I stood in my driveway and tended to the fire, my body layered for the cold in a hunter-orange sweater, denim overalls and Blundstone boots. My hair was dyed green, lips blood red, with temporary black scars lined up and down my jaw. Next to me: a zombie princess and a manic joker. A man in a hard hat with a hammer. One set of twin ninjas, an alpine skier, a furry gorilla, and an L.L.Bean Barbie. The sun was setting as we ambled around the flames, having just burnt our fears, and we were now preparing to yelp and shriek. It was the last day of October and the air had a texture that you could feel. Our island pastor had described it the previous Sunday as “the Thin Veil”—the point in the solar cycle when the line between the physical world and the spiritual one was pencil-thin. When the portals to the otherworld were most accessible. When spirits could more easily cross between the realms and enter our world. Life after life.
Despite it being Halloween, thoughts of death had been sitting heavy on our shoulders for several days. My home is about forty minutes from Lewiston, Maine, and you must know what happened there on Wednesday, October 25, but if you don’t, the news may not be a surprise—there have been more mass shootings in 2023 than there have been days in 2023. This time, at a bowling alley and then on to a restaurant. This time, a U.S. army reservist who had sought medical help after hearing voices. Once again, it was with a semi-automatic weapon. Once again, we are left marinating in the insanity of the normalcy of it: of an unwell person in legal possession of an assault rife—Maine state law doesn’t require permits to carry firearms—who goes on a killing spree, the first mass shooting in our state, killing 18 people, 19 if you include his suicide. A little after 8 p.m. that awful Wednesday night, after my spouse had read a chapter from Mrs. Frisby and The Rats of NIMH to our kids and we put them to bed, both our phones lit up, pinging with the alert: Active shooter on the loose. Armed and dangerous. Shelter in place until further notice.
Maine has an estimated 17,518,847 acres of wilderness; our state is 80 percent forest. He could be anywhere, a neighbor texted me. We hardly slept that night. On our street, most people had never locked their doors; we leave our keys in the car. By day two of the news cycle alternating between the manhunt and identification of the victims, our collective state of mind could be boiled down to one word: throttled. Things felt eerily similar to the first few days of the COVID lockdown. At one point, we just had to get out of the house, the risk was low enough, we reassured our kids. As we headed to the woods near our home, we saw only one car on the road (our mailman Allan) and one of the children asked, “…but what if the shooter gets in a box and ships himself here?” A 10-year-old shouldn’t have had to ask these things, just like I shouldn’t have questioned the possibility of it.
By Friday night of that week, the assailant’s body had been found in a tractor trailer with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The relief we felt was a strange combination of emotions—gladness, sorrow, sympathy, compassion, rage. Paired with the prickle of late October—the thin veil—we didn’t know what to do, how to think, how to act. “I don’t know where to look,” a dear friend of mine had said over the phone, and I didn’t either—not to policy for protection, not to government for reassurance that something would change. And soon it would be Halloween, which meant it would be time to celebrate. Time to celebrate? How were we supposed to be festive when our collective cauldron was boiling over with grief and fear, dread and uncertainty? I don’t know where to look. I wasn’t sure where to look, either, until I did.
We were to connect, and we were to gather. That’s what we always had done when one of us was suffering or celebrating; we got together and cemented our bonds. I have lived in many places that have a sense of community, and some that don’t, but we are lucky that our current home on a small island in Maine values the bonds and benefits of neighborhood. Historically, October 31 has been about honoring death, welcoming the harvest, and warding off evil spirits. Ancient Celts felt the need to please the dead in order to ensure that their population and livestock did not die during the harsh winter, so plates of food were set at the dinner table to welcome them home. In Brittany, libations of milk were poured over graves. In Scotland, Halloween lanterns were originally made of hollowed-out turnips, not pumpkins, which represented souls of the dead and were used to ward off evil spirits. Some cultures would abstain from eating meat on the holiday, while others had customary “criers” who dressed in all black and publicly mourned for all the departed.
But no matter where you are, over time, traditions change and extravagant rituals fade, leaving us with residual holiday customs divorced from meaning. While our little island neighborhood had continued to carry forth some traditions—kids getting dressed up, going door to door—the actions themselves had lost purpose. To me, they felt hollow, not hallowed, missing a key element that had birthed a tradition meant to fill a spiritual void. I wanted to infuse meaning back into our Halloween, to prescribe a new ritual.
Like the sign of the cross or blowing on dice, a ritual is a prescribed sequence of gestures or words that make a moment sacred, holy. Rituals are not useless superstitions, but rather fundamental actions to how we reinforce social ties and community, from how we mourn, grieve, and celebrate to how we feel safe and confident in times of vulnerability. Rituals are not illogical, and just because a ritual does not have any measurable and tangible effect does not mean it has no effect in the world at all. Rituals fulfill the same roles they did for our ancestors thousands of years ago: Guide communities through their anxieties and help people find meaning in their lives. All this helps bring the emotional reactions of the community members into alignment. Rituals help us find order and spiritual significance when the world seems dark and chaotic.
So that is what we did: a bespoke ritual on Halloween night. From down the street, it must’ve looked like a tailgate party, our cockamamie row of costumed Mainers, ranging from age 7 to 77. The ceremony was brief, slightly awkward, succinct yet charged with meaning. First, a few words honoring the victims of the Lewiston tragedy. Then, my daughter passed around a plastic pumpkin filled with small pieces of paper and pens. Each person was to write down one thing they feared (or more), fold the paper then place it in the fire. Sometimes words don’t suffice, so next and after a five second countdown, we harnessed our grief and exorcised it in one giant collective primal scream.
After that, I looked around. The small boy in the Spiderman muscle suit, the ladybug, my son in camouflage, and a little mermaid—I was hopeful that, from this small act of mindfulness, their souls would be a little bit nourished before running off to collect candy. Maybe, just maybe, they would remember this moment, store its meaning in their hearts. Maybe it might have lit a small spark of hope, something for them to carry into the dark night ahead of them.