The North American Halloween Prevention Initiative - Do They Know It's Halloween?: youtube.com/watch?v=jVc11TB8_9g
The place I grew up was once famous for a serial killer. He was called the "Monster of Miramichi" by the press. He killed and raped, was loose through our community for close to a year. When he was caught and tried they used DNA fingerprinting to convict him, one of the first successful uses of this technique in a crime case.
I was very young when this all happened. My parents consciously never talked about it at home, I only heard mentions of this mans name at school. His existence wasn't a part of my young life and I don't think I would have been able to conceive of his actions had I known. The only thing I remember from that period in Miramichi was that the town canceled Halloween.
When I was about 17 I was working in a shoe store and my coworker, who had grown up in Ontario, asked me about the serial killer. He said he'd heard about it when he was growing up, wanted to know what it had been like here as it was all happening. I had no answers for him and in fact had to look up this man and what he did because I'd only ever known his name as mentioned in conversation and that he had been a serial killer. I knew nothing else and had had no personal connection to the events though I had been there.
I suppose I'm glad I was sheltered from that fear. I remember young girls telling me about sleep overs they had and being terrified at night together, mentioning his name as if he actually was some sort of monster, some creature that isn't a man. I wouldn't have wanted that looming.
By no means do I mean to forward some philosophy of ignorance or shelter, I think one should be able to acknowledge a fear and simply overcome it. But what would a child think exposed to such inhumanity? Can that be overcome at such a young age? I wonder how I would have developed knowing of that monster.
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