Eyesore | October 2026

“There’s nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.” — Lon Chaney

Every year the displays get more extravagant, as if they are tracking the national zeitgeist exactly, fright upon fright. You also have to wonder how much cash money is going into these displays of morbid anxiety, in many cases a hefty percentage of the annual household income plus who-knows how many hours of labor. . . to put out the message “Be scared, be very scared.”

Halloween traditionally brings a dissolution of the boundary between the real world and whatever you suppose lies beyond it: the abode of dead souls, restless spirits, sinister ancestors, demons, circles of hell, eternal damnation, Netflix. Is it strangely and ironically possible that daily life has become so comfortable that some cultural mechanism is required to prompt an artificial reminder that hazard, horror, and death even still exist in this world? Well, maybe that’s a stretch, with mass murders here, there, and everywhere week after week. And so many still struggle to put baloney sandwiches on the table and pay the light bill, they must live in a nonstop cortisol fog. The headshrinkers might have a clue.

One thing for sure: the average American neighborhood is hideous enough without all the life-size inflatable mummies, blood-beasts, werewolves, wookies, witches, rotted corpses, dancing skeletons, botched science projects, and severed heads cluttering up the dooryards. Imagine everyone putting that money and energy into cleaning up the property, pressure-washing the layers of auto-emissions out of the soffits, truing-up the saggy porches, painting the front door. Then, maybe get yourself a pumpkin, carve a smile on it and pop a candle inside so the kids will understand the message, “Candy here!”

Or maybe the whole population has decided subconsciously that the country is going to hell and if we take enough drugs, the journey there will, at least, be amusing.

For you connoisseurs: Halloween on John Street, by JHK, oil on canvas. 24 x 24. $1500