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EDITORIAL

JOE MCCARTHY - SUBEDITORJoe is a 21-year-old student from Bantry. He thinks every musician is whining and he occasionally writes about movies.

TIM VAN WIJNAARDEN - PRODUCTION EDITOR AND LAYOUT GUY 23 years old, Dutch and armed with a pint of Guinness. Enjoys the occasional video game.

MICHAEL OLNEY - SUBEDITOR Hopeless drinker, drivel writer and failing musician, Michael can be found hunched over a pint, buzzing with misguided optimism in one of Cork’s many murky bars.

AMANDA COWHIG - PICTURE EDITOR Twenty year old West Corkonian suffering from a Tumblr addiction. Also, enjoys taking the odd picture or two.

Welcome to The Lantern’s Samhain issue, where we celebrate all things seasonal and welcome the return of the spectacular Dragon of Shandon parade. Hallowe’en in Cork will certainly be all the better for a three-day Dragon of Shandon festival, and The Lantern is proud to include a free pull-out programme for the festival inside each copy of the magazine. Our articles are the work of Griffi th College Cork’s journalism students. We’re proud to feature writing from so much exciting emerging talent, but we also welcome our guest writers: Cork poet Liz O’Donoghue has contributed a suitably themed poem, and our children’s page features a story from renowned local storyteller and author Eddie Lenihan. Hallowe’en may be a time to celebrate our darker side, but it’s also an excuse for a bloody (excuse the pun) good party. So get dressed up, get revelling, and whoop it up with the ghosts and ghouls. It’s only longer the nights are getting!

-ELLIE O’BYRNE - EDITOR Freelance journalist and perpetual student based in Cork. Twitter: @ellieobyrne1

Contributors

Amidst howls and blood-curdling shrieks, an enormous, translucent, glistening form emerges from an ancient stone archway. Huge drums pound as hordes of bloodied minions prostrate themselves before the beast in awe. It emerges fully into the night, peering ominously around at the assembled throngs of onlookers: the Dragon is back.

Cork Community Art Link, or Artlink as they are often known, initiated the first Dragon of Shandon Samhain Parade in 2006. It’s Munster’s biggest night-time parade and it celebrates the local heritage of Cork’s historic Shandon quarter. Featuring a 35-ft skeletal dragon and a whole host of other spooky creations, from the ghosts of mermaids to a spectral horse,

it has become a popular feature of Halloween in Cork.

As their name suggests, Cork Com-munity Art Link are a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of reaching out to communities and community groups through artistic projects.

Their board members, long-standing volunteers and administrative staff are all firm believers in the therapeutic and unifying powers of creativity. The Dragon of Shandon has been a flagship project for them, involving hundreds of collaborators from a broad base of community groups and educational projects.

After a break last year, the parade is back and this time the festivities will last for three days, involving over 500

volunteers and showcasing the creative work of groups as diverse as Cope Foundation, Enable Ireland, National Learning Network, Cathedral Cairde Youth Club, Playground of Dreams, Cork Swing Dance Collective and Cork Circus Factory.

This year’s Dragon of Shandon Fes-tival, which runs from the 29th-31st of October, is so much more than a parade. A big top will be erected in St Anne’s Park to hold festival events, which range from circus workshops for children to screenings of short films from the Dare Media Underground festival.

Cork Butter Exchange Brass and Reed Band, known locally as The Buttera, will perform at the festival launch. Swing dancing classes for adults and

Year of the dragon

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After a year’s absence, the Dragon of Shandon parade is back with a three-day Halloween festival, writes Ellie O’Byrne

The Dragon of Shandon Festival runs from 29-31 October in Shandon, Cork city. (Source: www.dragonofshandon.com)

fire hows will be complimented by tra-ditional Halloween games for children in the Butter exchange gardens.

Artlink set up a fundraising team and launched a crowd-funding campaign on Fund:It to finance the extended programme of events this year. They successfully met their target of €3,000. Aoife Potter Cogan, Artlink’s Managing Co-ordinator, regards the experience of crowd-funding as very positive.

“It was very successful, we got huge support,” she said. “Not only was it suc-cessful in terms of our budget, but also in terms of morale. For those working on the project it was great to see so much support from funders.”

William Frode de la Foret, Artlink’s artistic director, has been putting in very long hours in the lead up to the festival. “I am at twelve to fifteen hours per day. People are working very hard, just like every year.”

Having worked for Artlink for 21 years, he still derives a huge sense of satisfaction out of these collaborative projects. “Everything is satisfying,” he said. “But it’s the cherry on the cake, when you finish and you go on to the street with the thing you’ve made.

Working on it with people is what I really like, so it’s about the process, and working with all the different people who come in to the workshop. Plenty of people are working here, young people, old people, people with disabilities, people in all areas of life.”

This year, Artlink is facilitating other groups to provide the entertainment, the ideas, the design and the perfor-mances for the festival and are focus-sing their own efforts on the parade itself. “It’s very special for Cork because it’s one of the only street spectacles in Cork that takes place through com-munity engagement,” Aoife said. “A

huge number of groups take part every year and come back to participate the following year, it’s very much etched on their calendar.”

The collaborative nature of the build has its challenges and requires flexibil-ity from the design stage right the way through to the performances and street theatre. “The way we work here, no-body can claim that one piece belongs to them. Somebody starts something but somebody else can finish it; it

moves all the time. It belongs to everybody,” William said. “A lot of the work is developed organically because we never have the same team. There’s always new people coming every day, or people who don’t return because we work with people who are sometimes a bit fragile and they can’t come back for one reason or another so you need all the time to adapt; I think that’s the word, really.”

“It’s all very well to have a good idea or a good design but we need to adapt it to the street. It’s not a sculpture that you keep in a vacuum; it’s real life. We depend on the performer and we don’t know when we start who is going to work around what and who is going to move those props on the street so we need to be prepared to modify them. Acrobats for example who will come on set and say wow we could develop that a lot more by doing this or this. So it’s all collaborative.”

The parade, on Halloween night, is an atmospheric and family-friendly way to finish up the evening’s trick-or-treating, or for adults, a great way to get geared up for a night out. Glowing sculptures fill the river, and the parade makes its way along the quays, into Shandon and finishes in the plaza outside the Firkin Crane, where dancers and other performers stage a spectacular finale to the event.

“It’ll all culminate in the parade,” Aoife said. “As a community event, it’s very special for Cork because it’s one of the only street spectacles in Cork that takes place through community engage-ment. Thousands come to see it. It’s a fantastic event and the atmosphere is extraordinary.”

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Skeletal monsters swimming in the Lee for the Dragon of Shandon Festival. (Source: www.dragonofshandon.com)

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v e g e t a r i a n r e s t a u r a n tw h o l e f o o d s h o p s

24 SULLIVANS QUAY, CORKAlso at: Main Street, Ballincollig& Main Street, Carrigaline, Co. Cork

vegetarian restaurant | wholefood shops | health foods | organic produce | in-house bakeryscrumptious salads | splendiferous daily specials | art exhibitions | delightful desserts

special diets | rooms for hire...

021 4317026 info@quaycoop.comwww.quaycoop.com

Co-op A5 landscape 20/10/2014 09:50 Page 1

The Nightmare Realm, located on Albert Quay, gives the people of Cork a unique experience in a fabricated world that could be described as a horror film brought to life. I decided to brave The Nightmare Realm by dragging two of my more courageous friends along with me.

We entered a queue inside, where we were joined by clowns Shiver and Badger. They featured on The Nightmare Realm’s promotional video, where they jumped out of a treasure chest-like box, terrifying unsuspecting passers-by and chasing them down Grand Parade.

Shiver and Badger had pointed prosthetic chins and were dressed head to toe in leather. The two clowns working the crowd and ferocious banging the double doors to the left of us, along with the noise of a roaring chainsaw, were not enough to make me nervous. At this stage, my main concern was not peeing myself from fright once we got inside.

After what seemed like an eternity, the crowd shuffled through to the next room. This room was lit by UV lights and had a TV in it, which I didn’t pay too much attention to. I was too busy reading the questions written on the walls: “Will they touch me?” “Will they kill me?” “Will you get lost?” “Yes!” was

written next to each question. We got to the door that leads to

the first floor. At one point the security man joked that only one person at a time was allowed through TNR as part of “Monday Madness”. He got a kick out of watching our already anxious faces turn to absolute horror as we contemplated navigating the build-ing without the comfort of being in a group.

We made our way to the first floor…now I was terrified! It began as a fairly well-lit room, with no-one else around, but quickly turned into a weaving, dark corridor where it was difficult to tell where the next turn was, or when somebody was going to pop out and scare us next. Various different char-acters jumped out of the dark corners, but there was nothing too frightening about it. We made it through fine and laughed as we exited the first floor. “Is that it?” we joked to the security guard, completely oblivious to the fact that we still had two more floors to go through.

The second and third floors were darker and more intense than the first.

Each room had its own story, and for fear of spoiling the experience I won’t go into too much detail about exactly what horrors you’re likely to encounter in this years’ production. A predictable cast of evil doctors, creepy clowns and demons trapped in cages were interspersed with more genuinely frightening and disturbing imagery.

Some of the actors would follow you, or run right up to your face, whispering intimidating things in your ear. The Nightmare Realm isn’t for the faint hearted. Colleen, who visited TNR last year, had a much worse expe-rience than we did: “I felt trapped, and was cornered by something scary. I don’t even remember what it was. I’ve blocked it out.” Although, to be fair, she’s known for being easily scared.

You won’t die in Cork’s most terri-fying venue, but you are guaranteed to have a laugh and let out plenty of screams. For those who don’t mind a good scare, the adrenaline rush is perfect to put anyone in the Halloween mood.

Nightmare on Realm Street

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The clowns are actors, the sets are fake, but the screams are quite real, as Amanda Cowhig discovered on a visit to Cork’s Nightmare Realm.

The stuff of nightmares: Scenes from the Nightmare Realm in Cork city. (Source: The Nightmare Realm)

v e g e t a r i a n r e s t a u r a n tw h o l e f o o d s h o p s

24 SULLIVANS QUAY, CORKAlso at: Main Street, Ballincollig& Main Street, Carrigaline, Co. Cork

vegetarian restaurant | wholefood shops | health foods | organic produce | in-house bakeryscrumptious salads | splendiferous daily specials | art exhibitions | delightful desserts

special diets | rooms for hire...

021 4317026 info@quaycoop.comwww.quaycoop.com

Co-op A5 landscape 20/10/2014 09:50 Page 1

As the weather gets colder in com-ing months, our thoughts go out to the less privileged souls that don’t have the shelter that should be a basic human right.

Figures from a recent report from charity group Focus Ireland show that the charity supported a total of 9,237 people this year compared to 7,819 people last year. To combat the over-whelming rise in the risk of homeless-ness in Ireland, it is essential to provide more affordable homes for those who cannot compete with the price of high-in-demand housing in Ireland.

In the six years since the econom-ic crash, the number of homes being built has fallen to its lowest point in 40 years. There are 33,225 empty units in 2,846 ghost estates, and the Government has taken out long-term leases on 2,500 units for social housing. Developers have been buying empty estates at knockdown prices at auc-tion, in anticipation of future need of family homes in the years to come. The increased shortage of housing stock in Ireland has increased the demand for these houses to a huge degree, causing the prices of available houses in Dublin to skyrocket. This means that more and more people are at risk of losing their

homes. Focus Ireland has said that the amount of people calling in for advice and information because they are at risk of becoming homeless has risen by 43%.

Father Peter McVerry has been working for over 30 years to tackle homelessness, drug abuse and social disadvantage. Since its inception in 1983, the ‘Peter McVerry Trust’ has sup-ported thousands of young people on the margins of Irish society. I contacted Peter and asked him how he thought

the budget would affect the problem of homelessness and he was disappointed that there was no move to increase rent supplement levels and no mea-sures to control rent increases. “Well, the state has done nothing in the bud-get to prevent the problem. The rents are going up and the rent supplements are staying static, so people simply cannot afford the increased rents. The Government has refused to put up rent controls which would prevent arbitrary rent increases.” How does he see the 8

Is Ireland FACING a Housing crisis?

Father Peter McVerry has worked with vulnerable young people in Dublin for the last 40 years. (source: www.pmvtrust.ie)

Homelessness in Ireland has reached crisis proportions. Joe McCarthy asks if the Irish government has done enough to tackle the problem

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state of homelessness during the com-ing year? His answer was not uplifting. People looking for accommodation will face a restriction in the amount of money they can be loaned to purchase a house or apartment in a move that Peter thinks will force people to stay in the rental sector. “The problem is going to continue and it going to get worse because the central bank has brought out new restrictions on mortgage lending which is going to compel a lot of people to stay or get accommodation in the private rental sector so they’re not going to able to get a mortgage anymore.”

I finally asked Peter whether or not he thought that the Government had addressed the homelessness problem adequately in the Budget 2015 and he had welcomed the details of increased funding for social housing and home-less services. “They have allocated considerable funding in the budget to the provision of new social housing and the state has said that will produce 10,000 new social housing units by 2018. Now that’s probably the most they can do in the current economic climate but when you consider there are still 90,000 people on the social housing list, the last person on the

current social housing list would finally be offered accommodation in 2051”. So, that person will just have to wait 35 years to get suitable accommodation, provided that no one is added to the social housing list.

The Government is only addressing half the problem of people losing their homes. They are trying to get people off the streets and off the social hous-ing waiting lists but are doing nothing to stop the flow of homelessness and people getting onto the social hous-ing waiting lists. However, anything that can get people who are living on the street at the moment into accom-modation, and increase the social housing stock is always beneficial. An announcement in the Budget was that of a total 10,000 new social housing units could be available by 2018, which is very welcome and according to Peter that probably is the most the state can do at the moment due to the damaged economy. These commitments are wel-come but the state fails to address the major cause of homelessness, which is the increase in the price of rents in the private rental market. People are unable to meet the prices of the increasing rents and the rent allowance has remained static causing people

to be evicted from their homes. Many organisations working with homeless people to get them off the streets like Focus Ireland and the Samaritans have been collectively calling for an increase in the rent allowance, and for the Government to introduce measures to control the rent to prevent landlords from needlessly increasing the rents.

The Samaritans provide a 24 hour helpline to people dealing with stress, loneliness and other things people can’t cope with. I sat down with Cindy O’Shea, who is the Director of the Cork Samaritans. Cindy has been working with the Samaritans for seven years. I asked Cindy about the reported 43% rise in the amount of people calling into Focus Ireland and whether or not her branch of the Samaritans have had a similar jump in callers. “In general, we have experienced a huge 60% increase in the amount of people calling during this period of the year compared to last year.” After that, we spoke about the nature of the calls and if people have been worried about losing their homes. “There have been more people calling in to our branch looking for accom-modation and places to stay the night to avoid sleeping rough.” For many, renting has become less and less af-fordable, and the risk of dispossession has increased. The latest Daft.ie House Price Report shows a 14% annual rise in asking prices nationally, led in particular by Dublin, but with Leinster and the urban centres of Cork and Galway also showing significant prices increases. The same trend is evident from Property Price Register transac-tions, where analysis, controlling for location, size and type of the unit, shows a 17% annual rise, again driven by Dublin and Leinster.

The Budget 2015 is an important first step in the state’s effort to help the suffering people living on the street with the investment in social housing. The people that are sleeping rough on the street become over-reliant on the state or private charities for support and accommodation. Ireland’s social problems such as alcoholism and drug abuse are contributory factors to the homeless problem and it is at risk of becoming a national crisis, due to the shortage of housing stock.

Thousands of people sleep rough on the streets of Ireland every night.(source: fray20@en.wikipedia)

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In the lead-up to Halloween, shops are filled with costumes dedicated to adult women and it is increasingly difficult to find costumes that aren’t attempting to be sexy or revealing. Sexualizing women has quickly become the seasonal norm; even the standard Halloween witch outfit has been given a makeover and now includes a plunging neckline and fishnet stockings.

It’s not only adults who are affected by gender stereotyping in their choice of costumes. In Cork shops, a clear divide is visible in children’s costumes. While all the costumes for little boys are doctors, firemen and pirates, the little girls are given options like kitten, bumble -bee and 12 different kinds of

princess. Why should a little girl not be encouraged to dress up as a lifesaving firewoman?

Once more, how a woman looks is pushed to the forefront. New findings from the 2014 British Social Attitudes survey reveal that only 63% of women aged 18-34 and 57% of women aged 35-49 are satisfied with their appear-ance. The survey also revealed that almost 10 million women in the UK “feel depressed” because of the way they look.

If anything, dressing up for Hal-loween only adds to the pressure of looking like the model on the costume packaging and can erode the confi-dence of women.

How do Cork women feel about the trend towards provocative outfits? “Some people seem really confident in those outfits, but others act uncomfort-able because people stare or whistle at them,” Eva, a 23-year-old student from Cork said. “It’s kind of just what you’re meant to do, it’s just the way it is,” said another interviewee.

“I think being creative is more im-portant than what body part you do or don’t reveal. That’s a personal choice,” said Clare, a 33-year-old hairdresser.

Halloween is controversial but it is important to remember that you should feel comfortable no matter what you wear. Do what you want yourself, not what others expect of you.

Halloween: less about sweets and more about eye candy?The pressure on women to wear revealing Halloween costumes is a worrying trend, writes Breda O’Connell.

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Are you afraid of the dark? Or is it just one of a long list of irrational fears you choose to ignore?

We are all afraid of something. It could be flying, public speaking or spiders. We tell ourselves that there is nothing to be afraid of and we spend a large part of our lives either denying these fears or fighting them, but do we understand them?

Anxieties and phobias manifest themselves in many ways and in most cases the victims are told that there is nothing to fear. So now, rather than just being afraid, the sufferer is both afraid and embarrassed by their own fear. I’m here to tell you that it’s okay to be scared, and often more justified than you might think.

Fear is a very necessary bodily func-tion and plays a huge role in the sur-vival of our species, and when it comes to survival, one can’t be too careful.

The word “irrational” is thrown around a lot when talking about fears, phobias and anxieties, but is it the right word? Surely something as primitive and unlearned as fear cannot exist in the same realm as reason, or lack thereof. It exists somewhere else, somewhere deep in our genetic makeup; some-where untouched by linguistic defini-tion. So I say be afraid. I say shake and shiver and scream for to be terrified is not to be irrational, but human.

Fear of flyingOne of the most common fears in

modern society is the fear of flying. We are constantly bombarded with statistics and facts and told that this is an irrational fear and that it’s wrong to be afraid. But why all this fear then? Where is it coming from? Some deep,

primal instinct tells us that we are not supposed to fly. It’s not natural. We don’t belong up there.

Michael Comyn is the founder of the Fearless Flying Organisation, an Irish organisation set up to help people to overcome their fear of flying. Michael

The Fear Factor

Fear of flying is one of the most common fears.

Never mind the shrinks, fear is a natural, rational human response to real threats in your environment – and more often than not, it is justified, argues Mike Olney.

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has been working with people suffering from flying anxiety since 2009 and has helped over 1,400 people

According to Michael, one in four Irish people have some degree of fear towards flying. This is a huge portion of the population considering how commonplace flying has become in recent years.

“Fear of flying is increasing year by year. The main reason is not related to aviation safety, which is exceptional. You have a one in 60 million chance of being in an air accident and a one in 23,000 chance of being in a car acci-dent. One of the main reasons people fear flying is the actual process of flying, the noises, the motion and the handing over of control to strangers. Normal relaxation techniques are not available to overcome this panic when so many senses are being triggered,” he explained.

“People develop a fear of flying for a number of reasons. Most of the people we see developed the fear over a period of time and would once have flown quite happily. We have only met three people since 2009 who had never flown,” he said.

“The reasons can range from the birth of a new baby to flying with a hangover from a stag or hen party to flying in turbulence and believing that you are in danger, when you are not. If you experience an unusual situation you cannot explain, your brain will at-tempt to avoid that situation again and you will develop an anxiety,” he said.

Now we’re getting somewhere! The lack of control plays a major part in our anxiety levels, and why wouldn’t it? Sure, the chances of being in a car ac-cident are far greater, but the chances of surviving said accident are also far greater than those of surviving an air accident.

Glossophobia: fear of public

speakingGlossophobia is the fear of public

speaking. Very few people can speak in public without some level of anxiety. It is something people battle with on a daily basis, but our bodies aren’t in danger so why the panic? American

comedian Gerry Seinfeld once said that for most people, the fear of public speaking outweighs the fear of death: “This means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy,” he said. Could it be the fear of ridicule and subsequent social ostra-cism? We are social beings after all, and what could be scarier than being banished from the realm of human contact and acceptance? It could even mean, on an instinctual level, the end of our lineage and ultimately the extinction of the human race. The next speech you make could wipe us all out! Not such so irrational now is it?

Nyctophobia: fear of the dark

Earlier on I mentioned being afraid of the dark or, Nyctophobia. So dark-ness itself can’t hurt you, but what about the lack of light? Vitamin D, a vitamin produced in humans when our skin is exposed to the sun, plays a much bigger part in our immune system than once believed. A lack of exposure to sunlight can result in increased susceptibility to cancer, diabetes, heart attack and multiple sclerosis. As well as all of this, there is a condition known as SAD (season-al affective disorder), which causes sufferers to become moody and de-pressed during the gloomier seasons of the year during which direct sun light is scarce. It would seem that darkness poses a very real threat, maybe not for reasons you may have expected, but valid reasons none the less.

Arachnophobia: fear of spidersOne of the most common specific

phobias in the world is arachnophobia: the fear of spiders and other arachnids. A phobia of this nature is quite under-standable in countries like Australia and America, who are populated with such poisonous nasties as the Sydney Fun-nel-Web and the infamous Black Widow respectively. But what about countries that hold almost no risk at all? Why

are we, as a species, so terrified of these mostly harmless creatures? It is thought that mankind’s fear of spiders comes from our ancestors. It has be-come a part of our DNA through gen-erations of survivors who had their wits about them and learned to avoid these potentially deadly creatures in the wild. So now, 200,000 years later, a large portion of us still erupt in terror-driven freak outs whenever we encounter the eight-legged animals, regardless of any real danger.

If you live in Ireland and are under the impression that you are safe from poisonous spiders, you are wrong. Ireland now has a sizeable population of a spider known as the False Widow. They are thought to have come from the Canary Islands to Britain around 100 years ago and have since spread to Ireland, with large numbers of them living in the Dublin area. They are distant cousins of the aforementioned American Black Widow and, although not as harmful, can be dangerous un-der certain circumstances. One young man was hospitalized in Dublin having been bitten three times while sitting on his couch at home. He was adminis-tered two shots of adrenaline when he went into cardiac arrest and was told that, had he not been in good physical condition, he would almost certainly have died.

Even Ireland has poisonous spiders (source: fir2000@commons. wikimedia.orgP

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The average Irish person will spend about €40 euros on Halloween this year and we lag only behind the US in terms of Halloween splash-outs. Dutch-man and Halloween novice Tim Van Wijngaarden reports.

When I asked my Irish friends about their memories of Halloween, they recalled years of donning bin bags – surely the most multifunctional costume ever - and eating monkey nuts until you couldn’t possibly stand the sight of them anymore.

As someone born in a country where Halloween isn’t celebrated at all, those nostalgic recollections didn’t really tally with the image I had of Halloween. Five years ago when I first arrived in Ireland, my mind was filled with the zaniest Hollywood creations. I imag-ined neighbourhoods full of dressed up kids, all of them in the most detailed and awesome costumes. I envisioned the doorbell would be red-hot and the trick-or-treaters would be at the door all night, yet I only saw a single little witch appear at my door that night.

Halloween has always been a fun time of year in Ireland, but it seems to have changed recently. Halloween started off as Samhain, a Pagan fes-tival, the biggest and most significant of the Celtic holidays. Samhain was

a day on which the ghosts of those that had passed away in the previous year would pass on to the otherworld. Halloween may have originally been an Irish invention, but the Americans have taken the ball and are now running with it, taking the precious Pagan tradition and putting its hype machine behind it. Over time this tradition made its way to America by way of the many Irish immigrants where the original pa-gan traditions expanded into the com-munity driven festival we know now.

Nowadays, fancy dress shops do a roaring trade, with people going to incredible efforts with their cos-tumes. If you were looking to get into a club wearing your old bed sheet as a fantastic ghost costume, you’ve got another thing coming. It’s all about the cool factor and picking up the sweetest costume you can find. It seems to be no longer about coming up with a cool idea and making it yourself, but rather about how much money you’re willing to spend.

Even in the times of a weak econ-

omy, the Irish still seem to be find-ingmoney to go all out this year for a lavish Halloween. According to research conducted by WebLoyalty, Irish spend-ing for Halloween is expected to go up by 5.7% this year, a spending of an estimated €41 million. According to the research, 75% of Irish consumers take part in Halloween in some way, be it trick or treating, dressing up, or deco-rating the house. Furthermore the aver-age Irish person will spend about €40 euros on Halloween this year, which is almost two-thirds of what the average American spends on Halloween; the Irish may not quite be on a par with

Americans when it comes to cele-brating all things dark and wicked just yet, but they’re creeping up on them.

The times of going door-to-door for some monkey nuts and apples is gone, it’s all about the sweets and treats nowadays as “Trick or Treat” are the three words any homeowner will hear an endless amount of times on Hallow-een. Trick-or-Treating is a tradition that started in North America in the 1940s, where children go from door-to-door

Dutch Courage

Irish tradition like bobbing for apples were a source of great amusement for Halloween novice Tim Van Wijngaarden. (source:Amicon@commons.wikimedia.org)

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to ask for treats, which is too prevent them from “tricking” your house. It is now a feast of decorating your house, carving crazy amounts of pumpkins, watching the latest slasher-flick in cinemas, and of course scaring children who come to your door looking for sweets.

Sadly, it’s not only innocent pranks causing frights on Halloween. Vandal-ism is ruining the ancient feast day, according to natives of Cork. “I want to be at home well before it gets dark, I don’t want to get eggs thrown at me from a car,” one woman said. “It used to be a great evening out for the kids,

they could dress up in an old sheet and get a few treats, but there’s no way I’m allowing my kids out after dark.”

“It used to be fun for the children, but now it’s all about the students isn’t it?” another woman added. “You see all the shops are packed with the students buying the costumes. They all spend Halloween going out, dressed up in all kinds of mad outfits. It’s not a bad thing, but it just kind of changed didn’t it?”

I can’t help but smile when I see the shop windows stacked with Jack-o’-Lanterns, houses decked out in ghoulish little decorations and the some of the cleverest costumes I’ve ever laid my eyes on. The Irish clearly love their Halloween, and do not mind spending some money on it. When I look at Cork’s freaky vibe, I just can’t help getting the fright-fever myself.

Take a sweet at your own risk! (Source: toyah@commons.wikimedia.org)

Irish spending for Halloween is expected to go up by 5.7 percent this year, a spending of an estimated 41 million Euros

KIDS PAGESHave you ever wondered if the tales of Banshees are true or not? Eddie Lenihan is a folklorist and writer, and the following tale comes from a collection of stories that people all over Ireland have told him.

A friend o’ mine, an uncle o’ his was dying. At that time they’d be kept at home till they’d die. ‘Twas very seldom people were put into hospital. And the better-off families’d have a nurse minding ‘em. So, this family had a nurse for this old man, but they used to take turns over a couple o’ weeks to stay up with him; they weren’t expecting him to last too long.

My friend knew, from what experience he had, that the old man wouldn’t last the night. They came home sometime that morning after being up all night, and they were to go back again that evening. ‘Twas a pony and trap they had, himself and his sister, and they hit away over about nine o’clock – a noble summer’s evening. And just as he was coming out his own gate, he met an old man who had worked with the other family all his life. He came over to him and asked, “How’s the old fellow?”

“Ah,” says he, “we’re not expecting him to put in the night.”

So, they were talking away and the old man asked him, “Are you stopping by for the night?”

“Ah, we are,” says he. “We’re taking our turns looking after him.”

“Well,” he says, “if he’s going to die tonight, don’t be surprised at anything that happens over there.”

This friend o’ mine was a young man at the time and he paid no great heed.

He went over, and the old man was dying. The nurse and the family were above with him, saying the rosary. He stayed below in the kitchen with one o’ the work-men, a man that was there all his life.

And he told me that he saw the latch on the back door lifting. The door opened. He sat up, and he was expecting someone to walk in out o’ the yard. No one came in. So he went up and he closed it. The workman said nothing.

He told me the crying started outside around the yard, the very same as a woman crying. And the latch lifted, and it opened again. He looked at the workman, and the workman looked at him. So he went up and he closed it again. And it opened the third time.

And the workman said, “Leave it open. Don’t close that door again.”

The two o’ them sat down. The crying went off up the hill, and faded away. The door remained open, and the next thing, one o’ the family came down and said, “Poor man is dead.”

My friend got up – he told me this, now, himself. He walked out around the yard. He said ‘twas the grandest night you were ever out. There wasn’t a breath of air. Nothing.

But whatever that old workman knew, he said to leave the door open. Whether it had to be left open to let the dead man pass through or not, I don’t know.

Reproduced with the kind permission of the author, this story originally appeared in “Meeting The Other Crowd - The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland”, Gill & Macmillan, 2003

Banshee Comes for Dying Man

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Stephen King is known as the King of Horror: the prolific author has penned classic horrors such as Salem’s Lot, Mis-ery, It, and Carrie. Joe McCarthy revisits his work.

The Mist (2007)Frank Darabont, the writer/director

of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, delves into the horror genre with this homage to the 1960s B-movie horror classics. Darabont’s adaptation of a novella by Stephen King is a creature feature of unrelent-ing anxiety about the horrors of weak morality and mentality amidst almost biblically monstrous cataclysm.

The Mist starts with David Drayton (Thomas Jane) finishing up one of his famed movie posters as a thunder-storm claims his town’s power supply, as well as his upstairs studio thanks to a fallen tree-trunk. Drayton pulls his son (Nathan Gamble) and his neigh-bour Brent (André Braugher) into his Land Rover and drives to the mar-ket for supplies. As it turns out they weren’t the only ones with this idea: everyone in town is packed into the little market, snatching up goods for the emergency.

Before anyone in the store can leave, a dense fog fills the town. Typical Maine weather, perhaps…until a bloodied man scurries through the market doors claiming that there is “something ... in the mist”, which kicks hysteria into gear. Holed up in the small market, the matter of surviv-al starts to build tension amongst the shoppers. Some, like preachy fanatic Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), believe it to be wrath of God. De-scribed as a “local nut” by townsfolk,

Marcia Gay Harden is excellent as the religious zealot Mrs. Carmody.

What’s interesting about Dara-bont’s adaption of King’s novella isn’t that the creatures drive fear into the victims, but it’s the victims themselves that become deluded due to their own primitive fears. Mrs. Carmody foments fear by spouting religious scripture about expiation to anyone that will listen. In their terror, the people inside the market will take any comfort given to them, even if it is the belief that the unknown horrors outside can be reasoned with. The actions of the lo-cals, born out of their own fear, make us question to which side of the glass humanity belongs.

The Shining (1980)Debatably the best horror movie of

all time, The Shining is also an adap-tion of one of Stephen King’s works. When it comes to horror movies, there are many sub-genres, such as ex-ploitation horror, gore horror, classic horror and psychological horror. The Shining is something else. Director Stanley Kubrick made films unlike anyone else. 2001: Space Odyssey was a sci-fi and Full Metal Jacket was a war film, but both those films were completely different from anything else in their genres.

The Shining is a surreal, layered film that has been analysed by film buffs a thousand times. Kubrick’s awe-inspiring technique transformed King’s book into a study of madness and inner demons.

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is

an aspiring writer who takes a job as caretaker of the ominous Overlook Hotel so that he can write without distraction. He takes his wife and son with him to the hotel during the closed winter season. They are isolated and secluded in the hotel that sits atop a mountain and they have minimal contact with the outside world.

Jack tries to get some writing done but something in the hotel awakens something evil within him and he slowly starts to lose his grip on reality. Jack’s son Danny also begins to see strange and disturbing things. The only interaction the three have during the final act of the film is with hotel cook Dick Halloran (Scatman Croth-ers), who shares a common bond with Danny; a unique talent called ‘The Shining’, an uncanny ability that allows them to see unsettling visions of the truth. Like most mysterious elements in Kubrick’s films it is never fully explained.

Nicholson plays the psychopath so well that whenever he’s on screen, the audience dreads what he’s going to do next. The tension of the character boils and boils until he snaps in spec-tacular fashion. What is left open for interpretation by the conclusion of the film is whether the hotel is haunted by evil spirits or if Jack’s inner demons have resurfaced with a vengeance and the hotel merely awakened them. Kubrick teasingly keeps the answers just out of reach and the question is posed to the viewer: does the poten-tial for madness and evil reside in all men?

LONG LIVE THE KING

Nicholson plays the psychopath very well. (Source: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc @www.imdb.com)

19

Midnight Tombstone Cathedral

By Liz O’Donoghue

Three great bodháns to heaven a moon-glistened angel strumpeting the night -

below amongst the tombs

trollops and drunks drink from mossy bottles -

sitting on the edge of death

I hear not a sound from Erebus no revelry of ribaldry

not an inch of bare skin between the shroud trees -

the grass is grey green

under the yellow searchlights police cars slow as they pass -

through rusted railings beyond French’s Quay

down river towards the sea spreads a brilliant

bedlam night.

Reproduced with the kind permission of the author, this poem originally appeared in “Train to Gorey”, Published by

Arlen House, 2009.

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