Human beings are weird creatures indeed. Why would we need a day, such as Halloween, to feel fear? Aren't the crisis and current affairs scary enough to fill our daily dosis of panic and anxiety? Not happy with the natural horrors, our retorcida species, indulges itself creating artifacts to produce fear, revulsion and disgust. In fact, the more calamities, the better horror creations (and arguably also re-creations in general)

The funny thing though, is that it is not quite clear why we fear fictions in the first place: hey! it seems irrational to fear monsters and things that you possitively believe do-not -exist and that you know for sure are not going to jump from the book or screen in front of you; and second, why on earth can we enjoy works that make us feel uneasy and distressed? Why are we attracted by what, typically should (and would) repel us?

An additional curious thing about human beings is that they can write hundreds and thousands of pages on questions such as these two stated above whose sofisticated names are the paradox of fiction and the paradox of horror/tragedy respectively. And even more surprisingly: they can be REALLY interesting.

For those freaky creatures that might be tempted, a good place to start may be Noël Carroll's Philosophy of Horror: Or Paradoxes of the Heart, that's my recommended book for halloween. 

For those equally lunatics who do not care about philosophical paradoxes, here are other picks for the day:

A Film: The Changeling [Do not confuse with the new Clint Eastwood-SuperAngie one]

A Short Story: Any of J.H.Riddell's "Weird Stories" [now that I'm in London I have a crave for Victorian stuff]

A Song: Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead" (Undead-undead-undead)

A TV Series:  Six Feet Under (careful, it's addictive)

Other classics: Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies

And of couse, Halloween is not Halloween without Bach's Toccata&Fugue

*picture above thanks to vintage fictions gallery