I have been kind of contrary about Halloween this year*. Normally, as many sane children and grown-children in North America do, I await the month of October with baited breath and full batteries, ready to charge head-first into the swell of the season. More orange. More candy. More spice. More whiskey.
But this year, I will gladly engage with things from the floor of my studio (newly cleaned and cleared.)
Also, since alchemy and the occult are making such a strong aesthetic play these past few years, Halloween can be, indeed, everyday… particularly if you spend all day on the internet. I’m certainly not against it but I am a little surprised to see this trend go by without a nod to a favorite (and hefty!) book in my collection: The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult. Published by the Yale Press, it is the catalog of an exhibit of the same name held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005. I wandered into it while there to write a paper on the concurrent Van Gogh show. This exhibit, though small, was much more interesting and, before I really could stop my head from spinning, I had shelled out nearly $70 on the hard-cover companion.

by William Mumler, 1870-79. 2 photographs of Boston medium Fanny Conant and 1 photograph of a spirit appearing next to a photograph of an absent client.

by Edouard Isidore Buguet, 1875. Clockwise from top left: “Spirit of Paganini”/ “Skull of Altotas and his representative”/ “Mediumnic attraction”/”Fuidic effect”

by Jacob von Narkiewicz-Jodko, 1896. “Effluvia from an electrified hand resting on a photographic plate.”

both photos by Albert von Schrenck-Notzig, 1913. The medium Stanislawa P. emitting and reabsorbing ectoplasm through mouth.

by The Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis, 1966-67. Levitation of a doll and small table, printed in 1979 from original negatives.
*Edit: 10/30/12 When I wrote this a few days ago, my nature was getting the best of me. As of today, after 36 hours of desperately checking the news, facebook, and instagram, I declare that there will be no Halloween for me this year. Hurricane/Storm/Whatever Sandy took an extreme toll to my hometown and its surrounding areas with very little of the extent of the devastation currently calculated. Entire areas that I love have been washed into the sea and, even though being would not have helped, I feel all the more helpless being far away and unaffected. Never keep your heart in a place made of old signs and industrial staples.