Halloween is nigh, but fear not. Last year, when vaccines were still a dream but lockdowns weren't, I asked: "Will this be the scariest Halloween ever, given that the most frightening people out there won't be wearing masks?" In Salem, Mass., arguably the Halloween capital of the U.S., a surge of weekend tourists had forced Wicked Good Books to tweet: "Due to lack of compliance with mask and hand sanitizing requirements, putting the health of our staff, patrons and community at risk, we are now open on weekends by appointment only during October."
As it turns out, Halloween is still pretty scary in the streets this year, too, even though many of us are vaxxed and even boostered. But we're book people, so we have special powers, and focusing on the spirit world seems like a welcome alternative as Halloween approaches. Here's some good news that encompasses both realms:
As we noted last week, Books Around the Corner, Gresham, Ore., has opened in its new space and shifted from being a general-interest bookstore to a genre fiction shop with a year-round Halloween theme. The store will also carry "spooky and bookish" candles, bookmarks, gifts and more. Also on scene is the bookstore cat, six-month-old Spooky.
"This is the dream for me, seeing all this every day," said owner Stephanie Csaszar, who noted that within days of her October 8 reopening, customers showed up who had driven three hours from their Washington home for the Halloween bookstore experience. "They loved it.... I thought opening a bookshop would be a dream come true, but it was actually this Halloween-themed genre fiction bookshop that is the real dream come true."
In Chicago, the Occult Book Store, which opened on the Near North Side under occultist D.G. Nelson in 1918 with a mission to serve spiritualists, occultists and shamans, recently announced it is expanding to create a permanent sanctuary for the Occult Spiritual Society, Block Club Chicago reported.
Occult's mission is to be a magical and mystical resource, according to the Rev. Bishop Lisa Gruber: "Everyone who's associated with the Occult Bookstore and with the Occult Spiritual Society is a practitioner along the path. If you come in and speak to somebody, you're speaking to somebody who's a co-traveler along the spiritual path." Gruber and the current primary owner, the Rev. Bishop Louvel Delon--who began working at the store as a teenager in the 1980s--are looking for a permanent sanctuary location near Wicker Park.
On Saturday, the Occult Book Store is hosting an All Hallows' Eve Bonfire, "a night of fire and revelry to celebrate the ancestors and our beloved community," with proceeds going to help fund the new community sanctuary. "We've missed our community through the pandemic and we're excited to hold space with you again," the bookshop noted.
For obvious reasons, this time of year "is particularly busy for the store as regulars pop in and others visit for the first time, celebrating Halloween and Samhain, a pagan holiday marking the end of harvest season," Block Club Chicago wrote. Customers come in to learn about witchcraft and explore their more spiritual side.
"A lot of times during this time of year, we specifically will have parents come in because their children will be experiencing metaphysical things or having dreams or some sort of activity," Gruber added. "We're a really good resource for those parents, to be able to give good advice or hold space for what their child is experiencing.... No matter who you are, if you come in, you're going to get individualized counsel and attention. It's just what we do. We're very dedicated to the people who walk into our doors, especially when they're coming in from a place of genuinely seeking knowledge and guidance."
Speaking only as a reader, I believe we're all haunted by the works we've encountered and authors who have possessed us. We are mediums by profession and obsession, channeling the eloquent dead. Halloween seems like our time, too. In Christopher Morley's classic novel The Haunted Bookshop, we learn that the Parnassus at Home bookstore features a "large placard in a frame," which reads, in part:
THIS SHOP IS HAUNTED by the ghosts
Of all great literature, in hosts;
We sell no fakes or trashes.
Lovers of books are welcome here....We have what you want, though you may not know you want it.
Malnutrition of the reading faculty is a serious thing.
Let us prescribe for you.
As Mr. Roger Mifflin, the proprietor, observes: "My pleasure is to prescribe books for such patients as drop in here and are willing to tell me their symptoms. Some people have let their reading faculties decay so that all I can do is hold a post mortem on them. But most are still open to treatment. There is no one so grateful as the man to whom you have given just the book his soul needed and he never knew it."
It will soon be Halloween, but fear not. You are a reader, and that is powerful magic indeed, even in frightening times.