The history of the supernatural, or how Halloween became a holiday of evil spirits

It is generally accepted that modern Halloween is a legacy of the Celtic harvest festival, which was also a day of remembrance of the dead and the exorcism of ghosts. In some incomprehensible way, in an advanced civilization, a pagan ritual was transformed into an international holiday with an annual budget of a billion dollars?

Historian Lawrence Samuel believes that Halloween is our unofficial holiday of evil spirits, honoring the supernatural. It is the way modern society expresses its fear of, and interest in, what may lie beyond the known world.

“So how did the holiday grow into such a monster? Driven by marketers, Halloween has sailed the ocean of the supernatural for many years, directly challenging the logic and rationalism of modernism,” a brief digression from Lawrence Samuel reveals the strange and complex history of the supernatural in America and the world.

Era of Spiritualism

The supernatural came into vogue shortly after the First World War. Key figures in the movement, such as British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge and Sherlock Holmes’ literary father Sir Conan Doyle, educated Americans about “spiritualism” at Carnegie Hall and other great halls of the country. They traveled all over America, gathering huge audiences.

It was during this period that millions of people lost loved ones in the war or because of the 1918 flu epidemic and eagerly listened to claims that the ghosts of their relatives and friends were very close by. The media and ordinary citizens of different classes stood on both sides of the barricades, forming two camps – believers and non-believers, and the border between them remained unsteady.

Religious leaders also actively joined in, considering the supernatural to be their territory and asserting their rights to it. So everything paranormal was called hostile to organized Christianity and was perceived as a kind of modern version of a false idol, worshiping which, as it is written in the Bible, is a grave sin.

Indeed, if ghosts hover somewhere among the living, then people do not leave the earth after death, and the concept of heaven and hell is being questioned. Interestingly, the scientific community joined the religious leaders in rejecting the supernatural. The reason for both, in fact, was the same. To recognize the existence of spirits and other otherworldly phenomena meant to question some of the postulates of science. In this case, much would have to be revised, and what scientists devoted their careers and lives to would lose all meaning.

Civilization under threat

In the mid-70s, scientists, concerned about the growing popularity of ideas about the supernatural, joined forces in an attempt to stop this wave. In those days, their headache was also gaining momentum astrology and the general love for the book “The Secret Life of Plants”, the authors of which claimed that communication with indoor plants is no less real than relationships with pets – cats and dogs.

It seemed to many skeptics that rational thinking itself was under threat and humanity was sliding into the ignorance of the Middle Ages, discarding five hundred years of scientific progress like a husk. Unusual theories for many were much more interesting than science. The bestseller “Chariots of the Gods: Unsolved Mysteries of the Past” claimed that humanity received technology from aliens, whom they considered to be gods. The terms “ancient astronauts” and “the power of the pyramid” have become commonplace.

Fearing that the dominance of superstitions will bring the end of the civilized world closer, such celebrities as the writer Isaac Asimov, the psychologist and writer Burres Frederick Skinner, the famous astrophysicist Carl Sagan, and the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould took the side of science. They spoke openly, demanding scientific evidence from parapsychologists for a variety of theories and claims about the supernatural. For some critics, however, even “evidence” was not enough.

Lawrence Samuel notes that the idea of ​​the existence of forces that do not obey the laws of nature known to us has long gone beyond the imagination. “Science can answer many questions, but when confronted with death and other existential issues, the scientific worldview is either silent or skeptical,” wrote anthropologist David J. Hess in the preface to New Age Science.

He believed that it was for these reasons that religion and the supernatural remained such powerful forces in modern society. The American writer Mary Roach was not prepared to accept that most scientists would inevitably remain skeptical even when confronted with clear evidence of the paranormal.

“The evidence is relentless, especially when you are trying to prove intangibility,” she wrote in the world-shattering book Life After Death, believing that “the more you try to clarify and unravel everything, the less clear everything becomes.” While the camps of believers and non-believers fought on the topic of otherworldly phenomena, every year they manifested themselves brighter in culture, became more popular and more attractive from a commercial point of view.

Pop culture assimilation

The supernatural has become a part of American culture – provocative at first. Noel Quard’s Broadway hit Blithe Spirit was staged and then filmed, and the TV show Topper appeared in the 50s. The widest audience was attracted by the series “My wife bewitched me”, which came out from the mid-60s.

However, this was only a timid beginning – the topic gained its widest scope in the counterculture with its non-standard values. On the verge of a failure of faith in both science and religion, the supernatural had every chance of becoming super-popular, which it did. Hollywood has delivered Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen to heated audiences, and Stephen King’s enticingly frightening books have appeared.

The floodgates have opened for a new—and highly lucrative—entertainment genre. Well, today, in the post-era of the sensational “X-Files”, it seems that any TV show is somehow devoted to the supernatural, both obviously fictional and “realistic”, mediums, psychics and ghost hunters habitually flash on the screens.

new science

The turning point for the supernatural in the 70s could be seen far beyond pop culture. What caught people’s attention was Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s report that he had a “peak experience” while in space, and Uri Geller’s ability to bend spoons with his mind – despite failing to demonstrate superpowers on air on The Johnny Carson Show .

Finally, thanks in large part to a vote of confidence by anthropologist Margaret Mead, parapsychology was accepted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It was official recognition that the new field of knowledge was legitimate for “big” science. Paranormal phenomena began to be called “anomalies”. There are courses on the paranormal in universities today and there are always young minds interested in the subject.

The status has changed, followed by increased funding in this area, investors have long-term incentives, but they would receive real dividends after the appearance of an actual application for the science of the paranormal. For example, the author of the article Lawrence Samuel ironically, psychic detectives would be a great example of how you can use the power of the supernatural: to find missing people, objects, or even oil or precious stones and metals.

Some businessmen used psychics and astrologers to get more profit, they helped them play the stock market. The once feared ghosts quickly became a tourist attraction, giving rise to the popular “haunted house” entertainment concept. International interest in parapsychology was also growing in the Soviet Union, which is not surprising given the traditional folk belief in the supernatural.

New Age and Supernatural

Like the counterculture, the New Age movement in the 80s proved to be a powerful wave in which the paranormal also rose. It has become even more fashionable. By opening up opportunities to see in new ways, to use intuition and the creative parts of the brain, the supernatural now swam with the current of culture, and not against it.

Such a plausible activity as communication with the dead survived the rebranding, received the name “channeling” (from the English channel – “channel”) and offered millions of disillusioned people a direct channel to connect with a higher power. The fact that the main face of the movement, actress Shirley MacLaine, was smart, attractive, successful and talented, of course, did not harm the cause in the least.

The actress’s penchant for self-irony and sense of humor in stories about her past lives and contact with aliens were as attractive as the sensational news that the conservative first lady of the United States, Nancy Reagan, was fond of astrology. Soon everyone began to make astrological charts, visit psychics and carry crystals in bags, and the “what if it exists” attitude brought more and more sheep into the flock of believers.

In cahoots with the UFO

In the late XNUMXs, however, the skies of the supernatural began to cloud over as paranoia and conspiracy theories arose. After the end of the Cold War, it turned out that the enemy was inside, and it became clear that the United States government is the last institution in the world that can be trusted.

From a harmless phenomenon that they were in the 70s, anomalies and UFOs have become part of a massive government conspiracy, chilling stories of alien abductions have appeared.

Inexhaustible possibilities

And despite all that, the last couple of decades have been fruitful for the supernatural. The “Entertainment Society” of the 90s laid the groundwork for the supernatural to become a mainstay of popular culture. A truly inexhaustible field, with its inherent poignancy, offers a wide range of creative possibilities in a media environment where, over the years, it has become more and more difficult to capture the attention of viewers and readers.

In addition, now attempts to communicate with deceased relatives are fanned with a therapeutic aura. Of course, the development of the online universe has greatly expanded the options for those with an interest in the supernatural. There are hundreds of subcultures on the Internet dedicated to different aspects of it. Despite the constant progress in science and technology, the new century and the new millennium are still very friendly towards the paranormal.

Therefore, according to Lawrence Samuel, we have no reason to believe that Halloween will ever disappear like a ghost.