Guest writer Tommie Shea makes an argument for why Halloween and Horror AREN’T incompatible with Christian ideology
That time is upon us. That season of ghouls and goblins and witches and monsters. A time to be scared of what goes bump in the night because the night isn’t empty this time of year. So, be aware boys and girls, your nightmares are real and this is the time they come out to play. It’s OK to be scared and this is the time to dress up, drink, party and enjoy the fandom of fear.That is the messaging, is it not? The message created by the world, for the world and given to the world. The general Christian consensus is to simply ignore Halloween or for more passionate members to boycott or protest against it. Both are valid ways to deal with the season and what it represents, though I would ask the reader to entertain a third and far more relevant practice. That is to embrace Halloween, not for what it currently represents or how it currently is represented, but as a potential prospect for what it could be for Christianity. A highly visible pre-existing pipeline sitting wide open for Christian horror. A genre for the most part ignored, but directly in line with scriptural teachings and a space of immense opportunity to close a gap where God has been ignored as irrelevant or not appropriate.
Though multiple truths can exist at the same time, Halloween as it currently exists is an offense to Christianity and what it stands for while still functioning as a real point of growth to find a new and non-standard way of reaching those who choose to participate anyway. It provides a real, valid, option for younger people or people of all ages. Not as a way to commercialize God, but to take something the world uses for bad and convert it into something good for God. Scripture says, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
Today, for Christians, that horror shelf is empty. We have left the world to determine how to influence our friends, neighbors and children. Let’s be honest. Whether we admit it or not, millions of Christians participate every year, guided by Hollywood and interests that don’t have God as a central tether regarding how it’s represented.
Many classics today can be repackaged with the right messages for Christians.
The Exorcist is a classic example. Demonic possession isn’t foreign territory Christianity needs to borrow from horror; it sits directly within Scripture. Jesus Himself cast out demons, confronted them as intelligent beings, and treated them as forces capable of possessing and tormenting human beings. The Omen goes even further, building its horror around the Antichrist and Christian apocalyptic expectation. The Conjuring films repeatedly enter the same territory through demons, possession, faith and spiritual warfare. Even The Exorcism of Emily Rose places religious belief and scientific skepticism directly against one another and asks the audience what explanation can actually account for what they’re witnessing. These films work because Christianity already possesses a vocabulary for supernatural evil. Hollywood didn’t invent demons, possession, judgment or the end of the world. It discovered that they’re terrifying.
The connections don’t have to be literal either. Zombie films such as Night of the Living Dead can be viewed through a Christian lens: the dead rise, civilization collapses and humanity suddenly confronts a world in which death no longer follows the rules everyone assumed it would. Vampires have an even longer relationship with Christianity. Bram Stoker’s Dracula surrounds its monster with crosses, sacred objects, corrupted blood and an evil that imitates eternal life while delivering something horrifying instead. Even Stephen King’s The Stand builds an apocalyptic struggle around competing forces of good and evil, faith, temptation, sacrifice and humanity being forced to choose whom it will follow. Christians can repurpose these existing stories and tropes where they fit. But more importantly, we can create our own stories where the Christian meaning isn’t discovered afterward by the audience. It was there when the monster was created.
But this is not “Halloween Repackaged.” Certainly, many existing movies, books, etc. can be reframed under a Christian mindset as a secondary goal. However, the real primary goal is to produce a Christian Halloween. Where the horrors of belief are real, they seek to destroy us and cause real harm. Born from Scripture and not borrowed from cinema or mainstream books. Not a movie, not make-up, not dramatic prose, but real war with real casualties. Hollywood is merely a shadow of what real horror looks like. And if the world wants fear? Scripture knows how to produce it in spades.
The truth is, God is the king of horror. He’s been writing horror for millennia before Hollywood ever thought to coin the phrase. As tongue in cheek as that sounds, perhaps even a trope itself, it nonetheless is true. Nothing is more frightening than Scripture. The most popular movies in history all ping around the edges of the stories of the Bible as God knows the things we fear most.
The Bible is the scariest book ever written. We just got used to it because we stopped hearing about it on Sundays.
I implore you, read Scripture again with this mindset, like you’ve never read it before. People plagued by demons, ripping at their flesh, wailing in pain and agony, unable to escape. Tormented by things they cannot see nor touch and have no ‘thing’ to run and hide from. Giants that strike fear and bring death, the Nephilim, great terrifying men of renown. A destroyer, hidden between the shadows, moving through Egypt in the dark, killing firstborn children. Locusts from the black abyss with faces like men and teeth like lions. A king whose mind is so plagued by nightmarish thoughts that it shreds itself to pieces. All these things we often read with a passing glance and never stop to absorb the sheer horror of it all.
These aren’t monsters that die when the credits roll or the last page is read. They are the real monsters that movies and books are only the mere essence of.
Here’s what Halloween could be for Christians: A time to look into that dark abyss and remind ourselves that the darkness has a face. That evil isn’t a story, it doesn’t play dress up, and it’s coming for you. It’s coming for all of us.
Christian Halloween then becomes a real opportunity. First, it stands next to Halloween so our loved ones have a real valid alternate option. Next, it puts Christianity and God back in control of the narrative for our youth and friends. And finally, we meet evil where it stands today, not where we wish it to be. We didn’t create Halloween, but that doesn’t mean we allow the devil to run it free of consequences either.
This is a missing gap that Scripture can fill. And it’s time to address it directly. God doesn’t allow a free pass, so neither should we. Because horror done right is a concept never spoken. It has only been their horror and our belief. A constant struggle between those we lose to it and those that stand strong. When the question isn’t really tackled. Why not? Why not show believers real fear? Why not say if you want to be scared then God will show you what’s in the closet. He’ll show you what’s watching you from outside your windows at night. If it’s fear you crave then God will provide as He always does.
Think about what actually frightens people. It’s not the mask or the fake blood. It’s the feeling that something is wrong in a way science and knowledge cannot explain cleanly. That something exists beyond the October box we put it in. That cannot be contained at all. An intelligent, desire-fueled, intention whose sole purpose is to do real harm. A single unified focus of destruction. The Bible doesn’t flinch from that. Paul says plainly that we’re not fighting flesh and blood. We’re fighting principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness. That’s not poetry. That’s a threat assessment. That’s grab a weapon and stand a post.
The church used to know this. Medieval Christians carved demons into their cathedrals. Dante wrote the most famous horror story in Western literature and put his enemies in hell. Nobody thought that was weird. No one accused him of greed or commercialism. It is fact. And somewhere along the way we decided faith was supposed to be safe — felt-board safe, greeting-card safe. Skip that chapter and go to the good stuff … safe.
So when October rolls around and the culture wants to talk about monsters, Christians don’t need to change the subject. They need to stand up and put God on the stage. It’s the time to remind the world, what real monsters lie underneath all that fake makeup, sex and gore they push out every year.
Fear is an inevitable tool. It will be used against you. The only difference is choosing who holds it. Will God wield it or will you allow the world to become its master? Has the world not been the allowed master of our fears long enough It’s time to snatch back control of the narrative. It is time we stop boxing Scripture and predetermining where it is allowed and not allowed to speak. It is more than a mere holiday; it is about addressing an integral part of our existence. That gap will remain whether we address it or not. Leave it empty and something else will fill it, with no boundary to hold it back. Seize it or it will be seized for you. And your children.
Meet Tommie!
Tommie Shea writes the Looming Darkness supernatural horror trilogy — the final book just published — plus the AlphaDynamics science books and the Sola Scriptura theology series, out of Oklahoma City. His pitch is simple: Christians shouldn’t sit Halloween out, because the Bible has more monsters than Hollywood ever dreamed up.