Dear Heraldians,
Boo!
Once upon a midnight dreary, the Herald masthead got together (neither weak nor weary) to create this issue, oh so eerie…
Nothing says daring—the Herald’s favorite word—like Halloween. This issue interrogates the most macabre holiday from all angles. Certain pieces enliven the holiday’s spookiness. Kellyn Kolber interviews a scare actor who stars in a Connecticut haunted house; Meredith Henderson fictionalizes a stigmatized sexual reckoning rich with demonic symbolism; Natalia Ramos writes of an ill-fated fashion show; and Kira Tang reviews body horror at a museum in Busan.
Other writers reflect on Halloween as social tradition. Phoebe Barowitz explores her devolution away from ultra-niche costumes (Katherine Graham, Washington Post CEO 1963 to 1991, anyone?); Melissa Adamantidi assigns Halloweenish archetypes to Sex and the City’s leading ladies with characteristic whimsy; and Anna Siciliano reflects on the alchemy of fear. Not to mention—Irene Kim and Josephine Buruma clutch up with some spooktastic advice on how to navigate the horror-filled holiday.
Fear can come from many sources. In some cases, the scariest parts of our lives come from our own minds. Psychologist Carl Jung theorized that we all have a “shadow”—the part of ourselves we keep repressed in our unconscious. In Daphne du Maurier’s masterful suspense novel Rebecca, the narrator’s own feelings of imposture and unreliability turn the novel bone-chilling. In Northanger Abbey, the precocious protagonist imagines her life as a Gothic novel, leading to dangerous assumptions. All of us have a little unreliable narrator in us. What parts of yourself do you bury under a persona, only for them to haunt your narrative? Do we even know ourselves? We’ll leave you on this cliffhanger as you venture through our haunted house.
Most scaringly,
Hudson and Angel
