Every Day is Halloween in SoHum
Tomorrow is Halloween, at least officially, but here in Southern Humboldt County, every day feels like Halloween. Silly costumes and cheesy decorations can’t compare with the scary stuff we contend with all the time here in SoHum. Here’s a sample:
Black Cats I don’t know why anyone would be afraid of a house-cat because of it’s color, whatever it was, but we do have some black cats around here that will make your heart stop. Mountain lions are scary enough, but in our forests, black, or melanistic mountain lions are fairly common. Of the three mountain lions that have crossed my path here in Humboldt, two of them were black, nose to tail. I saw one black mountain lion while walking on BLM land in the King Range and another ran across the road as I was driving through Honeydew.
Skeletons We have more skeletons around here than we have closets to stuff them into here in Humboldt County. If you wander around the hills of SoHum long enough, eventually you’re bound to discover some human remains. You might find a bloated corpse at the tide-line on the beach, a tennis shoe, with a foot still inside it sticking up out of the river bar, or a mauled and partially eaten limb abandoned by a bear in the woods. So many people go missing in Southern Humboldt every year that if you walk in the woods long enough, sooner or later you’ll find one, or become one.
Ghosts We have at least two ghosts in SoHum, and they are both the ghost of chance. That is, in our small rural community, we have two candidates who are both running for Congress, and each of them has a ghost of a chance of being elected. If you believe in ghosts, you might consider voting for Andy Caffrey or Dale*. There’s a scary thought. *Dale works at Shop Smart in Redway, and has officially announced his candidacy. I couldn’t find his last name anywhere, but if you live here, you know who I’m talking about.
Zombies Meth eats brains, leaving in its wake, toothless, hollow-eyed, walking corpses that wander the streets in search of…money… MONEY… MUST HAVE MONEY. This mindless quest for more money has infected almost everyone in SoHum, so the streets are full of zombies, but brains are hard to come by. Frankly, if people in SoHum had more brains, they wouldn’t need so much money, but try convincing a zombie of that.
Bats Nocturnal flying mammals that devour mosquitoes by the thousands are a real blessing here in SoHum. However the bats wielded by local townsfolk strike more than fear into the hearts of the poor and homeless.
Witches Humboldt County’s Wiccan community is responsible for cleaning up a stretch of Highway 101 North of Redcrest, and they have their own Spiritual Perspectives show on KMUD. Around here, witches are pretty mainstream.
Pumpkin-Headed Dummies What would Halloween be without Halloween dummies made of old clothes stuffed with fall leaves, with a jack-o-lantern perched on top for a head. We have a scary, empty-headed stuffed-shirt around here all the time. We call him Blake Lehman.
Trick or Treat If you ate at Treats, you were probably tricked into it.
Bigfoot Sightings Sure, the famous Patterson-Gimlin film, regarded as the most convincing evidence of the existence of Bigfoot, was shot near Willow Creek on the other side of the county, but you can see large, hairy, odoriferous primates of unknown origin any day of the year in SoHum. On Wednesday mornings, you might just see one working on his blog.
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