"When I get a shot at Satan, I'm taking him out..."

This is what my husband said to me this afternoon after having taken a short walk around the block with Ethan. On their way, they passed a house decorated for Halloween. According to David, when Ethan saw the fake bones on the lawn he stopped in his tracks. He made a face, backed away, and said, "scared".


"We've ruined our child," was the thought David and I had as he recounted this little episode to me. "He's scared of bones and flickering lights."


Two nights ago, a friend invited all of us for a little family outing to the local "Haunted Trail". Every year around the time of Halloween, a portion of the paved trail that goes through our town becomes bedecked with all things ghoulish and ghastly to celebrate the holiday. This particular night was touted as the "non-scary" night meant for kids. Our friend was careful to check on this, and David and I thought this would be fun for Ethan, especially since he hadn't seen his friends in a while. At the end of the trail were to be treats and hot chocolate for all, followed by a hayride back to the parking lot. What could be more harmless?




Off we went. It was the first time for all of us (three families in all). The line was long, as was the wait, but we finally reached the entrance. A young college student dressed as Dracula greeted us and gave us some general directions for walking the trail. His costume and painted face, which did strike a scary bone in me, probably should have been indication to turn around and forgo the trail, which turned out to be more intense than we thought.

Ethan hated it. No, I should say he was rather terrified. We walked the whole trail, Ethan clutching onto Daddy for dear life. He didn't scream or whine, but it was dark, so I didn't notice his face until we got well into the trail. He looked perturbed, eyes wide, and still. I then heard his scared whimperings. I told him to shut his eyes as we passed the monsters, the smoking cauldrons, the flickering fake fires. To their credit, the monsters were not trying to scare us (they are instructed NOT to). Instead, they said happy hellos. But the imagery was enough to scare our dear Ethan.

I sound melodramatic, don't I?

His two friends, who are about the same age, showed no fear. In fact, one of them walked beside his mommy completely unperturbed. The other, who was also being held by his daddy, didn't seem to be scared, though I was so caught up with Ethan that I may not have noticed. We finished the trail in the drizzle that started to come down, had some watered down hot chocolate, and hopped on the hayride truck. Ethan had never seemed so happy to get back to the van ("White car!" he calls it).

Ethan could not sleep in his room the entire night. He whimpered and cried until 10 o'clock. No amount of encouragement from Mommy or Daddy could comfort him. I finally asked him if he wanted to sleep with us, and he quietly said "uh huh". We've never had our son in bed with us, and we thought we would make this one exception. Five minutes later, he fell sound asleep. Luckily, the next night he did sleep in his room without too much fuss. But when Daddy tried to put a space heater in his room, Ethan said "No want," and he picked it up and put it outside his room. The space heater had a flickering light, not unlike some of the ones we saw on the trail that night.

I don't know anything about the psychology of fear. But my question is this: Do we learn to fear, or are we innately afraid of certain things?

No one taught Ethan to fear ghosts or witches; he doesn't even know what they are. And not one of us acted scared as we walked the trail. As far as we were concerned, we could have been strolling down the trail to admire the fall foliage (though it was dark). So why was Ethan scared? David likes to think that Ethan is blessed with heightened spiritual awareness and discernment and is therefore completely turned off by all things unholy. Maybe so; we'll never really know. To some extent, I believe there is indeed a God-given instinct in all of us that allows us to distinguish between the light and the darkness. Maybe Ethan is more responsive to this instinct than others.

It breaks my heart to see Ethan afraid. No one wants to instill fear in their kids. Gosh, have we really ruined him? Are these dark images forever imprinted in his young mind? I remember my dad used to drive me through a certain part of Central Park in the evening, where the trees were tall and you could barely see the sky. My dad would say, "Gargoyles!" and he would do that "ooooohhh, mwahahaha" type thing. "See the gargoyles?" he would say. "They're gonna getcha!" As a four year-old it got me every time-- I would lean in close and shriek in fear. I don't ever remember really believing in gargoyles, but perhaps the thought of what a creature like that would be was enough to plant the seeds of fear. Even fear of something that didn't exist. I have to admit, I never forgot those drives through Central Park, or those images of the dark trees above.

Well, David still wants to "take Satan out" for scaring our son, but I have to ask myself, "Should we as Christians be spiritually sensitive for our children?" Obviously, good Christian parents and children can enjoy the haunted trail without any negatives (and our friends are examples of this). But Ethan was obviously scared, and as the children's song says, "Be careful little eyes what you see."