PROVO — It appears I've been looking at Halloween wrong for years.
Apparently it isn't just homemade costumes and pillowcases full of candy that last 'till Thanksgiving. And forget the spooky noises, creaking doors and terrifying shower scenes.
Now they tell me it's a time of introspective learning and that horror movies have much deeper themes than just ghost versus man. (At least that's what they say — I'm too scared to actually watch any of them.)
Brigham Young University professor Carl Sederholm has been studying the horror genre for years and says there's much more to it than chills and the inability to sleep for weeks.
The humanities professor teaches a class on horror literature and is even co-authoring a book on the subject. So, in honor of the approaching holiday, Sederholm shared his love of Halloween horror at a BYU lecture Thursday night — focusing on the history of haunted houses — complete with movie clips and pictures of famous spooky dwellings to emphasize his points. (I closed my eyes during the clips. Definitely a wimp.)
Halloween is Sederholm's favorite holiday.
"I love this time of year because we haunt our own houses," he said. "We walk around and have a blast. It's so fun to participate in this stuff."
And it's even better when you understand the underlying lessons, he says.
First of all, a haunted house doesn't necessarily have to look like a creaky, dilapidated building with carpet-thick dust. It can be any house — even normal-looking ones.
And the supernatural visitors — the ghosts, the demons or the clowns jumping out of the closet — can be seen by the educated viewer as signs of deeper personal issues that everyone has.
Sederholm said most good horror literature and movies use the gruesome to drop subtle hints about flaws in human nature and problems in popular culture.
"Some people believe that horror is actually a very moral genre, exploring what will happen to you if you get too involved with greed, lust, materialism," Sederholm said. "Any kind of negative vice is usually punished in a horror movie."
So, when ghosts begin encroaching on a house or bodies start rising out of their graves, the informed viewer or reader will not only scream but see the creatures as metaphors intended to draw attention to issues like immorality, greed or the inability to communicate with others. (However, by that time, I'm so petrified, I've missed all hope of an educational opportunity.)
Not Sederholm.
"People (say they) don't like to be scared, but they do. It's a paradoxical type of pleasure," he said. "Now that I'm older, I really like a nice creepy movie that raises the hair on the back of my neck. I also enjoy the challenge of a horror movie — what are they trying to say?"
Too bad I'll never know.
E-mail: sisraelsen@desnews.com