Some people celebrate Halloween all year long. Author Ray Bradbury called them “the Autumn people.”
And others — actors, magicians, ghost hunters, and more — may find themselves with a professional interest, as it were, in a world where jack-o-lanterns flicker long past the witching hour. Which gives them a certain vantage point when selecting where to go and what to do on the Halloween weekend.
Here are some of their ideas. (For details on some of their suggestions as well as their productions, see the events roundup below.)
ANA GASTEYER
Elphaba in “Wicked” at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts/Oriental Theatre.
“The movie I did last year, `Reefer Madness,’ [a musical remake for Showtime] has some thrill and gore in it, so I hope some people will be gathering around to see that.
“But this year is really fun for me, because we have a 3-year-old and she’s just exploding with Halloween. She requested very early on the scarecrow costume in `Wicked’–and the wardrobe department is obliging her–but we have to have a couple of backups. Some Disney costumes, and a good old-fashioned ghost.
“The Walgreens Halloween aisle is this daily mecca for us. The last time we were there, we picked up this giant sack of plastic cockroaches. Now, keep in mind that I lived in New York City and I have no use for this. So at least a couple of times a day, I’ll see one somewhere and I’ll have this cockroach meltdown, until I realize it’s just a plastic roach.
“The night before Halloween, because we’re New Yorkers, we’re doing all the festival stuff in Daley Plaza and Navy Pier, all the fun kids’ stuff. And we have friends in Milwaukee who live in this idyllic suburb right out of a Hollywood movie set. So we’re going to trick-or-treat in Shorewood and then go see Dolly Parton in concert.”
As for what Gasteyer will wear: “I get to dress up for a living so it doesn’t quite have the appeal. But I’ll get dressed up if [my daughter] wants me to. She may want me to be Elphaba.”
NEIL TOBIN
Magician and creator of the one-man show “Supernatural Chicago” and medium for the upcoming “The Houdini Seance.”
“I invite you to see my show, of course. But beyond that, I tend to steer people toward visiting the marvelous cemeteries of Chicago. You can’t go wrong with Graceland or Rosehill. They’re both just astonishingly beautiful with a wealth of things to look at. They are one of Chicago’s unsung bastions of public art. Graceland has a couple of monuments by nationally recognized sculptor Lorado Taft.
“Cemeteries are just so peaceful and there’s a certain comfort level with mortality that we in the modern United States tend to have lost. But a hundred years ago, people used to visit graveyards and have picnics and maintain a close bond with their ancestors that way. And we don’t do that anymore and I think that’s totally missed.
“If you look at cemeteries through the decades, as you get into the later half of the 20th Century, you develop these more invisible, golf course-like graveyards, where all the headstones are flush with the tops of the grass and they can all be mown without muss or fuss. Completely devoid of any art or expression, any ways to really make you remember. Society really lost a lot when that happened.”
DAVID PARR
Magician, author and historian. Creator and host of the theatrical production “Haunting History,” a tour of the supernatural and macabre.
“Around the turn of the 20th Century, a really popular thing to do on Halloween was to play divination games–fortune-telling games. It was the time of year for trying to catch a glimpse of the future because it was assumed that the veil that divides life from death was extremely thin. So you might be able to gaze through and catch a glimpse of a possible future. For example, one game was to take an apple and remove as much of the peel as you could in one piece and throw it over your left shoulder. It would form a letter and that letter would be the initial of your future mate.”
Parr says that other popular Victorian divination games involved spinners, card decks, and boards. “Those things were really popular. There were specific fortune-telling devices that were sold around Halloween. People who are interested in this can learn much more by tracking down the books `Halloween Merrymaking: An Illustrated Celebration of Fun, Food, and Frolics from Halloweens Past,’ and `Halloween: Romantic Art and Customs of Yesteryear.’ Both are by Diane C. Arkins.” As for a cool bookstore to find these titles: “There’s a bookstore in Lincoln Square called The Book Cellar [4736 N. Lincoln Ave.; 773-293-2665] that has a lot of weird, out-of-the-way stuff.”
MIKE FLORES
Playwright, founder and president of Chicago’s Psychotronic Film Society, now in its 20th year of celebrating all things sci-fi, horror and monster cinema.
“I like to watch Japanese horror films around Halloween. There’s a video store that is also an incredible collection of pop-culture items called J1 Toy [3326 N. Clark St.; 773-248-0644] in Chicago. They carry films from Japan and Hong Kong, as well as a lot of Japanese toys. Americans have seen films like `The Ring,’ not knowing they were remakes of ghost films coming out of Japan. Those films have really disturbing images . . . Japanese horror is still among the best. Remember, they were the only country that was ever hit by an atomic bomb, so they had to live through that. They were not allowed to voice any suffering they might have had after the war because we occupied them. A lot of their imagery and a lot of their feelings come out in these ghost stories.”
URSULA BIELSKI
Chicago ghost hunter, author and founder of Chicago Hauntings Ghost Tours.
“People laugh at me because I never work on Halloween. In fact, our whole company gets the day off, since it’s a big holiday! We don’t run tours, and I’ve never done a single book signing or lecture on Halloween. A lot of people complain about it! While my girls are in school, I spend the day doing all the things I love: going to local cemeteries, listening to atmospheric music, reading Poe and Lovecraft.”This year, we’re having a huge bash at the Willowbrook Ballroom [8900 S. Archer Ave., Willow Springs; 708-839-1000] on Devil’s Night, Oct. 30, in the same spirit. We’re running one tour that afternoon, and then we’re done, and I want all our employees to enjoy the two nights that follow. The next day will be for my girls. After school, I’ll dress up with my daughters and have a big party, decorate the house to the hilt, put on scary music and scare trick-or-treaters.
“Naturally, Halloween is not complete without a little illegal trespassing, and I haven’t outgrown sneaking into haunted forest preserves or cemeteries late at night on Halloween to try and experience some paranormal phenomena. I try to fit this in after the girls are asleep on Halloween. The baby-sitter comes in at around 10, and off I go into the night, like I’m 16 again.”
