Monsters, Masks, and Shadows
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
October 25, 2026
I always loved Halloween as a child. Walking around the neighborhood after dark, accompanied by friends, and hearing all the sounds: the giggles and chatter, and the scuffling of many small feet crunching through the dry fallen leaves. I remember the year I dressed up as a ghost: old enough to make my own costume. What could be easier than basically dropping a sheet over my head? I did go to the trouble of cutting out eyeholes, but I thought it would be scarier if I skipped cutting out a mouth in my ghostly face. All was well until we arrived at a neighbor’s house, where she invited us inside and said that instead of candy she was giving out cups of juice. I stood at the back. I think she gave me an apple. That might have been the last time I attempted a scary costume.
Despite my enjoyment of Halloween, I have never been a fan of horror stories or movies. I’ve attempted a Stephen King novel or two, but never finished one. And I don’t believe I ever have watched a horror movie. It’s possible that I think that real everyday life is frightening enough.
Halloween didn’t start out as being about horror. What we celebrate today is a modern adaptation of the ancient Celtic observance of Samhain, that cross-quarter day in the Celtic calendar that was considered the start of winter. It came at the end of October, after the harvest was brought in, and the cold and darkness was descending as winter approached. On the night of Samhain it was believed that the veil between the known world, our everyday world, and the world of the unseen grew thin. Spirits and unseen presences might be sensed, or heard, as they crossed over the barrier between the worlds. To create more light people hollowed out gourds or squashes or turnips to hold a candle, so that they wouldn’t be alone in the pitch dark should a spirit suddenly be felt among them. Bonfires were lighted and hearth fires were replenished with embers from these bonfires.
None of this was ever intended to be evil, or horrible. It was just part of life: coming to terms with the beginning of the cold part of the year with its short days, and coming to terms with the inevitability of death. The idea of a thinning of the veil between the realms could even have been reassuring: people might have hoped that they might encounter a loved one who they longed to see again. It was never meant to be evil.
Not evil, but it certainly could be scary. After all, there might be presences that you might not want to encounter on a dark country road; ghoulies, banshees, and ghosties, to name just a few. We’re not sure just exactly what people might have done to try to protect themselves from the more mischievous spirits. How the practices began of masking and dressing up have been largely lost to time. People might have used ashes to darken their faces to try to hide themselves from the more unnerving creatures. Scholars today believe that the practice of wearing masks only emerged in later centuries, likely in the 16th century with the rise of mummers, groups of performers who would travel the countryside to put on shows.
As we entered the modern era, the connection between Samhain and Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, has lessened. The film industry, which began producing horror movies in the early years of the 20th century, had much to do with new traditions and new kinds of costumes; in addition to ghosts, goblins, and witches, much scarier creatures were now seen on suburban streets: vampires, Dracula, Frankenstein, mummies, zombies, and as the 20th century wore on, more characters from ever more frightening slasher and horror movies, such as Freddie Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street.
The question becomes, what is this modern fascination with dressing up, with monsters, and wearing masks?
We have been discussing Courage this month, and today we’ll look at some of our deeply held fears. Monsters, scary creatures, are metaphors for what really frightens us. They represent the parts of ourselves that we are most afraid of, that we try to keep from showing to others, or even try to hide from ourselves. They can also show us some of the shadowy sides of our society: parts of our culture that we don’t like to confront.
Let’s think about vampires for a minute. We associate vampires with Count Dracula, a Victorian novel that captured peoples’ imagination in the 19th century. But in truth, the concept of vampires has been around for millennia, from Mesopotamia onwards. They were considered undead – not fully alive – and sustained themselves by drinking the blood of their victims. In other words, they exploited others in order to survive. In cultures with great gaps between those who own land or factories, and those who own nothing but who provide labor, vampires could be a manifestation of the exploitation that some people enact on others.
Vampires could also be frightening as a metaphor for a loss of control, or possibly even addiction. And vampires weren’t the only frightening mythical beings. We could compare vampires to werewolves: those humans, bitten by a werewolf themselves, who turn into a vicious wolf at the first sight of the full moon. Imagine how these creatures can be metaphors for our fears of a beast within us; an evil that we might not always be able to control.
This leads us, of course, to thinking about the horror classic, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this short book by Robert Louis Stevenson, a lawyer begins to investigate a certain Edward Hyde, who has been implicated in a variety of crimes, including beating other people. In every case, the lawyer begins to see connections between the mysterious Edward Hyde and his own friend, Dr. Jekyll.
Eventually, Dr. Jekyll confessed that he wanted to separate the good and the bad sides of his personality, and created a potion that allowed him to transform into Mr. Hyde, so that he can lose his inhibitions and act on his most evil impulses. Over time, of course, the potion stops working as originally intended, and Dr. Jekyll loses control of its effects. Mr. Hyde begins to appear on his own, and takes over more and more of Dr. Jekyll’s personality.
It’s interesting, of course, that Dr. Jekyll wanted to find a way to allow his evil, beastly, side, his evil twin, some freedom. Most people go to some lengths to try to hide that side of ourselves. Earlier we heard these words from a poet:
“The masks we wear, a shield, a wall,
To guard the truth, to stand up tall.
Yet in the night, when shadows fall,
The masks slip off, and we’re left small…”. (The Masks We Wear, by Belinda Takyi)
We can be so fearful of those masks slipping: not the Freddie Krueger masks or the witch masks, but the ones we create from within, the ones that hide what really frightens us. To hide all that we fear will make us unlovable, and unloved.
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung developed the concept of the shadow side of human personalities. The shadow represents everything that we don’t want to admit about ourselves, or that we seek to hide from others.
When we try to repress these traits we possess, all that we fear about ourselves and cannot acknowledge about ourselves, we are likely to project such traits onto others. Knowing this, we can imagine now where our fear and fascination with monsters emerges, especially creatures who had two sides, such as werewolves.
Our fear of our shadow side can be so strong that focusing on mythical beings isn’t adequate. We can find ourselves projecting the traits we try to mask in ourselves onto other people or groups of people. This can be a catalyst for racism and prejudice; deciding that an entire group of people exhibits the negative parts of ourselves we cannot accept. Suppose we are afraid that we aren’t skilled enough to be able to keep our job. We could begin to blame the possible loss of our job on new immigrants who we find threatening.
The United States in some ways is living through this right now; caught up in a culture of projection. Since our founding, and even before, the people who colonized this land and who built its economy exploited other people, especially the indigenous people and the enslaved people who were never paid for their labor. This is our country’s shadow side. It is an enormous shadow. And we try desperately to hide it, to hide behind the idealistic words of our founders about all being created equal. Deep down, we know that we have never lived up to those words. But we turn away, refuse to acknowledge our past, and instead treat people from marginalized groups as the cause of the problems. We project our fears and our shame onto them, and blame them for what is going wrong in our society. “They take our jobs.” “They are overrunning our country.” “They are dangerous criminals.” It’s as though here in the United States we are celebrating Halloween every day: hiding behind our masks and our costumes, and pointing fingers at all the perceived monsters in our midst.
This will not change until we find the courage to confront our fear, to acknowledge our history of greed and exploitation, and to search deep within ourselves to recognize those shadows in our own lives.
It can be done. Let’s remember Grover’s discovery that we read earlier: that the monster at the end of the book is actually himself. And may we always remember that by letting our light shine, we can remove the shadows. After all, the vampires and werewolves disappear once the sun rises. Our faith tells us that we possess enough light and enough love to block the shadows that frighten us so much and that do so much harm.
Our poet concluded:
“Here we stand today, a world apart,
Wearing masks to guard our hearts.
In hopes that one day we may find,
A place where truth needs not be blind.
So let us face the truth we bear,
The pain, the joy, the love, the care.
And in the end, when we lay bare,
We’ll find the strength beyond the wear.”
May it be so,
Amen.
