Halloween may be marketed as a harmless night of costumes and candy — but mental health experts have been warning for decades that the holiday can unleash very real psychological trauma.
“We need to understand that Halloween can actually amplify some of the psychiatric disturbances of people who were either victims of satanic ritual abuse or who were just traumatized by the fear and the just depravity that some people like to showcase on Halloween,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey explains.
A 1991 Washington Post article documents how Halloween has historically triggered emotional breakdowns, suicidal episodes, and violent behavior among patients suffering from multiple personality disorder (now classified as dissociative identity disorder).
Many of those patients linked their trauma to childhood abuse — and in some highly disturbing cases, alleged satanic ritual activity.
“Patients with multiple personality disorder (MPD) exhibit bizarre behavior in which personalities with distinct histories and voices — called ‘alters’ — emerge from a ‘host’ personality under the influence of severe stresses. The illness is believed to arise most often as a defense against child abuse that is typically sexual and physically painful,” the article reads.
“Of the 12 patients in the hospital today, six are having trouble with memories related to Halloween,” said Bruce Leonard, a psychiatrist who treats child abuse victims at the Columbine Psychiatric Center outside Denver, the article continues.
In the article, Leonard explained that a former patient of his was flying to Colorado from her home in Michigan to spend Halloween in the hospital, after “physically threatening her psychiatrist in Michigan” for the weeks leading up to it.
Another psychiatrist, Bennett G. Braun, told the Washington Post that “patients become increasingly suicidal, increasingly agitated” around Halloween.
Five of Braun’s hospitalized patients were “reliving Halloween trauma,” while one of his patients “with a history of satanic cult abuse” was being kept in the hospital until the holiday was over.
Another patient of his attempted suicide on Halloween the year prior and claimed to have been a childhood participant in “rites involving human sacrifice.”
“About 20% of MPD patients … claim that their childhood abuse involved organized satanic rites. Although few psychiatrists treating these patients today deny that their patients have a history of child abuse, there is great debate about whether the ‘satanic’ events actually occurred or are fantasy grafted onto recollections of more conventional abuse,” the article reads.
“So we don’t actually know if they actually endured satanic ritual abuse or if it had something directly to do with Halloween, although some of them seem to be able to cite specifically what happened to them on Halloween, or if this is a symptom of their psychiatric problems,” Stuckey says.
“But I think it’s an interesting phenomenon, and I do think that we should give more weight to presenting very scary, gruesome, morbid things to children before they have the ability to be able to understand it,” she continues.
“I don’t think it’s lighthearted to scare children and to present them with things that celebrate death and darkness and fear. I do think that you are setting them up for some kind of trauma. … And I think we do need to take that seriously,” she adds.
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