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You can find no trace of irony or humor in earnest Puritan fearfulness.

Most Halloween costumes are creepy-cute, while some are unsettling.

Levity leaves us happily in control.

Play often rewards us emotionally, with a thrill or a feeling of wonder. A roller coaster ride or a peek through a telescope trained on the cratered moon, so different, both captivating and edgy, yet easily understood as occasions for play. The body responds. The mind travels.

But consider two real or hypothetical events that lurk uncomfortably nearby in memory or imagination—a near car crash in our lingering felt-experiences, or terrifying thoughts of extinction-level planetary invasions that Hollywood loads us up with. You know the stories: a soulless hive-mind eyes our green and pleasant lands; an extra-terrestrial vanguard seeds Earth with pods that germinate with malicious, lookalike non-human infiltrators; or an emissary from a galactic police force arrives to put the planet on notice that its hungry warlike nature, its appetite for conquest, will not long be tolerated in this neighborhood of a peaceful galaxy.

We surely have enough real potential catastrophes to worry about in this Halloween season—orbiting nukes that could detonate and fry our power grid, for example, or glacial collapse that would flood coastal cities and stifle the Gulf Stream, or election subversion from power-hungry office-holders.

Yet in this spooky season, we celebrate the macabre as play and laugh in its face. Play is therapy.

Conquering Fear With Play

In the movies, a hero or a heroic coalition or natural defenses or a fundamental change of heart routinely defeat the threats. A grounded pilot steals a fighter jet and explodes a bomb in the intake valves of the mothership; the invading force succumbs to terrestrial microbes; a sobered world puts aside its squabbles to unite........

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