Ah…What a magnificent dragon!

I find myself captivated by the unbelievably creative Halloween displays I take in when I walk down nearby streets during October. I often feel like a tourist, eyes wide open, smart phone out, ready to snap a photo.

Yellow crime scene tape or iridescent, machine spun, spider webs are stretched around fences or front stair railings. It’s not enough to carve a scary face on a pumpkin any more.

A couple blocks away, a large frame home with side driveway and attic, is populated by mannequins acting out a scene from The Walking Dead. Around a dozen adult forms appear to be approaching the home to take it over, climbing into a third floor window and crawling up the lawn toward the front door.

I often see cars make a quick stop in front. Their drivers, people from the neighborhood or workmen from the cable company, snap pictures with their cell phones, like me, poised to share the image with friends.

Close to this scene is a house with The Loch Ness Monster, at least twenty feet long, guarding the front bay window. My local streets also boast bunches of graveyards and white legless beings hanging from trees.

Ah, but the magnificent dragon, on guard on the roof of this house, its purple wings catching the wind at times, moving slowly. Not exactly breathing fire, electric lights from the dragon’s three heads come on at night casting an eerie orange glow. Is the creature protective or menacing?

Over recent years, it seems that Halloween has become a holiday for grown-ups.

Yes, kids still go trick or treating. Bags of candy are dispensed. Inevitably, homeowners complain about buying too much or too little. Family pets allow themselves to be decked out as pumpkins, bumble bees or other animals that they are obviously not and then be paraded down the street.

Twenty-somethings compete in costume contests, creating get-ups inspired by pop culture. Thirty or forty somethings, if they have the money, enjoy decorating their homes and yards with more traditional images of death and demons, with specters and slashers.

I have to wonder if this urge is cathartic in some way. Examining things that are supposed to conjure up fear, but don’t.  Or, for adults, I wonder if Halloween is a celebration of an odd rite of passage, of declaring yourself unafraid.

An Oprah endorsed writing couple, Deb and Ed Shapiro, explained FEAR as an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real. Part of growing up seems to revolve around not buying in to the idea of the boogeyman hiding in the closet or other types of monsters ruining your life.

It’s important to learn not to be afraid of things that are not real, or at least, things that are not bigger or more powerful than you are.

This process starts out when a young adult chooses to release their allegiance to stories they might have been told by people who wanted to control them through fear. Maybe some of these stories were initially told by parents who wanted to protect them.

But it became easy for other beliefs to develop that inhibited taking reasonable risks or believing in oneself, or letting words of criticism raise doubts about being lovable.

All sorts of stories, all sorts of beliefs, may need to be released like letting the air out of an over-sized, inflatable fiend.

We might all have a magnificent dragon in our lives. Maybe at one time certain beliefs protected us. But the time has passed for us to let go of what others may have told us to fear.

Maybe Halloween is about celebrating releasing some of our fears.

Knowing when NOT to be afraid is no small thing.