Step into the eerie nostalgia of Halloween, Horror, & Hearses: A GenX Memoir, where childhood fears, 80s Halloween celebrations, and a lifelong love for the dark side come to life. From watching classic horror movies and telling ghost stories to discovering goth and industrial music, this personal journey explores what it meant to grow up as a horror-loving GenXer. Whether you remember bobbing for apples at school Halloween carnivals, singing The Hearse Song, or embracing goth culture in the 90s, this memoir takes you back to a time when Halloween felt thrillingly spooky.
While life, in general, isn’t always black and white, there are things, however, that you either like or don’t. Horror movies are one of those that many either love or do not. The darker things in life are another and that one may be predicated by our upbringing more than anything else. In time, your feelings about either may wax or wane, depending on how much you have been exposed to or your feelings have changed. But for me, the darker side of things, just like Halloween, is a love that started in my childhood. Today, I would like to share some of my past with you in an article that I call, Halloween, Horror, and Hearses: A GenX Memoir. Join the conversation—share your own memories of horror, hearses, and Halloween in the comments below!
- Horror beginnings, childhood fears
- Halloween memories, GenX style
- Dark childhood, gothic awakening
- Dark journey, gothic love
Horror beginnings, childhood fears
I know that most of my love of horror started with watching the Incredible Hulk as a child and then watching old black and white scary movies on Saturday afternoons. Movies like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein were good introductions to the original movie monsters. From there I became fascinated with Appalachian ghost stories and that led to reading authors like Stephen King, Shirley Jackson and others. This was the beginning of my love affair with horror.
I remember telling ghost stories as a kid, granted they were on a kid level then so not much to bat an eye at. It was a beginning all the same. There were times I remember laying in our room on the top bunk and telling my sister about ghosts and how the barn in the back part of our property was haunted. At this time, I still had lingering fears of death. Part of that falls to the television show, The Facts of Life. There was an episode where Tudy was singing a song that had the lyrics, “the worms come in the worms come out, the worms play piccolo on your snout.” I remember being confused by this song and my mother told me it was the Hearse Song and it was about laying in a coffin and what happens after you die. I was terrified about worms eating my body as I laid there, unable to stop them. That terrified me.
Halloween memories, GenX style
It is not a secret that I am a GenXer, I write about it a lot. Most GenXers come from a time when the world wasn’t so obsessed with being overly safe. It felt like we had space to grow and learn, for ourselves. This is true when it comes to elementary schools celebrating Halloween.
Bethel Elementary was the school I started in. The school was built in an ‘L’ shape, so each long hallway held all the classrooms. Halloween turned the school super special. Every grade would do Halloween decorations, we all would dress up, and there were costume contests. The ultimate part of it was the Halloween Carnival it held every year. Each classroom had a theme for some kind of game or activity. One room did bobbing for apples, and a fishing game. The fishing game involved a sheet being draped across one area of the room and students would stand in front of it with a makeshift fishing pole – a stick with a string. You threw the line over the top of the sheet and someone on the other side would attach a prize to the clothes pin.
Another room held cake walks, a cake walk was where you sort of played musical chairs. For us, there was a large circle on the floor and at random spots were varying size circles that corresponded to a type of cake or pie. If you landed on the spot, you got a cake. Of course, there was a fee for this one. The night would end with us trick or treating the various classrooms.
But the thing about Halloween in school that I loved the most was music class. Our teacher, Mrs. Woods, would go all out. She decorated the entire classroom for halloween. Paper cut out decorations of witches, ghosts, and such. Tissue paper streamers across the walls and ceiling, spiderwebs hung up, and even a jack o’lantern. What made it magical for me were the slightly creepy songs we got to sing. We sang songs like “Have you seen the ghost of Tom,” “Witch’s Brew,” and “Skin and Bones” to name a few. The funny thing is that many people today have never heard these classic songs and since they were rarely pressed by big names, almost all have been lost to memory. There are a few teachers, today, that still teach them. Have you ever heard of them? I made a Spotify playlist that has some of them and you can find that here (insert Spotify link).
Dark childhood, gothic awakening
After elementary school, I went on to middle/high school and there my love of darkness grew more.I had, at my disposal, a library that was tailored to young adult readers and that meant finding books like The Amityville Horror and even more books by Stephen King. I would check out these horror books and spend my free time with my nose buried in them. I loved reading about werewolves, vampires, and all things dark and twisted.
This dark aura I was developing didn’t go unnoticed by peers and school administration. I think the point in which I tipped it further was when I bought a long black duster. If you aren’t familiar with the word, a duster is a trench coat for cowboys. Essentially, it is made out of denim, has a short cape on the shoulders with a high collar for keeping the rain out. Thankfully, this was three years before the Basketball Diaries came out. Had that been a bit closer to my time in high school, I am sure that my guidance counselor would have pulled me aside for more conversations than she already did.
Being poor, being fascinated with the things I was, and how I dressed, my counselor often repeated to me how I would never amount to anything. I wouldn’t be able to go to college, I would never get a degree or become a contributing part of society. To me, to be a part of the society she glammed onto was something I didn’t want to begin with and after being told I couldn’t be a part of it I only spoke out about it. That, in turn, gave her the ability to include me in an anger management group she started. Then, she got the full double barrel of my mother, after finding out she put me in this group without consulting her. This would start my journey into dressing more in the goth fashion bad by college, it became easier.
Dark journey, gothic love
My dark obsession grew. Horror movies became a feature in my life, dark literature the main thing I read, and my music tastes shifted more, also. College allowed me to find and explore the early American industrial scene. Groups like Gravity Kills, Wumpscut, and Velvet Acid Christ became new loves. I also found more goth groups to expand my library with. From college to leaving college, my wardrobe took on an air of cyber goth, tying in my love of SciFi, Cyberpunk, and Goth cultures. To this day, I still love each of those things the same and have been able to explore them even more, thanks to Karl, my boyfriend. He is a HUGE industrial fan and has even introduced me to groups I wasnt aware of. I have to say, my journey here has been intriguing and I have loved it. At 51, I dont plan on changing my music tastes or my dress still, to any degree.
What about you, were there subcultures you belonged to or wanted to belong to that caused issues in your youth or modern day lives? Have there been people that came into your life that helped you expand the love of those subcultures? Let me know in the comments below. Let those comments flow as each of you are a part of GayintheCLE and your words are as important, if not more, than mine.
Gay in the CLE 