such enormous portent, it sends chills up and down our spine much more than a story of some silly monster or a pirate with glowing eyes (costumes any kid can pick up, parents willing, at the Five & Dime or whatever they call those wonderful, totally stocked country stores nowadays).

The New England village of Alders, as recently as last year, boasted exactly two traffic lights over the crossroads, one at each end of town. Each year on the Day of All Souls or the Eve of All Hallows (more commonly known in the secular community as Hallow E'en, or simply Halloween), high school students for generations have liked to play pranks. Since half the students in the small school volunteer with the Fire and Police Departments, they know how to do this, and the town's four constables pretend not to notice (because they did it when they were young).

When candles blaze in hideous pumpkin faces on mossy concrete stoops or rickety wooden porch stairs, and long after the little ghosts and goblins have rushed home with their candies and popcorns, the pranking of the ancient spirits begins. High schoolers associated with the Ancient Guild of Fire Fighters (Frighters?) and Rescue Officers, and similar honorable unions for public service, ride to the outlying crossroads of town with a key to the stop light. They then turn off the normal green-orange-red sequence of lights, and just leave the orange light in the middle flashing. They paste on a few deftly cut strips of black plastic, and presto—a flashing jack o' lantern at either end of town.

Now Alders dates far back to the time when Tisquameket and other Native Peoples still hunted like shadows in the dense forests, and dour Puritans dressed in gray were hanging witches and black cats in their villages. Something else nobody talks about is that some of the English who sailed across in the 1600s were still secretly worshiping their own forest spirits, and liked to dance around the May Pole. The Irish brought with them their own Celtic spirit of Samhain—recalled across our land in the carving of pumpkins, whose horrible grimaces and bright flickering candles drive away spirits.

Two kinds of spirits are abroad on this very powerful night. According to the ancient Europeans, evil spirits roam about seeking the ruin of souls. Also, the spirits of the unsaved dead wander the world seeking release, or so the Christian priests taught. And the next day, there is the Feast of All Saints, so presumably many of the unquiet dead found peace by midnight. One extremely ancient tradition from Italy, dating at least as far back as the archaic Romans of the Iron Age, was that a male witch (streghe) could see the dead walking at crossroads on certain nights. A gifted and properly prepared shaman (man or woman) could speak with the ghosts, or even walk in the spirit world.

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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.