A Halloween Memory

I'm currently reading a multidisciplinary study of demonic possession (Patrick McNamara) and being reintroduced to Freud, Oedipus, guilt-driven behavior, etc.

Many Halloween eves ago, I stayed up with Dad to watch the Late Great Horror Show (at that time hosted by W-JET radio disk jockey Jim Cook in Erie, PA), and they were playing the original 1941 Wolf Man with Lon Chaney and Claude Rains.

I'd seen the movie many times before, it was a staple of late-night Halloween TV, but I hadn't realized until I was watching it with Dad that night, that the Wolf Man's father is the one who is forced to kill him. I think I was just old enough to understand the emotional punch that would have had on an audience, and only now wonder at the layers that Freud might have peeled back.

Here's a few minutes with radio DJ Jim Cook on TV, in the days before Vee-Jays, when seeing a local radio celebrity was an event…

Late Great Horror Show 1981-1988 WJET-TV 24 with Jim Cook

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Possessed Regan writhes before the Assyro-Babylonian god Pazuzu in The Exorcist.

BTW, regarding demon possession, I'm reminded again that there is always a scientific explanation for everything we think, do, or see. That's because we have no choice but to frame what we think, do, or see in terms of what we think, do, or see.

I believe there are a few rare exceptions in exceptional people, and though we might reason to it, we can't prove it.

[2014-10-29: Just read a section in McNamara regarding the real events behind The Exorcist, and he admits that he has no explanation for paranormal phenomena that often accompany possessions and exorcisms. That doesn't mean there aren't any, but that his thesis doesn't account for them. Good science is honest that way. It doesn't need to say any more than that.]

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Did you know there is a real sixth sense? We can detect heat without touching hot objects. This is a real sense and distinct from the other five. I learned this in a lecture, but can't recall which one.

[2014-10-25]

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