SUPER SPOOKY HALLOWEEN GUIDE

Halloweentown

A LITTLE SLICE OF HORR-OREGON

SHANNON STEED

VICTORIA CALDERON

When it comes to Halloween, many flock to Oregon yearly to visit the Spirit of Halloweentown—located in our very own St. Helens. Many people didn’t even know that the far-away fantasy land filled with magic, known from the Disney Channel classic Halloweentown, actually exists a short drive from Portland!

Every year since the film, the locals of St. Helens have transformed their town to recreate the beauty from the franchise that is so close to many people’s hearts, allowing people to share the magic from generation to generation. The town looks forward to hosting every year and even supports tourism, by providing free parking for those shopping and spending money at local businesses.

Aside from the beautiful scenery and the recreation of the titular town itself, there’s also tons to do. There is currently a haunted hotel, self-guided walking tours, a giant pumpkin totem on display, a mysterious dark market, the so-called “whispers in the woods” and—last but not least—walking with pumpkins! The small businesses are also open all along the riverfront. The events are all familyfriendly and encourage all ages to celebrate—a great time to explore and learn more about St. Helens and the once-peryear transformation.

Halloweentown is just one of the major franchises that shares some of its scenery of St. Helens. Another beloved favorite that has its hooks in the area—Twilight. A couple notable locations are actually located in this beloved town: the dress shop where Bella first finds herself in danger and her father Charlie’s house.

Actually, Charlie’s house is a real place that you can rent, though it’s booked out until 2024. Both the Twilight and Halloweentown films have led to a boom in St. Helens’ tourism industry during the month of October—though some sites can be visited year-round.

During 2020, many people simply didn’t get the Halloween they expected. This small town’s incredibly immersive experience will be taking place through the end of the month, giving everyone a chance to enjoy the sinister season.

While open on weekdays, the special events tend to happen on weekends. For the final weekend, watch the trick-or-treater parade or get an autograph signed on Oct. 31 by Sophie (Emily Roeske) from Halloweentown or Emmett (Kellan Lutz) from Twilight (tickets available on their site). A great send off for pumpkin season!

THE GREATEST WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH SHOW OF THE TWIN PEAKS PACIFIC NORTHWEST

BÉLA KURZENHAUSER

In regards to a canon of Pacific Northwestbased filmmaking, little attention has been given to the selection of television shows produced in the region. While works of the 2010s era like Grimm and Portlandia have secured themselves a reputation as cultural touchstones of the PNW, relics of the 1990s like Nowhere Man and Northern Exposure are frequently excluded from conversation.

Indeed, 31 years ago, the groundwork was laid in Snoqualmie, Washington, for a show the likes of which television had never seen before—a show whose legacy would surpass two decades of cancellation, clawing its way back from the grave for a triumphant return in the form of an apocalyptic third season helmed by its two original creators. Those two creators are David Lynch and Mark Frost, and the show is Twin Peaks.

Twin Peaks’ reputation both as a landmark in television history and as a foundational masterpiece of its medium easily precedes itself, and the dynamism of the show as it evolved over the 27 years it spanned ensures that any creative or cultural discourse will be focused on the enigmatic silhouette the show casts.

While Twin Peaks represented the oncoming explosion of what would become known as “prestige television” as it crested the early 1990s, it also spurred an entire subculture of fan-driven theorizing and obsessing years before cerebral mystery shows broke into television’s mainstream. For over three decades, people have mulled over the unanswered questions gestated by Twin Peaks’ 48 episodes—what exactly is the red room? Who, or what, is Phillip Jeffries? And, perhaps most importantly: who really killed Laura Palmer?

As such, while we find ourselves situated in the midst of yet another brisk and chipper autumn in the Pacific Northwest, one may argue that the changing of the leaves signals the start of a Twin Peaks binge. Tragically, the show was taken off Netflix in July, so you’ll have to head to Hulu, Paramount+ or Showtime—which is the exclusive platform for the show’s third and final season—in order to engulf yourself in the show’s onslaught of dramatic tension and secrecy.

The rose-red hues—a trademark of 80s and 90s television cinematography—of the first two seasons seem to stamp the show with a viscerally autumnal feel that is echoed by the atmosphere: a microcosm of Cascadian geography, with a towering enclosure of waterfalls and forests dominating the quaint logging town of Twin Peaks, Washington.

Despite the show’s premise—focused on the murder of Laura Palmer, a high school girl whose history and presence seems to be less opaque than her friends and family thought—the story never seems to situate itself in the kind of dreariness and despondency common in other murder-mysteries. Rather, the colorful cast of characters, in combination with the sincere juxtaposition of tragedy and comedy frequently found within Lynch’s work, manages to give Twin Peaks a somewhat light-hearted atmosphere that doesn’t minimize the darkness and sadness present within the plot. If anything, Twin Peaks is a show about grief and reckoning, as the unexpected death of a seemingly-innocent young girl reveals an underbed of supernatural conspiracy and corruption rotting the roots of the town and rocking the collective world of its inhabitants.

Lynch and Frost have always been adamant that Twin Peaks was never really about a murder, and was actually more about the lives and relationships of Twin Peaks’ denizens. As each person associated with Laura attempts to reckon with their grief and trauma surrounding her death, they come to terms with understanding how they fit into the world around them. Twin Peaks arrived on public broadcast television at a time when youth became synonymous with disillusionment, and after three seasons, Laura’s murder still hangs over the town like a fog, even as the supernatural and mythological themes of the show become increasingly prominent. It is as if to understand the unexplainable death, one must understand the cosmic entirety of existence.

While Twin Peaks may falter at times, particularly in the second half of its second season due to Lynch’s departure from the writers’ room after creative disputes with CBS, it never manages to lose sight of its own identity. While the show was dramatically cancelled in 1992, leaving an unfinished conclusion alongside the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, 25 years later it descended from the heavens like a fallen angel for a third and (likely) final season. What followed was 18 episodes of pure abstract insanity the likes of which television had never seen; a reconstruction of everything the medium stood for and a complete rebuilding of what people previously understood Twin Peaks to be.

The season—aptly subtitled The Return—was declared by many to be one of the finest works of art ever produced, and polemically criticized by others as a farcical mess of unanswered questions and experimental filmmaking. Regardless, it is indisputable that The Return is a bold and creative tour-de-force whose artistic eccentricities are perfectly representative of the evolution of television throughout history.

The TV medium is stranger than ever, with streaming shepherding a new era of television less artistically bound to the pastiches of network broadcasting, and if anything, The Return feels like a striking response to the questions of where television will go in the future. It proposes strange concepts and alienating narratives, but instead of provoking its audience to pull apart its machinery, it asks them to simply marinate in the journey.

The answers to the show’s aforementioned questions, at least abiding by Lynch and Frost’s artistic philosophy, are simple: they have none. Such a statement might seem like a deflating disappointment for a show framed around a mystery, but to be clear here, the show presents answers to many of these questions, but parametrizes them as mere raindrops amidst a torrential storm. In any other show, the grand reveal of a mystery would arrive at the culmination of a season, cracking open the world’s narrative through some seismic explosion of twists and betrayals. Here, however, every epiphany is tinged with a sense of grief and tragedy, as though the inhabitants of Twin Peaks are merely pawns entangled within some cosmic scheme of fate and destiny.

There are few shows and few works of mystery artistry that are as intricate and thoughtprovoking as what Twin Peaks and its modest depiction of the Cascadian landscape bring to the television screen. So, if you’re itching for the mind-shattering binge of a lifetime, then get a slice of cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee and strap in for the sometimes-tragic, sometimes-heartwarming but always-mystifying masterpiece that is Twin Peaks.

5TH AVENUE CINEMA PRESENTS THE RETURN OF TWILIGHT

TANNER TODD

Unless you were asleep for the better part of the early 2000’s, you probably remember the Twilight series. Maybe you remember it as the sole topic to occupy the high school hallway grapevine, or as a series of increasingly melodramatic scenes acted out on the playground the way some people perform Shakespeare in the park. Perhaps, it made its way into your family home, with a parent or sibling sheepishly burying their faces in one of the tetralogy’s dense pages. There’s even a good chance you read it yourself, becoming one of the 12% of U.S. adults to read it.

As was inevitable for the time, they made it into a movie. Featuring a star-studded cast in pale makeup that included the likes of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, the 2008 adaptation picked up on the book’s already-soaring popularity and cemented the franchise into a cultural phenomenon. People loved it, people hated it, but everyone seemed to be talking about it. The teen vampire bubble expanded on the waves of the franchise’s success, as each of the novels was adapted into a movie format, for a combined global gross of over $2.5 billion.

Eventually, the bubble burst, and people moved on to other things. Fast forward to now, 13 years after the first film installment was released, and Twilight has moodily sauntered back into our local collective consciousness by way of 5th Avenue Cinema, which screened the movie over the second weekend of October. For the PSU-based student-operated theater, which normally programs obscure indie films, the Twilight screening is a bit of a departure from its usual content, and the fact that it made it into the lineup at all represents something of a serendipitous accident.

When a distribution issue tanked a film’s availability in the fall lineup, 5th Avenue Staff were left with a gaping hole in the schedule to fill. During a discussion with distributors to acquire Twilight for another theater location that specialized in blockbuster reruns, they made a surprising discovery—Twilight, or so the distributors claimed, was available in 35-millimeter format for distribution.

“[The distributors] ended up telling us ‘oh, we have it on 35’ so we just decided to just make it a part of the main program and fill that slot,” said Nayeli Naranjo-Robles, who helps oversee the theater’s programming. For the staff at 5th Avenue, the key detail of 35mm availability for Twilight qualified it to slip into the programming alongside the likes of films such as Mala Noche and The Piano Teacher.

Unfortunately, due to further distribution problems and shipping miscommunications, the precious canisters of film

THIRTEEN YEARS imprinted with Edward and Bella’s likenesses didn’t make it to the LATER, THE FILM theater in time. “We were waiting and waiting for it to

GRACED THE come through in the mail, and then just yesterday mornSILVER SCREEN ing an email came in and they were like ‘well, actually FOR A WEEKEND we don’t have it,’” Naranjo-Robles said. “So...we are showing it on digital.” Incidents like these, while unfortunate, do highlight the often-overlooked obstacles faced by small, independent movie theaters. “We are at the whims of the distributors,” NaranjoRobles concluded. “It’s just how it goes...but the showing, for me, that’s the most important thing, for people to be able to see it for free,” added Owen Peterson, another event programmer. 35-millimeter format or not, Twilight still packs a punch in the cultural nostalgia department. For some of the event programming technicians (and much of the audience), Twilight recalls visceral memories of the early 2000’s Twilight fever, which swept across U.S. middle and high schools thirteen years ago.

“I remember people in my class would like, reenact the scenes on the playground, and it was like this huge deal for months,” Peterson said.

“It’s a strange experience, watching them,” said projectionist Catie Godula. “They take themselves so seriously that it becomes like this weird pseudo-comedy.”

Godula’s experience of the movie seemed to be shared by the theater’s audience, which provided a veritable laugh-track to the night’s screening. Popcorn and ginger beer in hand, the student crowd cackled as Edward Cullen gazed lustfully across the biology desk at teen heroine Bella Swan, and they practically roared when a white makeup-covered Edward delivered a soliloquy of Shakespearean proportions while dangling comically from a tree.

Besides the cheap laughs, people were clearly enjoying being back in the space of the theater after pandemic closures made traditional movie-going impossible. Across the venue, they enthusiastically crinkled their popcorn bags and tore open candy wrappers with a special gusto, and the film’s absurd dialogue and convoluted plot points allowed ample opportunity for theater-goers to giggle witticisms into their neighbor’s ears.

By the end of the night, as Bella Swan danced on the undead feet of Edward Cullen, Peterson’s recommendation rang true: “Just come in with an open mind,” he said earlier that night, “and you’ll probably have a good time...it’s pretty hilarious.”

BELLA SWAN REACTS IN CONFUSION TO EDWARD CULLEN'S SUDDEN DISGUST IN A SCENE FREQUENTLY MADE INTO A MEME FROM TWILIGHT. COURTESY OF SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT.

THE HISTORY OF SAMHAIN

THE PAGAN HOLIDAY

RYAN MCCONNELL

Pronounced “SAH-win,” or /saʊɪn/ for those who study the International Phonetic Alphabet, Samhain is a Sabbath from Oct. 31–Nov. 1 to honor ancestors, celebrate the harvest of crops and mark the beginning of the dark half of the year.

Many pagans and Wiccans believe this is also a period when the barrier between the physical and spiritual worlds is at its thinnest.

Earliest known practitioners come from the ancient Celts; druid priests would light a community fire using a wheel to spark friction and flames. This wheel was a representation of the sun and renewal. Many additional aspects of this holiday symbolize death and rebirth.

A common myth associated with Samhain is that the holiday’s name is derived from a Celtic deity of death. However, Celts from Wales, Ireland and Scotland had different cultural interpretations of death and afterlife that don’t find direct comparisons in of many of the Abrahamic religions that came later in the region’s history.

Arawn would be the closest example of a Celtic god of the underworld, although even the understanding of the underworld is misconstrued. He was known as a skilled magician who resided as the Lord of Annwn, a Welsh otherworld described throughout ancient texts and folklore. It is believed that Annwn presents many similarities to the Arthurian legend of Avalon.

Another deity often described as the Celtic Goddess of Death would be the Morrigan. The Morrigan has been variously interpreted throughout history and folklore, but she is often associated with war, battle, fate and death. She is a triple goddess, appearing in many tales alongside her sisters Badb and Macha, although the Morrigan can sometimes refer to all three deities together.

None of these deities are usually associated with Samhain, at least not directly. Samhain, for many pagans and Wiccans, is the opportunity to celebrate and honor whichever deities they worship, as this holiday represents the best time to communicate with entities from the otherworld.

Dumb Supper—a meal held in silence to honor the deceased and invite ancestral spirits to the table—is now celebrated as part of Samhain. The ritual offers a time to commune with lost loved ones and celebrate the turning of a new year together, not dissimilar to Día de los Muertos.

As Christianity made its way into previously pagan communities, church leaders attempted to reframe Samhain as a Christian celebration, first declaring the celebration be moved to May 13 as a way to celebrate saints and martyrs. By the ninth century, Pope Gregory moved this celebration back to its original timeframe in autumn, declaring Nov. 1 to be All Saints’ Day and Nov. 2 to be All Souls’ Day.

This reframing did little to change the pagan roots of the tradition that continue to exist today. Oct. 31 became known as All Hallows Eve, retaining long-held traditions before it was widely adopted as Halloween in the 19th-century United States through Irish immigration and cultural migration.

Many of the gimmicks in modern-day Halloween come from the Celtic practices leading up to this time of year.

The most notable aspects of trick-or-treating, such as dressing up and going door-to-door, come from an Irish and Scottish tradition known as guising. Children would go door-to-door, singing songs, reciting poems, telling jokes or performing tricks, and collect fruits, nuts or coins as a treat.

Halloween pranks, while also originating from Samhain celebrations, existed but were often blamed on fairies.

While Halloween developed from Samhain, the pagan revivals that reintroduced Wicca and Druidism in the 1980’s have indoctrinated Samhain as a religious practice, separate from the U.S. celebration.

Dumb Suppers, communal practices and religious bonfires are only some of the many traditions that Wiccans and pagans practice on this holiday. Known as Summer’s End, it is a way for practitioners to reflect on the year, honor loved ones and invoke new opportunities moving forward.

A TRADITIONAL IRISH TURNIP JACK-O'-LANTERN FROM THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY. RANNPHÁIRTÍ ANAITHNID/MUSEUM OF COUNTRY LIFE, IRELAND.

Portland's HAUNTED PLACES

FELIPE FLORES

Have you ever wondered why some moments, both ephemeral and temporary, make you feel unsettled, as if some undetected force is present?

This intuition doesn't normally come with conscious reasoning, but is our body's way of telling us that something is off. This instinctive feeling can become deep and sometimes incurable—staying with you from place to place.

In that ethos, we currently find ourselves subscribed to a stretch of Pacific Northwest autumn weather, which brings a wealth of gloomy darkness, saturated greys and harsh shadows to the region. Paired with Portland’s historic indelible folklore, we quickly find plenty of spaces, places and things in October that appear to have a bump in the night written all over them.

EXTERIOR OF THE HEATHMAN HOTEL. ALBERTO ALONSO PUJAZON BOGANI/PSU VANGUARD

CATHEDRAL PARK BRIDGE

One of the more melancholy tales comes from 1949 via the Cathedral Park Bridge, and a horrific teenage kidnapping.

Known for its sweeping gothic arches, Highway 308 and its elongated section above the east shore of the Willamette River commonly frames some of Portland’s more iconic scenic landscapes. While sweeping restoration projects have developed over the years, the park has still retained a rather ghostly chattering effect when occupying the spaces beneath—partly due to the materiality of the bridge and the geometry of its structure.

However, at the time of the Roosevelt High School student abduction, sections of the beach underneath it rife with junk and foliage spreading uncontrollably. Police subsequently found the missing teen seven days later under a pile of driftwood. Now, some 70 years later, it is said that you can still hear a person screaming out for help at night.

In June of 1980, the park decided to seal a time capsule into one of the walls of Memorial Garden with plans for opening it slated for 2030. Given the fascination that people have with both the past and the future, we should be wary of what's in store.

THE BENSON HOTEL

Simon Benson, the philanthropist who made his mark in the timber industry, is at the center of another eerie materialization.

His iconic “Benson Bubblers” pepper Portland’s downtown streets, his childhood home is stilted and preserved on the corner of SW 11th and Clay. Yet something is left undone—something is still incomplete—with a man dressed in a dark suit coat and hat in a constant state, place and condition of transition.

This takes us to The Benson Hotel, which made USA Today’s list of most haunted hotels in the world. Opened in 1913 and quartered with 287 rooms, Benson successfully ran the operation of the building himself for seven years, establishing a world-class hotel during the first half of the 20th century, which saw periods of prohibition and dramatic social and political change.

A known supporter of prohibition, Benson has been accused of battering guests’ drinks, silently observing ongoings of business travelers in meeting rooms and skirting the boundaries of the hotel’s two chandeliered cathedral ballrooms.

Maybe Benson still disagrees with inebriant behavior, maybe he wants to ensure his hotel retains its venerable demeanor—in either case, if you ever find yourself on the grounds of The Benson Hotel, be mindful of its host.

THE HEATHMAN HOTEL

The Heathman Hotel, constructed in 1927, is a 10-story concrete structure wrapped in a brick façade that continues to cause unrest while providing swanky accommodations in a nationally registered historic landmark.

Located at the edge of Portland’s downtown Cultural District on SW Broadway, its connections to the number three and ghostly encounters run extraordinarily deep. Pair these connections with one of the oldest remaining buildings in Portland, and you get a hot spot of activity between its urban intersections.

Despite its zeal and luster, unseen movements continue to assemble, massing in every space of their guest’s occupation. Over the years, stories at the Heathman have continued with a common thread—screams can be heard in rooms ending in the number three. Ultimately, one of these cantilevered spirits exposed its tracery, and a staff member was able to snap a picture. Today, that photo still hangs in the employee break room, encapsulating a vision of the past, cementing its remains.

With guests reporting persistent spiritual misgivings throughout the property, management has yet to uncover its root cause, leaving those who enter to determine how much angst they can handle.

What we have found in these stories, like many, is that dredging up the tales of the past can make their folklore more ambiguous, alarming and chilling than originally perceived. Preparing yourself for the chills that go along with brushes of death, sorrow and obscurity have become all too easy to attain in the origins and traditions of Halloween.

How to have a very DISNEY SPOOKY SEASON

KARISA YUASA

Growing up as a Disney kid meant that every year, from October to December, the TV was tuned in as my sister and I awaited themed Disney Channel Original Movie replays and new special episodes of our favorite shows. Over the years, I have compiled personal favorites that bring on the nostalgic feeling, but I haven’t actually sat down to watch any in a long time. As we come up on the two-year anniversary of the wonderful existence of Disney+, which has let me go back and watch some of these, I present to you my list of the most iconic, underrated and/or cringey spooky-themed episodes and movies to cozy up to this season.

SERIES HALLOWEEN SPECIALS

Everyone that grew up watching Disney Channel in the early 2000s knows that this list could not be complete without the infamous Suite Life of Zack and Cody episode, “The Ghost of Suite 613.”

These 24 minutes alone are the reason this list exists in the first place, as 16 years later the episode still lives up to its nostalgic feeling. The episode brought together the entire cast for a night of frights that gave my little kid self nightmares. After rewatching it as a 20-year-old, however, I have to argue that it is not just the nostalgia speaking, and it is still a quality piece of Disney Channel history.

Even if you don’t want to take it from me, take it from the 2011 MTV article titled “How The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody’s Halloween Episode Changed Everything,” in which the author stated, “Out of all 87 episodes produced during The Suite Life of Zack and Cody’s threeseason run, one is responsible for making the series last as long as it did.”

There are more blast-from-the-past Disney Channel Halloween episodes that also hit the mark, like season one, episode 15 of Phil of the Future, in which Kay Panabaker plays a cyborg named Debbie that forces students to make 50,000 cupcakes without stopping. Although not the scariest thing I’ve seen in my life, this episode was not made for a comedic effect, and I know my childhood self would probably not be sleeping well after watching this.

Some episodes of Disney’s past have not stood the test of time quite as well. For instance, That’s So Raven’s season two Halloween episode titled “Have a Cow,” in which Raven and Chelsea turn into cows on Halloween, misses the mark. Chelsea, a vegetarian, accidently eats a burger with meat and immediately stresses while Raven jumps up to say, “That’s terrible...I almost ate something healthy.” Despite my love for the show as a whole, I do have to say that the episode has not aged very well and was utterly disappointing.

In slightly more recent Disney Channel episodes, A.N.T. Farm’s “MutANT Farm” episode was conceptually really strong, as it was a remake of the pilot episode with a fun, spooky Halloween twist. K.C. Undercover’s “All Howl’s Eve,” which premiered in 2015, was a quality Halloween special as well. Zendaya also stars in it, so what is there not to love?

DISNEY CHANNEL ORIGINAL MOVIES

Disney Channel Original Movies, or DCOMs, are iconic, and there is one for basically every occasion. The first official DCOM was a spooky movie titled Underwraps (1997), in which a group of kids accidentally revive a mummy and must race the clock to return him to his final resting place before midnight on Halloween. Although the original movie is not available on Disney+, a remake by the same name which premiered this month is.

In terms of Halloween DCOMs, the big name is the Halloweentown franchise. The movie and its three sequels were filmed in St. Helens, Oregon. The film continues to be a Halloween staple, despite the final sequel, Return to Halloweentown, premiering 15 years ago.

Despite Halloweentown’s success, I always took on the controversial opinion growing up that the superior Halloween DCOM franchise was Twitches—and Twitches Too—that premiered in 2005 and 2007. I desperately wanted to add them to the list of must-watch movies, but due to the fact that it has been over a decade since I have seen either of them, I needed to do more research.

I will not go as far as to agree with film critic David Nusair from Reel Film Reviews, who states that “Twitches is ultimately as bland and forgettable as one might’ve expected—with the film’s various problems exacerbated by the distinctly underwhelming performances (though the Mowry sisters are personable enough, they simply cannot act).” However, watching it as an adult has given me a different perspective.

Given the main characters are supposed to be close in age with myself, I felt the movie didn’t work as much as I had hoped it would—and how I remembered it did. It was cringey at its finest and although I still love it for the nostalgia factor, in terms of quality content, you might just want to stick to Halloweentown.

A personal guide to the Disney Channel nostalgia

ANASTASIA PARGETT

SHANNON STEED

WHITNEY GRIFFITH

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