5 Nights of Halloween 2023 – Evolution, Full Moons & More (Part Two)

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“For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ’s birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.”

― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

I’m not a particularly scare-fest person but I like a good cemetery. I’ve celebrated them for as long as I can remember. My “dark side” was shaped by being an introspective child who never craved scary experiences. I preferred reading about others who were famed for plumbing darker subjects. But I recall being fascinated, if not thrilled by Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Three Detectives” to the point of obsession. I found a kind of lust for the novel and film, “Escape To Witch Mountain,” and was delighted by “Return To Witch Mountain” and finally “Beyond Witch Mountain” I recall some sort of gothic esthetic was born in me, a strange passionate sensation that shaped my sense of life beyond explanation upon discovering the film “From The Mixed Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler.” That one somewhat terrified me as much as it intrigued same time and think it was a mistake to watch it alone on a Saturday in my basement. Throw in “Something Wicked Way This Comes,” along with endless episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of, and every Hardy Boys’ book with just a touch of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, and there’s not much more that one needs to understand who I was made into well before high school. In fact, if you’d told me by age 13 that there was nothing else past some Chronicles of Narnia and a few Stephen King books to come along and at that moment I’d been given the option of being locked in a room with just all of those things for the rest of my life, I’d 100% snatched that key from the offering hand to never be heard from again! But as no such opportunity or framing of the world was presented as such, I drifted on to become the artsy goth kid who eventually took a job in a Victorian cemetery in my hometown. And the rest is his-story so to say. I became The Cemetery Man of my own design.

The 4 Nights of Halloween Savannah Exclusive Weekend

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It’s hard to say when exactly Halloween came to Savannah but yes, with one witch from Ireland arriving to Savannah ala shipwreck, certain pagan traditions with a tint and hint of Christianity formed around many holidays or rituals, Hallow’s Eve or Samhain was never far from the life experience of superstitious people. Savannahians certainly cleaned it up, but it remains fascinating to me that until the 1950s, they burned 50-foot bonfires in Johnson Square and Washington Square, an act that we can trace back to the 1840s in Savannah. Naturally, the pagan regalia of early got traded up for Ben Franklin 5 & 10 costumes with Hanna Barbera themes, but in the earliest hours, no question that this was an active solstice mid-term for scaring away demons from the crops so that there was a cornucopia to share. It’s exactly what “Shout at The Devil” really means!

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By the 1950s, the Savannah Fire Department would stand around the edges of our city squares where the fire festival was happening, and they would simultaneously spray down the facades of the buildings to keep them safe. When Trick O’Treating became the main game of suburbia and suburban sprawl took root while Savannah’s Historic District died off for a time, all of the above disappeared and few to none of the nouveau riche living here now, know anything about it. Some Savannhians who are still around from those days, and trust me, there aren’t too many, recollect those hours with a fondness that warms the heart. They also recall parents taking 40 or 50 at a time in costume, then parading them around Bonaventure Cemetery for some good-natured spooky times. They told the ghost stories of Little Gracie, many of which came from caretaker families who lived in the cemetery for years. That tradition also went by the way for one reason or the other. 

So we decided to remedy the missing link by adding something Halloween-ish but respectful to the old dame, Madame Bonaventure Cemetery, and several years ago began an exclusive event, now referred to as The 4 Nights of Halloween

The event offers people an exclusive exploration of Bonaventure Cemetery after dark as only host, Shannon Scott can provide, and as we’re such purists, we’re about the only event happening on actual Halloween Night which as readers know, is a Monday! Trust us when we say you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything to do that’s worth the ticket price on a Monday night in Savannah except this! And yes, the PREMIERE evening is Saturday October 29th which includes the 3 Hour After Dark Tour, a private dinner at Erica Davis Lowcountry where we’ve rented out the facility for the evening and music provided by the spooky, kooky but always rocking band, The Donna Savage Band! (See Video Below). The evening will have firepits, a FULL BAR, Shannon Scott’s “Morbid Museum” collection on display and then really incredible prizes that are beyond the pale! ALL OF THESE EVENTS HAVE LIMITED TICKETS! As you might guess, they sell out every year so we cannot stress enough, if any of these evenings strike your fancy – DO NOT DELAY! GO BIG FOR HALLOWEEN BY GOING BONAVENTURE! 
              WWW.4HALLOWEENNIGHTS.COM