I live near salem, MA, which becomes insane every October. Pepper Mill won’t go near the place, but I love it (aside from the inconvenience of the crowds).
You can’t blame them – witches bring in lots of tourists and their bucks. even if you abhor that sort of thing, you can’t deny that the money and the free publicity give you the opportunity to show off other aspects of the town, so that people who come for the Halloween kitsch get exposed to the Literature of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the History of the Port and City of Salem, and the Real History of the Witchcraft Hysteria. If you’re a New Age Type, it gives you a hook to interest the Mundanes in your brand of philosophy.
so it’s not surprising that they try to drag in other things, or that other places try to cash in on the boom. Salem has half a dozen “witch museums” of various types, along with Dracula’s Castle and the Terror Factory and Horror on the Wharf. But Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote some supernatural stuff (Roger Corman tried to cash in on it with a movie – “Twice Told Tales” – based on stories by Hawthorne nd made during the days of his Edgar Allen Poe films. I think it flopped), so the House of Seven Gables plays that up, and someone tried to open a Poe/Hawthorne haunted house (Poe used to live in Boston, which he hated, but not in Salem). It flopped. Someone has also opened a Lizzy Borden Museum in Salem, but that’s also a stretch – Lizzy lived in Fall River, MA, over an hour south of Salem. She may never have been in Salem in her life.
This got me to thginking that other historical places might want to jazz up their Octobers with some Halloween tie-ins, no matter how far-fetched. Some examples:
Robert Frost Farm Derry NH.
It’s closed by Halloween, but they could open it, put Jack O’Lanterns all over the place, and have a big Green Monster out by the stone wall that surrounds the house. It could be the Something That Doesn’t Love a Wall. Beyond are the woods, Lonely, Dark, and Deep (Nobody will noticed that you changed a “v” to an “n”). Tell people it’s the Darkest Evening of the Year and say, in a creepy voice “Miles to go before you … SLEEP!”
Emily Dickinson House Amherst MA
http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/
They don’t seem to have anything planned for Halloween, either. Maybe this can help:
"Because I could not stop – for DEATH! – He kindly stopped for me.
go into the house and se the opening of The Belle of Amherst and wonder – what did she put in that cake? Afterwards, go outside and see “the swelling of the Ground, …The Cornice in the Ground”.
Walk around the corner and you can barely make out The Thing with feathers. Truly a Wild Night!
Anybody else have ideas about making a historic site Halloween-worthy?