The king said to her, “Don’t be afraid. What do you see?”
The woman said, “I see a ghostly figure coming up out of the earth.” (1 Samuel 28:13)
"I want to have scary decorations this year." So said my 10-year-old daughter a couple of weeks ago. "And I want to watch horror movies."
I don't like scary. And I hate horror movies. My child has never seen a horror movie. She doesn't know what it is to see something truly scary, and to never be able to un-see it, and to have it keep you up at night, terrified of what is under the bed or in the closet or at the window or outside the door.
While she doesn't seem to have quite the runaway imagination that I did when I was her age, I wasn't about to let her watch even a PG-rated horror movie. She's not ready for that yet. Maybe, like me, she never will be.
We did start watching old Twilight Zone reruns, though. And now we're all hooked.
About those Halloween decorations: I am decidedly unenthusiastic it comes to any holiday decorating. And at Halloween, my least favorite of all the holidays? I'd like to bury my head in the sand and not come out until it's over.
I can't help myself. I have no interest in a holiday that celebrates ghosts, ghouls, vampires, death, violence, the demonic, and the occult. I see how haunted houses can be thrilling, and it's fun to dress up in costumes and go trick-or-treating, so I allow my daughter to do all of that. But I'd like my house to be free of creepy zombies, thankyouverymuch. Haystacks and pumpkins all the way for me.
I ended up compromising: A couple of zombie hands in the flowerbed, a jack-o-lantern ghost in the crepe myrtle, spiders in the window, a giant web by the front door, and flashing eyeballs in the bushes. Oh and a not-scary "Welcome to our web" sign to replace my beautiful fall wreath for a few days. We'd originally put a couple of cloaked skeletons on either side of the door, but it was a little much for me, so we took them down.
Just a week or two ago, we read 1 Samuel 28, where Samuel comes back to earth as a ghost, terrifying the medium at Endor. I'd read 1 Samuel before but had surprisingly forgotten this event, which shocked me when I read it. There are ghosts in the Bible? Not like the Holy Ghost, but as in people who go down the Sheol and come back up, all spooky and translucent?
It can't have been common; the medium screamed in terror when she saw it. And once the ghost of Samuel is gone, she gets Saul out of her house as quickly as she can.
The occult is a real thing, and I have real reservations about "scary" Halloween decorations that depict it, and even celebrating Halloween at all. But I also realize that kids aren't thinking so much about the occult as they are about having fun and getting candy. So I'm going ahead with it, allowing my daughter the same fun of (mildly scary) decorations, fun costumes, and trick-or-treating that my own parents allowed me.
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