Haunted Halloween
Jennifer R. Hubbard www.jenniferhubbard.com
I didn’t go Trick-or-Treating when I was little, because my mother said there were crazy people in the world who poisoned candy and put razor blades in apples. Years later, I learned that such stories were largely urban legends, until a few people capitalized on the legends with true crimes. (See http://www.snopes.com/horrors/mayhem/needles.asp and http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp. And by the way, I never knew anyone who gave or received apples as a Halloween treat. We were all about the sugar.) For me, Halloween was a night for staying home, handing out candy to others, getting to see everyone’s costumes, and eating whatever we didn’t hand out.
I don’t know if feeling like an outsider on Halloween, or having the specter of a hypothetical mad-poisoner-crazy-neighbor hanging over my head, led to my own particular brand of fear. “Scary” movies didn’t scare me because I knew they were make-believe. The news, on the other hand, chronicled real events—real events in which real people were hurt or killed. I did not worry about a werewolf coming to my window; I worried about dying in a car accident or getting a fatal case of meningitis.
And when I look at Halloween, and scary movies, and ghost stories, I see them largely as a safe way to deal with fear. Make-believe allows us to deal with fear’s adrenaline without being truly threatened. Halloween allows us to scare and prank others without serious consequences, to face our fear of the dark. We all know, underneath, that it’s a game, a prelude to orange cupcakes and “fun-size” candy bars.
We all know that true horror is on the nightly news.
The Secret Year by Janenifer Hubbard Publisher: Viking Juvenile (January 7th, 2010) Reading Level: Young Adult Hardback: 192 pages Seventeen-year-old Colt has been sneaking out at night to meet Julia, a girl from an upper-class neighborhood unlike his own. They’ve never told anyone else about their relationship: not their family or friends, and especially not Julia’s boyfriend.When Julia dies suddenly, Colt tries to cope with her death while pretending that he never even knew her. He discovers a journal she left behind. But he is not prepared for the truths he discovers about their intense relationship, nor to pay the price for the secrets he’s kept.
The paperback version of The Secret Year will be available December 23th!
Thank you Janenifer for the story and for the bookmark donation!
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* Check out Lisa's Haunted Halloween post with Sara Bennett Wealer and a giveaway for a signed copy of Rival.
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