All Souls Eve has always been a time for thinking about and playing with the ways in which we at once long for and fear the return of our dead
The Halloween dioramas are annually more disturbing. Gardens near my house have half-buried skeletons emerging from the lawns, some with shreds of tissue still adhering. Suburban gates guarding freshly gravelled driveways are adorned with severed limbs and nailed heads, blood dripping. I saw skulls on a barbecue yesterday, as if the residents were planning human brains for tea.
It’s like a simulation of a particularly horrifying civil war, scenes too violent for newspapers and television.
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