Halloween’s Magical Role in Our Disenchanted Culture

Kayce Robinson

“These things are real in the simple sense that they happen. What they mean is an entirely different issue. But whatever they mean, I think it is safe to say that the sci-fi and superhero fantasies reflect, refract, and exaggerate these real-world paranormal capacities.“
-Jeff Kripal, Mutants and Mystics

Halloween is an annual tradition for many of those living in the United States; regardless of religious orientation or cultural background, Halloween seems, in some capacity, to find a place within our annual festivities. These festivities surpass our individual life and manifest themselves into the larger culture we live in as well. Major retailers have their Halloween candy and costume sales, pop-up stores show up in abandoned once-department stores, tv networks are running Halloween specials, and our schools, jobs, friends, local restaurants, and bars all seem to be holding costume contests. It permeates seemingly every part of our social lives within the month of October – but why?

Although it may not seem like it, as it has become such a norm within the larger culture, Halloween’s place within our culture is odd. Halloween – a time primarily concerned with the paranormal (things outside of the known norm)- seems to be the odd one out in a culture that is largely disenchanted. German economist and pioneer of the sociology of religion, Max Weber, coined the term, disenchantment, and defined it as a “…mental attitude: namely, the idea that, at least in principle, everything in nature can be explained and calculated.” However, as Egil Asprem, a scholar in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Norway, argues, this view of disenchantment seems to preclude the phenomenon that remains unexplained in the natural world by science. This disenchanted world view became prominent after the rise of western enlightenment, where the battle between faith and science left those to choose one or the other, with little room to exist in between. This worldview has carried on, not just in academia, but in the larger culture as well, making it difficult to speak about the paranormal without not being taken seriously in both personal and professional settings. It is important to note as well that the “paranormal” is anything that lays outside of our normal understanding of how the natural world operates; however, it is entirely plausible – and is most likely the case as recognized by many physicists and others within the sciences – that there are things about the nature of reality that we do not yet, and may never, fully understand.

So, in a disenchanted culture that largely rejects the idea of the paranormal, how then do we find ourselves so entranced by a holiday focused on just that? Although it may not be the norm to talk about or express a belief in the paranormal, it does not mean that experiences labeled as such do not happen or that people do not, on some level, believe in these phenomena on a large scale. According to a recent 2022 article in Forbes’ science section entitled, “New Psychological Research Says Paranormal Experiences Are the Norm, Not the Exception”, because of the consistent amount of paranormal experiences relayed by many people, there is a growing need to recognize these experiences as “real”. Along with this, there is a large body of data spanning decades that points towards “paranormal” experiences being a common reality; data that has baffled many scholars, of whom many continue to study these experiences within their respective fields. If these experiences are so common, but we cannot express them out of fear of social or professional rejection, how then can we safely express these experiences? The answer may lie in our fascination with Halloween.

Perhaps our fascination with Halloween is a physical manifestation of a common secret: at one point or another, the data suggests, most of us have had paranormal experiences. Though this does not necessarily mean that we have had “spooky” experiences – an idea of the paranormal popularized by pop culture media- rather, we have had experiences that lie outside of the norm; experiences that we cannot seem to explain by our current understanding of the natural world. Halloween seems to be an outlet through which we can express that which we have been keeping hidden: a belief in the paranormal.

A similar idea can be found in Jeff Kripal’s book, Mutants & Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and The Paranormal, where he discusses the idea that many works within sci-fi media are a manifestation in fiction of the real-world’s paranormal capacities. Similarly, I argue, Halloween is a manifestation of our knowledge of the real world’s paranormal capacities – whether it be an unconscious or conscious effort to do so. A time in which it is acceptable for us to step out of our normal disenchanted world and into a world in which we can write our own narratives, become our own characters, and express an acknowledgment of a hidden (or not so hidden) realm in which the paranormal exists and affects our lives.

While this is just a brief look at Halloween and a generalized view of how it is celebrated in the larger culture, it is an interesting starting point for thinking about why these traditions that seem to juxtapose the attitude of the larger culture appear and are widely accepted. Perhaps taking time to individually self-reflect on our own experiences with Halloween and the paranormal would be valuable in understanding this cultural phenomenon.