Classic Unbelievable: Is Halloween harmless fun or a doorway to evil?  Peter Laws vs Michael Cummins

Host Ruth Jackson introduces Baptist minister and horror enthusiast Peter Laws, whose book The Frighteners examines why people enjoy being scared, and pastor Michael Cummins, a deliverance minister who warns about Halloween’s occult roots. Laws says Christians often react to Halloween with a knee-jerk fear that ignores its history and present-day reality. Most parties, he argues, turn scary imagery into harmless “laughs and squeals,” offering a chance to contemplate death and evil while refusing to take them seriously as powers. He sees Halloween as a potentially positive celebration rather than an inherently dangerous one.

Cummins recounts growing up in a poor London family with a Catholic father and a mystical mother. At nine, after entering a church for a Scouts parade, he says he heard high-pitched and buzzing noises, felt pushed and pulled, saw things in his home, heard tapping, and experienced his bed shaking. He says he was eventually lifted from the bed and thrown onto the floor, experiences his teachers interpreted as madness. After his mother told him the devil was trying to claim him, he prayed one morning; his bedroom filled with light and the fear disappeared. He later returned to Christianity and spent decades in deliverance ministry.

Cummins says many people he has counselled became interested in the occult after Halloween, then moved toward tarot cards and Ouija boards. He cites Satanist Anton LaVey’s reported remark that he was glad Christian parents let children worship the devil one night a year, and says Samhain was viewed in witchcraft circles as a time when the boundary between living and dead became thin. Laws challenges the historical certainty behind such claims: Samhain was associated with the Celtic transition from summer to winter, but the Celts left no written history, and later accounts may have exaggerated sacrifice and devil worship. He emphasizes that “Halloween” comes from the Christian All Hallows’ Eve.

Laws argues that the seasonal movement into winter naturally invites reflection on death, mystery and darkness. He does not oppose churches holding “light parties,” but says making them the only Christian response can imply that Christianity contains only sweetness and whiteness. He compares this with parents who avoid classic fairy tales because they contain danger, noting that older stories exposed children to darker ideas than sanitized modern stories such as The Gruffalo. Cummins replies that Halloween was not part of his South London childhood and seems to have arrived through modern American influence, but concedes that some people can enjoy a party harmlessly while others are vulnerable.

Cummins says Halloween can be a “basement bargain” entry point to occult practices, especially for suggestible people exploring the internet alone. Laws responds that horror and Halloween took him in the opposite direction: as a nonchurchgoing, anti-Christian child, horror films were among the only cultural forms that treated supernatural reality, objective good and evil, and life after death as serious possibilities. He used a Ouija board when young out of curiosity rather than a desire for satanic power, though he would not recommend it now. Cummins describes a family who tried to contact a dead husband through a Ouija board; he says the home became disturbed, the dog would not enter, and the woman levitated during his prayer.

Laws explains that many people enjoy horror as a controlled encounter with subjects relevant to everyone, especially death and suffering. He compares it with a roller coaster: fear can produce an adrenaline rush when the person remains safe and knows the danger is fictional. Cummins recalls a neighbour who watched The Exorcist and was too frightened to re-enter her flat, leaving her baby inside while she waited on the balcony for her husband. He nevertheless considers The Exorcist unusually pro-Christian because good ultimately defeats evil. Both agree that fear becomes harmful when it dominates someone’s life, though they disagree about how broadly Christians should warn against horror.

Laws says people who watch horror generally identify with victims in peril rather than with killers, unlike pornography, which can encourage viewers to want the depicted experience. He argues that studies and cultural history do not support the claim that violent entertainment programs people for real violence; he notes that youth crime has fallen even as video games became more violent. He sees gore as, for some viewers, a form of artistic creativity and a controlled way to process fear. Cummins remains cautious, particularly about children and vulnerable people, and links exposure to disturbing online material with concern about young offenders, while acknowledging that not everyone reacts the same way.

Cummins says he is more concerned about supposedly real paranormal programs such as Ghost Adventures than about fictional films. He recounts a New Jersey case involving a woman whose daughter appeared to change after filming an episode in Florida; the daughter began an affair, and her husband later murdered both her and the lover. Cummins says the mother reported poltergeist activity and that three Catholic exorcists failed before he cleansed the house in about ninety minutes; he also says the mother’s rheumatoid arthritis disappeared. Laws leaves open the possibility of supernatural activity but says many such accounts could involve mental illness, misdiagnosis, exaggeration or faulty memory.

The discussion turns to claims that ghosts, demons and exorcisms are psychological rather than supernatural. Cummins says only six of the thousands of people he has helped in thirty years seemed genuinely demon-possessed; most were frightened people whose fear had opened them to further problems. He agrees Christians should not see demons under every dustbin. Laws cites C. S. Lewis’s warning against two opposite errors: denying demons entirely or believing so thoroughly that they are seen everywhere. Both accept that supernatural experiences need not be demonic; Cummins describes seeing his deceased father’s face smiling in a mirror, which he experienced as peaceful after his father’s deathbed conversion.

In closing, Cummins acknowledges serious abuses within deliverance ministry: he has seen a minister punch a man while claiming a demon was in his face and others touch women inappropriately. He insists that Jesus, not a pastor in an expensive suit, is the deliverer, and says practitioners should investigate a person’s family history, mental health, bereavements and other circumstances before praying. He recommends medical help for depression where appropriate and says grief or job loss should not automatically be labelled demonic. Laws remains concerned that vulnerable people can be psychologically harmed when mental illness or epilepsy is misidentified as possession.