Posts tagged Halloween
Meet the Spirits at Columbia Cemetery on Oct. 7
Sep 28th
On Sunday, Oct. 7, meet famous Boulder residents from the past, such as Tom Horn, “Rocky Mountain Joe” Sturtevant, Mary Rippon, “Lady of the Evening” Marietta Kingsley and many other Columbia Cemetery “residents,” who will rise from the dead to tell their stories from noon to 5 p.m. at Columbia Cemetery in the annual “Meet the Spirits” event.
Get into the Halloween spirit with Victorian mourners, funereal music, vintage hearses, and a reenactment of a solemn Masonic burial service by members of Columbia Lodge #14.
Ghost hunters will also demonstrate the equipment and techniques used in their paranormal research.
This fun and educational event is sponsored by Historic Boulder, Inc. and the City of Boulder Parks and Recreation Department. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for Historic Boulder members, $5 for children under 16, and are available in advance at Historic Boulder, 1123 Spruce St. in Boulder, or at Columbia Cemetery at Ninth and Pleasant streets on University Hill on the day of the event.
Proceeds benefit Columbia Cemetery and Historic Boulder. Rain/snow date for the event is 12 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 14.
For more information, call 303-444-5192. www.boulderparks-rec.org.
Boris Karloff was my neighbor
Oct 31st
I am reminded that Boris Karloff lived 7 miles from my home in New Milford Connecticut. I never knew that. No one around there knew. This was a small New England town. Everybody knew everything. Certainly, if a big star like Karloff lived there. I only found out because my new girlfriend Slylvia Prichard lived in his house with her parents. Her parents were British. So was Karloff. The Pritchards bought the home shortly after karloffs death in 1969. They had lived there just over a year when I met Sylvia.
It was a long time ago but I still remember it like it was yesterday. Sylvia and I were swimming on a hot June day in 1971. Only her mother was at home. She didn’t want to be left alone at night. Her mom had PTSD from being an English searchlight girl during the London Blitz in the 1940s. She was a bit quirky. Sylvias mother invited me to stay for dinner and to spend the night.
That is when I first heard the story of how Karloff had murdered his wife some 20 years earlier. Karloff was never arrested for the crime, but New Milford police always suspected him. At the time I was a young reporter, so I ventured over to the Police department and got my hands on the police report. It seemed Mrs Karloff had fallen down 30 stairs into the basement one night after an New York theater party. I had never heard of this. It was never in the papers. Never except this death notice from 1961 in the New Milford Times. “Andresca Karoff died accidently at her home on 312 Maple trail”
But the police report said they had found blood on Karloffs clothes.
As the evening wore on Mrs Pritchard revealed that she did not want to be alone because Andrescas Karloffs ghost roamed the house at night. Also, that sometimes Boris was there too. And that the murder was played out over and over. By this time it was nearing midnite. Both Sylvia and her mother were looped from wine we had been drinking.
I was like what the fuck?? Get out of here. Sylvia asured me that it was true but she didn’t care cause she took sleeping meds and never saw anything. I didn’t believe it. I thought they were both crazy.
Mrs. Pritchard saw that i wasn’t on board with yet another New England tale of horror and ghosts. No of course not I don’t believe in ghosts period. I didn’t then and I don’t now. I spent then night without episode.
I was tired and went off to my room in the basement. The guest room at the bottom of the stairs. Then something curious occured. An old car had pulled up to the back of the house when an older women came in through the sliding gloss door. It was Agness Mrs Pritchards sister who was visiting the family from England. She had been to bridge party in town. Not wanting to appear rude I sat at the sun table downstairs and chatted with her.
OMG she kept me up all night talking…… endlessly about her life in Liverpool. It was daybreak when I finally went to bed. agness went to bed in the room next to mine. Syvia and her mother had apparently passed out, because they did not come downstairs and rescue me from this odd duck.
I awoke late the next morining . Sylvia was smashed on ludes for sleeping and I from the old lady. During coffee when I asked about Sylvias aunt….Mrs Pritchard said. “What aunt??”
Your sister I said” Agnes. she kept me awake half the night talking”, Both Mrs Pritchard and Sylvias face drew pale.” I don’t have a sister Jann” When I took them to show them the old Mercedes parked in the back it was gone. The room next to the guest room was not a second guest room at all but an old unused coal furnis room.
Mrs Pritchard insisted ” It was her. It was her. It was Andresca Karloff you spoke with.” Like I said I don’t believe in ghosts. With a couple of lushes like the Pritchard, i have no idea what to believe. But this story is true and the case of Andresca Karloff death is still unsolved. And Agness? I don’t know what to make of her. But i did talk to her . she was as real as that cup of coffee you’re drinking. One other small fact. Andresca Karloff drove a 1961 Mercedes 220. The same car i had seen that June night in 1971.
from a place where innocent girls are murdered for fun
Jann Scott
Boulder Colorado
Halloween: A Celebration of Evil Boulder at center
Oct 29th
Halloween: A Celebration of Evil
Boulder celebrates all forms of evil, torture, murder and spiritual decrepitude this weekend. It is our largest most drunken holiday. Modern celebrations of Halloween may appear on the surface to be quite harmless, but the spiritual implications of dabbling with the spirit world are extremely serious.
What must an unfamiliar observer think of Halloween? Parents dress their children as monsters, vampires, devils, witches and ghosts and encourage them to approach total strangers to ask them for candy and other treats. Homeowners decorate their houses with images of black cats, ghosts, goblins and carved pumpkins and sometimes transform their yards into make-believe graveyards. Adults dress in similar strange and outlandish costumes and go to parties in rooms decorated like dungeons or crypts.
Why are such bizarre practices so popular? Why would anyone celebrate a holiday emphasizing the morbid and macabre? Where did such strange customs originate?
As with Christmas and Easter, we can trace the roots of Halloween far back into the pagan past. The Encyclopedia of Religion says, “Halloween, or Allhallows Eve, is a festival celebrated on 31 October, the evening prior to the Christian Feast of All Saints (All Saints’ Day). Halloween is the name for the eve of Samhain [pronounced sow-en], a celebration marking the beginning of winter as well as the first day of the New Year within the ancient Celtic culture of the British Isles. The time of Samhain consisted of the eve of the feast and the day itself (31 October and 1 November)” (1987, p. 176, “Halloween”).
Besides Halloween, the Celts observed many other holidays including the winter solstice (later transformed into Christmas), spring fertility rites (reborn later as Easter) and May Day as a harvest festival.
Concerning Halloween The Encyclopedia of Religion continues: “On this occasion, it was believed that a gathering of supernatural forces occurred as during no other period of the year. The eve and day of Samhain were characterized as a time when the barriers between the human and supernatural worlds were broken. Otherworldly entities, such as the souls of the dead, were able to visit earthly inhabitants, and humans could take the opportunity to penetrate the domains of the gods and supernatural creatures.
“Fiery tributes and sacrifices of animals, crops, and possibly human beings were made to appease supernatural powers who controlled the fertility of the land … Samhain acknowledged the entire spectrum of nonhuman forces that roamed the earth during the period” (pp. 176-177).
On this holiday “huge bonfires were set on hilltops to frighten away evil spirits … The souls of the dead were supposed to revisit their homes on this day, and the autumnal festival acquired sinister significance, with ghosts, witches, hobgoblins, black cats, fairies, and demons of all kinds said to be roaming about. It was the time to placate the supernatural powers controlling the processes of nature. In addition, Halloween was thought to be the most favourable time for divinations concerning marriage, luck, health, and death. It was the only day on which the help of the devil was invoked for such purposes” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, Micropaedia, Vol. 4, p. 862, “Halloween”).
Ancient practices continued today
As with Christmas and Easter, church leaders adopted this ancient celebration to serve their own purposes. “Samhain remained a popular festival among the Celtic people throughout the christianization of Great Britain. The British church attempted to divert this interest in pagan customs by adding a Christian celebration to the calendar on the same date as Samhain. The Christian festival, the Feast of All Saints, commemorates the known and unknown saints of the Christian religion just as Samhain had acknowledged and paid tribute to the Celtic deities” (The Encyclopedia of Religion, p. 177, “Halloween”).
Several ancient Halloween practices still exist in modern observances. Bobbing for apples was originally a form of divination (fortune telling) to learn of future marriages. The first person to bite an apple was predicted to be the first to marry in the coming year … The jack-o-lantern … represent[ed] a watchman on Halloween night or a man caught between earth and the supernatural world” (Jack Santino, All Around the Year: Holidays & Celebrations in American Life, 1994, p. 26).
Civilized peoples condemn the occult
Although some may dismiss the demonic symbolism and divination associated with Halloween as harmless fun, the Biblical teaching reveals the existence of evil spirits, led by Satan the devil, whom God holds responsible for great suffering and sorrow inflicted on the human race. Revelation:12:9 speaks of “the great dragon … that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan … [who] deceives the whole world …”
The name given him in the Bible, Satan, means adversary or enemy. The apostle John tells us that “the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John:5:19). Satan and the other fallen angels (demons) constantly try to keep humanity spiritually blinded, turning them aside from their awesome destiny as part of the family of God.
As a loving Father, God commands us to avoid things that can harm us. Concerning the spirit world, notice what God says to His people: “Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus:19:31).
In addition to this command to avoid practices that pertain to evil spirits, God warned ancient Israel to avoid any kind of occult practices: “There shall not be found among you anyone who … practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord ” (Deuteronomy:18:10-12).
God has called His people to a different standard. Instead of superstitions and myths, God tells us to look to Him for our blessings, direction and future.
Modern celebrations of Halloween may appear on the surface to be quite harmless, but the spiritual implications of dabbling with the spirit world are extremely serious. Fortune-telling, Ouija boards, astrology, voodoo, clairvoyance, black magic and the like can all be related to occult, satanic forces or the worship of natural phenomena and are forbidden in Scripture.
Jesus Christ tells us that “the first and greatest commandment” is to love our Creator “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew:22:37-38). God alone is the giver of life and all good things. To give recognition to false gods, and to imitate practices that honored them, is unacceptable and idolatrous.
Halloween was the celebration of the beheading of children, carving their skulls and leaving them in front of homes with candles to appease evil spirits. Today this is symbolized by carved out pumpkins.
This is akin to celebrate the Nazi slaughter of Jews during world war II , yet the community does not celebrate that. It sound too horrible, yet Boulder celebrates an equally evil holiday by acting out chilling events on the Pearl Street mall. One has to question. BOULDER SHOULD BE ASHAMED