The Hallowe'en Scarometer

It's time again to crank up the Hallowe'en Scarometer, to let you know which book, which film, which piece of music are most likely to send you screaming from the room and in need of months of therapy.

Ghost stories are the oldest form of scaremongers, and there have been classic appearances of spectral figures--Banquo's ghost who appears to haunt Macbeth's banquet hall (not to mention the three Weird Sisters, brewing their diabolical broth) and the trio of spooks who drop in on Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve. But while the characters are terrified, are we? Maybe not. Ghost stories of the kind told around Boy Scout campfires can be found in the classic tales of Montague Rhodes James, who spent most of his career at Cambridge, and whose stories often have a scholarly setting. Another academic who liked to spin ghost stories was Robertson Davies. While Master of Massey College, he presided at the annual Christmas party, during which he would read a yarn of the supernatural. (M.R. James's stories may be difficult to find, but Davies's were collected and published by Penguin Books under the title "High Spirits.")

However--our choice for best ghost story remains "The Green Man," a novel by Kingsley Amis, published first in 1971. The Irish Times found it "shimmering with panic." It is also very funny, good on food and wine, and including, as the Sunday Times wrote, "superb sexual comedy."

Scariest music for many may be the theme from "Jaws," but we still give top marks to Miklos Rozsa's score for "Spellbound," the 1945 Alfred Hitchcock film that also had dream sequences by Salvador Dali. What provides the chill in Rozsa's theme music is the use of the theremin, an electronic instrument that produces the aural equivalent of ectoplasm. Deliciously chilling.

And finally, the film. Many viewers would vote for "The Exorcist," which caused them to sleep--if they could--with the lights on. And ghosts have materialized in many movies, including the romantic ("The Ghost and Mrs. Muir," "Portrait of Jenny") and the comic (Bob Hope's "The Ghost Breakers," Bill Murray's "Ghostbusters.") But for our money, paltry sum that it is, the best of the films is "The Uninvited," which is not only suitably scary, but is also a clever and subtle mystery, a paranormal riddle, left for brave Ray Milland, ascending the haunted stairs, candelabra in hand, to solve. ("The Uninvited" also gave us Victor Young's lovely "Stella by Starlight"--bonus points for that.)

Enjoy a scary Hallowe'en. A most cordial "boo!" to all.