Recently I listened to the Door’s mellow yet satisfying album Waiting for the Sun.

The track “Summer’s Almost Gone” particularly resonates with me this time of year, although probably not for the same reasons as it did for The Doors (interestingly enough, another track on the album is “Wintertime Love”, so the change of the seasons definitely influenced the band on this album).

For me, this is the time of year that I get jacked for Jack-o-Lanterns, giddy for gourds, and generally pumped for pumpkins.

I long for the that crisp feeling in the air, falling leaves, and fire pits, that season that the poet Keat’s described as “the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”.

This makes me wonder – how did something as innocuous as a mere fruit become an object of terror? Certainly stories like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and movies like Pumpkinhead have helped solidify this gourd’s place in all things spooky, but where did the association between pumpkins and fear begin in the first place? One wonders.

Back to The Doors – near the end of the song, Morrison mournfully croons these lyrics: “When summer’s gone, where will we be?”

Well, by early October, the major cable networks (AMC, USA, etc.) will start running horror movies nonstop – classic movie franchises like Halloween (ironically, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, involves the Druids and Samhain, which I mention earlier in this post) and Friday the 13th (and yes, the excellent Pumpkinhead), as well as newer additions to the horror film lexicon like Scream and Urban Legend.

So my dearly departed Morrison, when summer’s gone, glued to the silver screen is where I’ll be!

Where you will find yourselves as we enter the dark half of the year?