Halloween in Chicago

If you associate Halloween with children “trick or treating” their way from door to door in the hope of a sweet or two, stop right there. I have been in Chicago over the weekend making a documentary loosely centered on the subject of war.

The city lived up to its windiness – it made for a spectacularly sunny Halloween with an icy wind billowing in off what amounts to the largest freshwater pond in the world. But whatever we were doing it was impossible to escape the festivities.

Checking into the hotel, the clock behind reception was smothered in cobwebs, the men and women on duty, wore green make up and sported wigs to their waists.

Getting into the elevator, we were joined at intervals by people with horns, fangs, and at times bodies that appeared to represent vast inflated whoopie cushions. So far as I could divine, there wasn’t a child in the 26-floor building.

The entire pumpkin production of Illinois seemed to have descended on Chicago, together with straw bails that appeared to have been dropped by helicopter down the central reservation of Michigan Avenue. But above all, it was the wholesale dressing up – be there or be square, and some were.

I saw a number of cardboard boxes walking down the street, even a wooden box that blew over, crossing at an intersection. The planks fell into the street revealing the unfortunate inmate who fled in pyjamas, carrying bits of timber under his arm.

A mass desire to dress up, to become absurd, seemed to seize the place. The Feast of All Souls? All Saints Eve? Forget it – this is America’s day, all fools day, and it gets bigger every year, more commercialised (many of the ritzier costumes I saw had been professionally constructed and sold) and more infectious (witness its growth in at home in Blighty).

The net result is that the stranger going about his work in normal clothing feels undressed, almost naked and horribly sober. Did I say horribly? That’s quite enough horror for one weekend!