ALL HALLOWS EVE

"And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors. Never felt before…nevermore." — Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

The Halloween spooks that fill us with such fantastic terrors today originated in the myths and practices of ancient Europe. But that doesn't mean the streets of Fort Myers are safe from the ghosts of those Iron Age Celtic tribes. They celebrated the New Year on Oct. 31 with a festival called Samhain, the genesis of modern-day Halloween. And their residual presence might still be abroad this Hallows Eve.

"I believe energy doesn't die, it just keeps going. And sometimes… I think everything is possible," said Brooke Sanzari, 27, owner of Browtopia in downtown Fort Myers and founder of Spooktacular, a Halloween bash that promises to scare the living daylights out of the River District on Friday.

"People like to be scared a little bit," Ms Sanzari said. "It's an adrenalin thing."

Spooktacular is free, with early buzz created by an autumnal cornucopia of ghoulish events, all headlined by a concert by Hollywood starlet Juliette Lewis and her band, The Licks. "I wanted to have a big bash to help all the local businesses," Ms. Sanzari said.

COURTESY PHOTO The Bar Association in downtown Fort Myers has the right spirit this year.

The ancient Celts believed the dead returned to earth on the evening of Oct. 31, during a supernatural interim dividing the warmer days and the cold, dark ones.

It was the tribal society's biggest celebration of the year, a day to prepare for the winter months by stockpiling food and offering sacrificial animals and vegetables to their Gods.

They wore masks to avoid being recognized by ghosts, demons and other spirits that haunted that night. And they left food outside their doors to keep the returning dead from entering.

Catholic missionaries from England began to convert the Celtic people and transform the Samhain festival in the first millennium A.D. In an effort to make the transition to Christianity smoother, Catholic leaders attempted to align their own holidays with Samhain, setting All Saints Day for Nov. 1. All Saints Day was also known as All Hallows, meaning sanctified or holy. And Oct. 31 is All Hallows Eve, or Halloween, on Old English word.

COURTESY PHOTO Mary Ann Muhly finds the right garment for a sorcerer's costume at The Fun Tree, a 10,000- square-foot costume store in Fort Myers.

But the Christian holiday didn't satisfy the natives.

"The powerful symbolism of the traveling dead was too strong, and perhaps too basic to the human psyche, to be satisfied with the new, more abstract Catholic feast honoring saints," wrote Jack Santino, in an essay for The American Folklife Center at The Library of Congress.

To shore up the stubborn beliefs, another Catholic holiday — All Souls Day, to honor the dead — was set for Nov. 2.

Still, the Celtic traditions persisted — that the dead came back on Oct. 31, on All Hallows Eve, as it was; that you should dress in masks to avoid being haunted and should placate dead visitors with food.

Different countries including England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland — all places where original Celtic people lived — found their own meanings and traditions with which to celebrate Halloween. In some ways, it was as much a celebration of young love or marriage as it was of death and darkness. Some of the old Celtic stories that took place around Halloween were about things like triumphant love; in one tale, childhood lovers overcome parental disapproval, turn into swans and fly away.

Robert Burns' famous poem "Hallowe'en" also helped popularize the holiday. It was an account of romantic interludes, games and parties that happened on Halloween among English peasants in the late 1700s.

Halloween also kicked off annual sporting events for some Englishmen of Burns' time. After the seasonal slaughter, "local lads" used the dead animals' dried out bladders for ball games, "inaugurating the beginning of the football season when rival villages, or rival ends of the same village, would try to rough and tumble their way to victory."

Halloween is not linked to Satanism, although Christian missionaries considered Celtic practices pagan. (And in 1982, Rev. Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, called Halloween a "satanic ritual.")

Many incidents, traditions and myths run together to make up the Halloween about to be celebrated in North America. In parts of Europe, a practice called "souling" resembled trick-or-treating. People went door-to-door asking for food in return for prayers. The "soulers" carried a hollowed-out turnip with a candle in it, representing a soul in purgatory. It was also a way for the poor to get food from the wealthy before winter's arrival.

American spooks and youths

At Space 39, an art gallery in downtown Fort Myers, the Dark Art show is a disturbing collection of grotesque, absurd and deranged art. Edgar Allan Poe would be proud. In choosing the works, gallery owner Terry Tincher said, "We were looking for something that wasn't pretty." The Dark Art show will be on display at Space 39 until Nov. 1.

It's easy to imagine the reaction New England Protestants who settled America would have had to the show. They would have shunned the Dark Art works, as they did Halloween. The holiday went underground in North America, scarcely kept alive by Irish and Scottish immigrants who still exchanged scary poetry, wore costumes and partied in the streets on Oct. 31

But by 1890, more than two million Irish men and women lived in North America, then the largest ethnic group. In rural counties and in poor, workingclass neighborhoods of growing cities, the spirit of Halloween was revived.

"Halloween gave a broad range of people the opportunity to reclaim the city streets, however temporarily…" wrote Nicholas Rogers in the book "Halloween: from Pagan Ritual to Party Night," "… and to represent the marginal, the unorthodox, and, above all, the wild energy of youth."

It was also known for being a night when youths pulled pranks and even vandalized neighborhoods. Common incidents included dug-up flower gardens, cars set on fire, trash cans toppled and signs ripped out of the ground. Police and law enforcement often handled such acts with a boys-will-be-boys sense of tolerance, and vandals were prosecuted with a light hand.

At the Chicago World's Fair in 1934, which ended on Oct. 31, "some 300,000 revelers, some of them masked as witches, took complete control of 32 miles of streets and concessions, and 'drank everything in sight except Lake Michigan.'"

Eventually, local governments, newspapers and community groups such as Lions Clubs or churches tried to curb the pranks.

Trick or treat

The idea of giving out candy also had ancient origins, but saying "trickor treat" was introduced around 1939. It's an amusing threat when spoken by children in adorable costumes, and was intended to make Halloween seem less threatening.

"Trick-or-treating sought to marginalize adolescent pranking and to defuse the antagonism inherent in the festive tribute," historian Mr. Rodgers wrote. "Children dressed up and unreflexively requested candies from local neighbors with little sense of what 'tricking' might mean."

The free-spirited Hallows Eve, which seemed to grow and thrive through any century's chaos, was morphing once again into a holiday just as much for adults — and adult themes. At bars, clubs, discotheques and street parties, people openly displayed their inner sexy vampire or fairy, and cross-dressing didn't seem out of place. It was a chance to explore a secret fantasy life for one night, without reproach.

Whatever people decided to "go as," it was easier to cross the line on Halloween.

The holiday could be risqué, campy, perverse, funny and mysterious. It was also a more indulgent, narcissistic holiday, bowing to a great desire for candy, or other personal inclinations over more virtuous celebrations. Halloween might be considered the black sheep, or crazy drunken uncle, of the family of major holidays.

It's now also the second most profitable holiday behind Christmas — a $6.9 billion per year industry.

At The Fun Tree, a 10,000-squarefoot specialty costume shop lurking on out-of-the-way Thompson Street near downtown Fort Myers, Gov. Sarah Palin has been one of the most requested masks this year. But she hasn't been around long enough to get a rubber mug.

"It was too late for manufacturers to make a mask," said owner Donna Faught. But they do have Gov. Palen's glasses.

Ms. Faught helped retired Fort Myers resident Michele Hughes find a sorcerer's outfit. Other costumes across the decades have mirrored mass culture as living pop art: a gas pump, a slice of pizza, a pack of cigarettes or a soup can.

Many still believe Halloween can be a fun, casual way to vent your pent up demons and desires.

"The psychological principle here is that of catharsis," wrote Russell W. Belk in a 1994 essay "Carnival, Control and Corporate Culture in Halloween Celebrations."

And community celebrations and traditions like trick-or-treat are still alive and thriving. The U.S. Department of Commerce said there were an estimated 36 million trick-or-treaters in 2007, ages 5 through 13.

Also, 93 percent of U.S. households considered their neighborhood safe as of 2003; another 78 percent said they wouldn't be afraid to walk alone at night within a mile of their house.

There were 110.3 million occupied housing units in 2007 — all potential spots to stop for candy. There's probably quite a few less this year.

But it's all a part of the sweet and sour passing of time. Just like the frightening moments and the mundane, the good years and the bad, ghosts appear and fade away.

"I think Halloween is a fantasy holiday," said gallery owner Mr. Tincher. "It's more about stepping outside who you are."

Do you believe in ghosts?

Julie Essik, co-founder of Southwest Florida Paranormal Investigations, has studied haunted spots in Lee County for seven years. She investigated the Lee Civic Center, homes and the Buckingham Cemetery, among other places.

"It's a cool little graveyard," she said. "The (other) founder of the group actually saw an apparition out there. She saw a dark figure move from one tree to the next."

Ms. Essik said she has never seen a ghost, but still has an unquenchable curiosity for the supernatural.

"I actually believe in them less than I did when I first started it," she said. "I don't think they aren't there. There's just a lot that's unexplained. It seems like the more I learn, the more questions are raised."

She has used sophisticated sound and image recording equipment to investigate places in downtown Fort Myers such as the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center.

"We go to a spot, set up our equipment and the cameras," she said. "And then it's pretty much just sitting there, looking at the computer screen." She's also investigated a building on Hendry Street in downtown Fort Myers that used to be The Greystone Hotel next to Neo Lounge. Now it's unoccupied.

"We didn't really get much except for a couple of those EVP (electronic voice phenomenon)," she said. "We're still not sure exactly what it was. One of them sounded like a little boy saying 'Here they come.' Another sounded like a man saying 'Get Out.'"

Raimond Aulen, who owns the building that used to be The Greystone Hotel, said it's pretty spooky up there. Ms. Essik agreed.

"The inside of that hotel is so creepy," she said. "It has old sinks and tubs and there are some holes in the floor."

Mr. Aulen, who also owns a bar downtown called The Indigo Room, said he thinks old buildings have a certain undeniable energy.

"A lot more energy went into building an old building," he said. "A lot more hands and a lot more labor, a lot more sweat. Every brick has somebody's hands on it. Some of the energy is transferred into all those things. Energy is the only real thing that goes on forever…

"I think that's the big difference between some of the bricks made in factories. Most of the bricks that are out there on the street have a thumb or handprint in them. Sometimes it's real soft; sometimes it's easy to see.

"I think people are sensitive to it, but they don't understand why. People do have a certain draw to historic buildings — a feeling. Some people are creeped out by the feeling, and other people like it."

Mr. Aulen said an odd object, which moved like a living thing and was about twice the size of a softball, was once caught on a video surveillance camera in The Indigo Room. But the video was later lost.

The object entered the room from a projection screen above the bar that sometimes shows old movies on television.

"It fluttered into the room," Mr. Aulen said. "As it got closer to the camera, it got bigger, so I know it had dimension to it."

Then it went under a table and disappeared.

"It was this wispy looking, weird thing," he said.

Fort Myers Halloween Events

Spooktacular 2008 in downtown Fort Myers River District, Oct. 31, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. Events include, but are not limited to (a small fee may apply to some):

The Gruesome Graveyard in the Patio De Leon, by Roger Mercado and Stacey Tripp, who will be sacrificed at midnight with no mercy.

Creepy Creatures at the Calusa Nature Center: scary snakes, alarming alligators and a bunch of demented zookeepers.

The Haunted Construction Maze. See how scary downtown construction is, hosted by Kraft Construction. All ages.

The Historical Haunted Walking Tour, commencing at 7 p.m and 9 p.m. at the Southwest Florida Museum of History, and sponsored by Southwest Florida Paranormal Investigations (call 321-7430 for reservations).

Harrowing Horse & Carriage Rides, by Charlene's Classic Carriages.

Communication from beyond, psychic readings at The French Connection by Maria at Many Blessings. Upstairs only.

A Haunted House from 7 to 9 p.m. at Venu.

Scare Zones, by Hide-A-Way Sports Bar and Salon Nicholas. Repulsive zombies will get in your way. Come armed with beer money.

Trick or Treat Stations from 7 to 9 p.m., at locals such as Orion Bank, Potomac Bead, April's Eatery and others.

The Vampire Blood Drive, at the Lee Memorial Blood Center; look for the mobile bus. Vampires will suck your blood to replenish the area's blood supply. Treats and prizes for participants.

Juliette and The Licks in concert. Patrick Jerome & the Jam open the show, with the music starting at 8 p.m.

Harry Chapin Food Bank will be accepting donations. Visit harrychapinfoodbank. org for more information.

Purchase a VIP toe tag to sponsor the event. Packages cost $200 and include two passes for the VIP concert viewing area and two passes to the VIP after-party at Spirits of Bacchus. Single sponsorships are $100. All proceeds go to Spooktacular event budget.

Call 337-BROW for more information or visit one of the sponsors: Bennets Fresh Roast Coffee, Browtopia, Cella Molnar & Associates, Delicious Things, H2, Holiday Inn Historic Downtown, Space 39, Spirits of Bacchus and The Cigar Bar.

Ricochet Halloween Cat Country 107.1 Boo Bash, Oct. 31. First prize wins $500 and a pair of concert tickets at the country themed dance club. Second prize — and Sexiest prize — both win $100 and concert tickets. Doors open at 7 p.m. and ladies drink free all night, except shots. Guys pay $3 and ladies $5. Call 277-5700. 3853 Cleveland Ave.

Halloween Costume Party at Cin- Cin, a Mediterranean Bar & Grill, Oct. 31. Judging at 11p.m. with cash prices for best costume and gift certificates for runners up. Call 415-2007. Corner of Cypress Lake Drive and McGregor Boulevard.

Halloween Costume contest on the Murder Mystery Train, Oct. 29-31. Award in each car! Call 275-8487.

Kids Halloween Boo Bash '08, Thursday, Oct. 30, 5 to 9 p.m. at Gulf Coast Town Center. There will be a costume contest and trick or treating.

The Edison's 1st Annual Halloween Masquerade Ball, Oct. 31. Look for $1,000 in cash and prizes. An 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. half-price happy hour on house cocktails, wine and draft beer. "Hightide" performs live and costumes are welcome but not required. Call 936-9348. Overlooking the Fort Myers country club on McGregor Boulevard.

Halloween Parking Lot Party at Reserve Cigar and Wine Bar, Oct. 31 starting at 5 p.m. Heinous…Disturbing… Vile…Disgusting…Gruesome… Awesome. Look for drink specials, Soapy Tuna playing outside and a DJ inside. $10 cover in costume; $15 cover without. Call 210-0300. 10950 Cleveland Ave.

Bistro 41 Annual Halloween Bash, Thursday, Oct. 30. Starts at 9 p.m. at the patio and bar. Live music from The New Vinyl's, wines from National Republic Distributing poured by hot celebrity bartenders. Appetizers by Reiner Drygala, and a midnight costume contest. $25 per person. Call 466- 4141. In the Bell Tower Shops.

Fright Nights at the Haunted House, Oct 23 to 31 at the Lee Civic Center. Gates open at 5 p.m. Ride through goblin filled woods for an additional $2. Children's games and live entertainment. Sponsored by the Lee County FairAssociation. Admission is $8 for adults, $4 for children 6 to 12, 5 and under Free. Call 543-8368. 11831 Bayshore Road.