Dear readers,
What is the formula for fear? Over the last two weeks, we’ve witnessed horrors of all sorts—half of a rotting pumpkin left on a doorstep, a matching conspiracy board-themed costume, and two Halloweekends. We recognize fear but still aren’t sure what qualifies it. Perhaps no amount of fake blood or corpse paint can answer our question. We did what we do best, and turned to writing about it. We didn’t solve Halloween, but perhaps that’s what next year is for. We did remember to let ourselves be scared.
And there’s nothing scarier than addressing you, readers, with the hopes that our issue can stir you. And we hope this issue can teach you that we all have a lot to learn from horror—even after the eve of all hallows has passed.
Inside our annual Halloween issue, writers of the Yale Herald explore what can be learned from eeriness, horror, and all that’s in between. Emiliano Cáceres Manzano ’26 profiles the legacy of Dr. Harvey Cushing’s collection of patient portraits and preserved brains at the Yale Medical School Library, and articulates how life and death are preserved there side by side. Daniel Yim ’27 flays out Coralie Fargeat’s fascination for flesh in her sophomore feature The Substance (2024). Julian Raymond ’28 enlivens the voices of the dead during walks in various cemeteries. Finally, for the cover feature of this issue, Avery Lenihan ’27 reflects on decay and devotion at Holy Land USA, exploring the abandoned Catholic theme park’s quiet place in an era of megachurches and Christian tourism.
It’s now November, however, we are left with the remnants of the season. Like Avery, we continue to search for the signposts of devotion in a landscape of fear and ruminate on how fervor decays. Eerieness is what keeps us questioning into November. In The Weird and the Eerie, Mark Fisher writes, “The eerie is often tied up with an idea of agency. Who—or what—caused these ruins, uttered the strange howl?” We hope that this year’s Halloween issue of the Yale Herald continues to move us closer to the many strange howls that surround us, or at the very least, lets us keep asking about them.
Somewhere between these pages, we hope your blood will curdle.
Yours most daringly,
Connor Arakaki and Madelyn Dawson