This post originally appeared in my October 2024 newsletter.

As I sit here writing this, it is a cozy fall evening, perhaps one of the first truly chilly nights of the season. The wind whistles and scatters dried red, yellow, and orange leaves, and shadows grow longer under the fading light.

Inside?

Autumn twinkle lights offer a soft glow to write by while old black-and-white horror movies play in the background. Whisigothic decor (and some Halloween decorations too!) fills my home with a sense of magic. The kettle whistles in the kitchen, and a lazy pumpkin-spice cloud wafts from my jack-o-lantern mug. And two sleek black cats snooze nearby.

Readers, we are the picture of spooky autumnal coziness.

That, however, was not the case just a few nights ago when I decided to go to my first haunted house. You see, I had been feeling brave. I’d spent the last few years watching iconic horror movies each October, finding again and again that they were never as scary as I’d imagined them to be. I’d been reading horror books, too, and enjoyed every minute of it. In fact, I found that the idea of these stories was often scarier to me than the actual story. While these terrible tales could be creepy or chilling or even downright terrifying, I always made my way through them all the better for having read or watched them.

All this to say that I felt VERY proud of myself for facing the things that once scared me and realizing that they weren’t all that scary. In fact, I was feeling downright smug about it!

Too smug, as it turned out.

It was with this deep sense of what I now know was overconfidence that I decided to try my first haunted house. I was offered free tickets, after all, and had a sister who was willing to brave the unknown with me.

The Universe was providing me with an opportunity to try something that might have been too much for me Once Upon a Time. I wasn’t such a big old scaredy cat anymore. Sure, the promo images for the event looked chilling, but I’d seen scarier images in some of the movies I’d watched. And I knew it wasn’t real, so…

How bad could it be?

Spoken like the protagonist in a horror movie right before she promises to spend the night in a haunted house. Nothing bad will happen if you stay in an old home that only a bunch of superstitious townsfolk think is haunted, right? The one where a bunch of people fifty years ago disappeared under mysterious circumstances, their bodies never found, right?!?! RIGHT?!?!?!?!

At any rate, I couldn’t back out after I invited my sister and told everyone I was going. I have a goth reputation to uphold, after all. Like any traumatic experience, much of it is now a blur. What I can tell you about that harrowing event was that a certain amount of (liquid) courage was required to enter that haunted house. But enter we did, into the swirling fog, where all manner of things lurked in the shadows.

There were screams (mine). Dark maze-like corridors to navigate. Panic (also mine). Ghosts and ghouls and all sorts of monsters to run from. Believe me when I tell you it was not for the faint of heart!

I learned something about myself that night: I AM STILL A SCAREDY CAT.

But I also can’t help myself. I will always be drawn to the gothic, the unknown, and terrifying things that go bump in the night. And that’s okay. Healthy, even.

After we made it through the terrifying haunted house and ran to the safety of the well-lit street, my sister and I both felt strangely cleansed. Okay, our hearts were still racing, and we were out of breath from dodging monsters and running through torture chambers. But we were also relaxed.

There was the rush of having faced something we’d both built up in our heads (hence the liquid courage), doing the thing that scared us, and coming out the other side (mostly) intact.

We survived!

It was truly a terrible delight to be frightened out of our wits and then leave it all at the door of the haunted house. There, in the moonlight and crisp air, was a fresh start and a clear mind.

That feeling is what makes me venture deeper into the world of horror, even as I am, and always will be, a scaredy cat. There’s something incredibly empowering about looking at the things that scare you—especially the ones that have followed you since childhood—and laying them to rest. They may never stop scaring you, but at least you know, when old ghosts stir in the night, you can face them and be the better for bringing them into the light.

That’s the power of horror stories: They shock us! They terrify us! They make us face our fears so we can put things into perspective, heal what needs to be healed, and exorcise the demons and spirits that have tried to hold us captive.

That’s the beauty of spooky season. It makes us eager to look at the things we normally confine to the shadows of our minds the rest of the year. Now, in the cozy warmth of my home, a large pumpkin on the kitchen table waiting to be carved, I feel brave again. Brave enough to consider going through that haunted house again next year.

Maybe.

As a special treat, in honor of spooky season, I’m offering up free copies of Hungry Business and Weep, Woman, Weep through Dia de Los Muertos. May they bring you chills, thrills, and delightful exorcisms!

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational collection of musings touching on life’s simple pleasures, everyday fantasy, and absolutely delectable recipes that will guarantee to stir the kitchen witch in you.  If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is the everyday, subscribe here.

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