Haunted Shadows

© Photographer: Edd Boyer

We must travel in the direction of our fear.
~ John Berryman

The flickering shadows cast by jack o'lanterns are part of the great fun of Halloween. The gorgeous image above of a local pumpkin carving competition captures the spirit of this wonderful nighttime holiday, where children are suddenly free to explore vast, new spaces in their own neighborhoods. They fan out, intrepid and costumed, finding both treasure and the opportunity for mischief.

As they move through the shadows, there is always the chance that they might encounter a ghost or other supernatural being, or so they might imagine. Whether the shadow might have a substance of its own, they don't consider, which is probably for the best.

But what happens when we brush up against something, or someone, in the dark? Here's a video of a true ghost story, as told by Nathaniel Thomas Powell, who describes the event:



Level-headed Boo's account couldn't be denied - someone met her on the stairs in that darkened house. Unable to depend on her sight, her sense of feeling informed her of another presence.

I think it's the same way when we become aware of the shadow within. Our conscious mind, like our vision, is what we usually rely on, the default method for taking in and processing information. But neither of these methods can help us understand the shadow, a void that we fear, imagining that it contains any number of terrors. But in reality, it holds the parts of ourselves we have rejected and buried. These fragments wait patiently to be acknowledged and brought back into our larger selves as we move, in fits and starts, toward wholeness.

It takes special days like Halloween to remind us of the reality of the shadow. They invite us to explore the dark, holding out an offer of not just tricks and treats, but of a new view of ourselves and reality.