The 31 Days of Halloween: Day 11

Halloween is the best time of the year. It's a wonderfully indulgent time, where your inner ghoul is given societal license to be put on display. To celebrate it to it's wicked fullest, the Midnight Cheese will be posting every day in October with excellent ways to enjoy the season. Whether it's horror films, video games, books or activities, check back every day for some new Halloween fun.

Poltergeist

Ghosts. Vengeful spirits left behind to wreak havoc. How do they always know that clown dolls are way more terrifying than floating sheets with eye holes? Is there perhaps some guide book they all receive upon graduation from spooky spirit school? "Here's your diploma from Spooky U. Oh! Don't forget to enter through the children's bedroom closet and possess a clown doll if at all possible. They fucking HATE that." This wouldn't surprise me in the least. What else do the dead have to do with their time anyway?



If they're squarely located in the same realm as the film Poltergeist then it seems they have quite a few cool tricks up their inanimate ghostly sleeves. One of them isn't as useful as it was when the film first came out though; with the advent of 24 hour a day television, I can't remember the last time a ghost tried to screw with me via the static left behind when a channel would sign off for the night. I'll admit, as a child, waking up to the static of a TV left on was terrifying. Thanks Poltergeist.

Children's closets are still ridiculously dangerous. Beyond the Sponge Bob stuff and all the other stupid crap that kids get now, the barrier to Hell is thin and easily traipsed in these locations. Kids know this but we never believe them. Go lock one in their closet and see. I'll wait, go on....They screamed their head off to be let out, didn't they? It's because they know that a gateway to the darkside is in there. Kids aren't stupid (yes they are, just not in this example).

Perhaps the biggest impact Poltergeist has had is on the real estate market. Before the film, you had a scientifically proven one in thirteen chance of purchasing a new development home which was actually located on top of a former graveyard. Now that ratio reads one in three hundred thousand. Do you know why that is? Three words: Craig T. Nelson. That's right, no developer would dare invoke the wrath of the former Coach star and thus find plots of land to build on which weren't previously the haunts of the dead.

What I'm getting at is this: watch Poltergeist. It could very well save your life. (And Craig T. Nelson was the bomb in Phantoms yo)