Halloween is bad enough, so why torture ourselves with scary films? | Emma John
I spent the past week in the mountains of western North Carolina, where the seasonal colour of the tree-covered Appalachians offers a fiery backdrop to small-town life. You can't beat this place for autumnal vibes, with apple pies and cider on sale in every store, gourds and pumpkins in every layby. And then there are the Halloween decorations. People take them seriously here, their windows, lawns and roofs fantastically dressed in ways that range from the tastefully spooky to the unashamedly exhibitionist. My nearest neighbours have a menagerie of inflatables - a werewolf, a skeleton, a zombie - that blow up taller than their house.
The folk I stay with, however, don't construct ghosts out of bedsheets and brooms or hang up fake spiders' webs on their porch. They have their own way of marking the season. For the whole of October, my friends Andrew and Carrie commit to watching a different horror film every day. To some, that will sound like psychological torture. But this is a couple who enjoy the genre so much that the first thing you pass on walking into their home is a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit of DVDs with names such as Chopping Mall and Slumber Party Massacre.
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