The nights are drawing in. Thoughts are turning to jacket potatoes and soup and fireworks. And before that, Halloween. What, did you think we'd forgotten? Of course not. This is our favourite festival based around sweets, mild extortion, and competitive carving. Oh and the dressing up. As a feminist website we are under a contractual obligation to mention the whole phenomenon of 'slutty' costumes. Men can dress up in inventive costume. So can women, but it apparently has to feature cleavage and stocking tops, because that's what everyone thinks of when they think 'halloween zombie.' Thing is though, the outrage about those costumes is getting more tiresome than their existence. Have you ever seen one on a real live human on halloween? Us neither. Mostly we just see lots of drunk people wearing badly applied facepaint doing shots. If anyone wants to wear a revealing costume then really, just get on with it. We're not here to judge.
How about a return to some of the other traditions associated with tonight? The feeling of ice down the spine, the face lit from below by a torch as a gruesome story is shared. We asked our contributors to share a scary story that has happened to them...
How about a return to some of the other traditions associated with tonight? The feeling of ice down the spine, the face lit from below by a torch as a gruesome story is shared. We asked our contributors to share a scary story that has happened to them...
1. Many years ago, one dark and wintery night I was sat in my front room when ghostly, barely audible voices started coming out of my stereo speakers. My switched off stereo. A crackling, broken sounded voice asking howling into the night that it was lost. Was this a lonely spirit, trapped between the realms, forever wandering through the darkness.
No, it was some Brighton cabby who couldn't find his fare's house who was parked outside and whose car radio was apparently tuned to the same frequency as my stereo. Gareth
2. The scariest thing that happened to me was that me and my friends frightened the bejesus out of ourselves. In true Catholic School Girl style we created a spooky board game played in in my friend's bedroom which just happened to be in an old 18th Century Pub. When it came to the square on the board that said say the Hail Mary backwards three times. We all stood in front of the mirror with a candle in the dark to say the prayer, when we got to the word 'DEATH'. One of the three of us screamed, setting us all off and down the stairs to the living room where we spent the rest of the night with the lights on watching the Little Mermaid on repeat. Squeamish Nicola
3. I was staying with a friend at her aunt's house when I was about 12. We were playing in the garden, exploring the bushes which were deep, with walkways threading through them. As we were walking along, her ahead of me, we started to hear a strange low noise, building into an ominous buzzing. My friend was ahead of me and all of a sudden she pirouetted and sprinted past me shouting at the top of her voice. We had walked into a wasps nests and all of a sudden we were running from thousands of wasps and not managing to get away from them. We got inside but not until we were both covered in so many stings we looked as if we had chicken pox. It still makes me shudder to think about. Squeamish Louise
4. I don't like horror films, I never even read the Goosebumps book series. While I have experienced 'spooky at the time' occurrences - sound of footsteps in an empty house, lightbulbs jumping out of my lamp (if anyone could explain that it would be nice), objects falling off shelves for no clear reason - I haven't got anything that counts as a scary story for light consumption. I find driving pretty scary as my car likes to turn itself off at unexpected moments, opening bank statements frightens me and the idea of making the wrong decision gives me the willies, as it were. That's probably unsettled you for the rest of the day. Squeamish Kate
5. I like being scared. I don't want to run into Michael Myers in a dark alleyway on any night, Hallowe'en or otherwise, and I've never been a fan of any of those fictional recreations of scary things that can (and do) happen in real life yet which some people find entertaining. I like the kind of scary when you reach beyond yourself and find out you're actually capable of far more than you ever thought. For me, the scariest thing that's happened to me in recent years was when I finally got the F1 paddock pass I'd been applying (and reapplying) for for months. All of a sudden I had to plan a solo trip to a country I couldn't find on the map (Bahrain. Anyone else know you could drive there from Saudi? Yeah, me neither...), pack a bag, get on a flight, and play like a professional in an arena when I was all fan. The morning I was due to leave I cried so much I made myself sick with nerves, threw up all the way to Heathrow, got on that plane and I've not looked back since. The scariest things we do are often the best things we do. F1 Kate
No, it was some Brighton cabby who couldn't find his fare's house who was parked outside and whose car radio was apparently tuned to the same frequency as my stereo. Gareth
2. The scariest thing that happened to me was that me and my friends frightened the bejesus out of ourselves. In true Catholic School Girl style we created a spooky board game played in in my friend's bedroom which just happened to be in an old 18th Century Pub. When it came to the square on the board that said say the Hail Mary backwards three times. We all stood in front of the mirror with a candle in the dark to say the prayer, when we got to the word 'DEATH'. One of the three of us screamed, setting us all off and down the stairs to the living room where we spent the rest of the night with the lights on watching the Little Mermaid on repeat. Squeamish Nicola
3. I was staying with a friend at her aunt's house when I was about 12. We were playing in the garden, exploring the bushes which were deep, with walkways threading through them. As we were walking along, her ahead of me, we started to hear a strange low noise, building into an ominous buzzing. My friend was ahead of me and all of a sudden she pirouetted and sprinted past me shouting at the top of her voice. We had walked into a wasps nests and all of a sudden we were running from thousands of wasps and not managing to get away from them. We got inside but not until we were both covered in so many stings we looked as if we had chicken pox. It still makes me shudder to think about. Squeamish Louise
4. I don't like horror films, I never even read the Goosebumps book series. While I have experienced 'spooky at the time' occurrences - sound of footsteps in an empty house, lightbulbs jumping out of my lamp (if anyone could explain that it would be nice), objects falling off shelves for no clear reason - I haven't got anything that counts as a scary story for light consumption. I find driving pretty scary as my car likes to turn itself off at unexpected moments, opening bank statements frightens me and the idea of making the wrong decision gives me the willies, as it were. That's probably unsettled you for the rest of the day. Squeamish Kate
5. I like being scared. I don't want to run into Michael Myers in a dark alleyway on any night, Hallowe'en or otherwise, and I've never been a fan of any of those fictional recreations of scary things that can (and do) happen in real life yet which some people find entertaining. I like the kind of scary when you reach beyond yourself and find out you're actually capable of far more than you ever thought. For me, the scariest thing that's happened to me in recent years was when I finally got the F1 paddock pass I'd been applying (and reapplying) for for months. All of a sudden I had to plan a solo trip to a country I couldn't find on the map (Bahrain. Anyone else know you could drive there from Saudi? Yeah, me neither...), pack a bag, get on a flight, and play like a professional in an arena when I was all fan. The morning I was due to leave I cried so much I made myself sick with nerves, threw up all the way to Heathrow, got on that plane and I've not looked back since. The scariest things we do are often the best things we do. F1 Kate
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