Editorial: Halloween’s scariest threats? Not razor blades or ‘rainbow’ fentanyl, but rumors and lies
A few years ago I wrote about how a new Halloween horror show should feature a scarecrow that grew from its skull, with razor blades dripping out of its eyes.
It didn’t quite make the final cut. The most recent edition of the series, called The Dark Side of the Fun House, features a scary face-skewering scarecrow, but this one is named “Joker” and carries a machine gun instead of a knife.
But this fall season, the “scary” Halloween characters will be far from scary. It’s going to be a time of “rumors, lies, false rumors, and scare-tactics,” as “Fear for Fears” says.
The most terrifying threat is a rumor, and here’s why.
Rumors and lies are not inherently scary
In one of the most terrifying moments of The Dark Side of the Fun House, a zombie (played by Josh Lucas, an actor best known for his role on NBC’s “The Walking Dead”) attacks the house and people run outside to escape it.
When the zombie is chased, the next scare comes from another scarecrow (played by Mark Duplass) who begins to speak to the crowd, saying the following: “When we get to this part of the house it’s going to explode…. We’re gonna run and we’re gonna run.” He then grabs hold of a prop prop that looks like a human head, and it begins to turn, revealing four razor blades, dripping out.
This scene is a perfect example of a rumor being much scarier than it is. The scarecrow is the closest thing to a scare in the episode, yet this could be any scarecrow. In the real world, a scarecrow is almost always something innocuous like a scarecrow in a Halloween display.