Graveyard Smash

It all began because of a lame old song, sung or recited by a one-hit singer nobody could pick out of a crowd. The song was even inspired by an earlier, odd-duck tune with the theme of mashed potatoes. The earlier one was sung by a girl group, maybe around 1960. That didn’t keep the lame song from becoming way too popular, from being played annually at a certain time of the year: pre-Halloween. 

Every year since 1962 right up until now that tune haunts commuters by car, customers who walk by a store display and set off the mummy with a spooky voice, who starts to sing; or any weekend gathering held at night during September and October.

The song, or The Song, was of course, “Monster Mash.” Right up there. With other seasonal melodies like “On the Boardwalk” or “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” That was how a generation, no, two generations, later there were still adolescents laughing and making jerky movements when they heard it. Many of those adolescents didn’t know their parents and grandparents secretly did the same thing. In the privacy of their homes, of course.

The song was spooky because of its effect on listeners. Conversations would stop, people would look at each other, then a lot of them would start to move like one of the characters in the lyrics. For a moment, groups were like suspended in time, moving jerkily, laughing like mad persons, then finally, like people who were enjoying a good joke. Parody made for popularity.

The Song was thus the inspiration for the idea to spend a night in a graveyard. 

Here are some of the most relevant lines from the lyrics:

I was working in the lab, late one night

When my eyes beheld an eerie sight

For my monster from his slab, began to rise

And suddenly to my surprise

He did the mash, he did the monster mash

So, yeah, the couple - whose names were Jordan and Jamie - did the dumb little dead-person-walking dance and decided they would take that party to the grave. They would go to the closest cemetery, which was a very quiet one in fact, and raise hell. Or just dance and scare the people sleeping beneath the stone slabs. That was the only way to reenact the scene in the lyrics. You couldn’t do it at home on the living room couch. Very inauthentic. They each practiced speaking in monster voices, notably the one they thought fit Frankenstein. 

That was the only way to sing “Monster Mash,” of course.

This plan showed very little respect for the song’s composer, singer, or producer. The pair weren’t taking the scene seriously. There’s only one thing to say to that: Karma still exists, and Jamie and Jordan would eventually pay for being disrespectful. Nonetheless, they kept singing the verses, because they wanted to have them memorized perfectly”

From my laboratory in the castle east

To the master bedroom where the vampires feast

The ghouls all came from their humble abodes

To get a jolt from my electrodes

They did the mash, they did the monster mash

The monster mash, it was a graveyard smash

“What do you think a ghoul looks like?” Jordan suddenly asked Jamie.

“What do you mean?” Jamie replied.

“Well, are they evil? Do they physically harm people? Were they originally people or have the always been supernatural humans?”

“Hmmm, I don’t think I have ever thought about those things.”

“What color are they? Gray, green, or brown? Or mottled? I doubt if they come in chartreuse or fuchsia.”

“Ha ha! That’s funny. There are pink elephants but no pink ghouls?” 

Some research on the origin and nature of ghouls was necessary if they wanted to pull this thing off. Neither of the two offered to do it, and so they remained uneducated. That is not a wise thing to do when planning to spend an entire night in a cemetery.

Jamie and Jordan had gotten so distracted by thoughts of teal or coral or lemony ghouls that they had forgotten the electrodes part. It was right there in the song! They didn’t have any extra electrodes lying around, either, so they looked into party stores and one of the stores had those old hand buzzers pranksters used to use a lot. They didn’t even consider tasers. Those are not things people should mess around with, not at all.

The zombies were having fun, the party had just begun

The guests included Wolfman, Dracula, and his son

The scene was rockin', all were digging the sounds

Igor on chains, backed by his baying hounds

The coffin-bangers were about to arrive

With their vocal group, 'The Crypt-Kicker Five'

This all required a hard decision. So many guests. Jamie and Jordan had obvious reasons for wanting to spend their evening graveside alone, just the two of them. They considered a number of solutions: go ahead and invite their friends; make some cardboard characters; ignore the lyrics and just use their imaginations to conjure up everybody mentioned in the song. For the record, neither Jordan nor Jamie considered hooking up with any real zombies like the ones in The Walking Dead and its spin-off. Those fellows would have a lot of commitments this time of year, anyway. 

We’ll leave out the details of what they decided to do and not do, to take and not to take. They were mostly interested in being silly, hopping and staggering around like the characters doing the monster mash dance. They wanted to parody the song that was already a parody of itself. That weird voice used by Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett and the over-the-top facial gestures à la Frankenstein were never intended to frighten anybody.

When all those layers were combined, it isn’t hard to understand how the whole adventure turned out...

Finally the night arrived. Jordan and Jamie were well prepared and were looking forward to their little adventure. They hugged. Both had the same thought: the power of song...

Out from his coffin, Drac's voice did ring

Seems he was troubled by just one thing

He opened the lid and shook his fist and said

"Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?

Jordan adeptly mimed the figure of the world’s most famous vampire, while Jamie was superb with the sound effects. This set of lines alone had so much potential. Jordan moved, lurked, and stalked. Jamie did the creaking of the coffin lid and afterward added sounds like bats screeching and chains dragging. It’s amazing to think a human being could produce a sound like a chain moving across the floor, but Jamie did it. After this section was ready for the graveside stage, some twisting was inserted. They kind of put their own little dance party inside the Monster Mash party. Layers. Like the ones in a shroud.

Now everything's cool, Drac's a part of the band

And my Monster Mash is the hit of the land

For you, the living this mash was meant too

When you get to my door, tell them Boris sent you

Idea is to go to cemetery, play song, dance until they ‘turned into zombies’ to “Monster Mash.”

Boris? Make a sign with the name and attach it to the closest tree in the cemetery.

For you, the living? If Jamie and Jordan were singing this in the graveyard, are you aware of the irony? The ‘you’ can only be the people buried there. Not exactly what you’d call ‘the living’.

They might also have taken some sorts of sustenance just to enhance the mood. Nothing illegal, though. Stories with drugs in them are boring. This isn’t one of those.

Other paraphernalia considered essential by Jordan and Jamie: a flashlight or iPhone; a blanket and cushion, to use when not dancing. This was necessary so as not to break any tombstones or bones, should either of them fall while cavorting to the silly music. They wanted to be respectful, even if the tune was silly. 

Then the creativity kicked in. Water, salt, flowers, candles were all chosen as props. They suddenly wanted to do a fusion event, so decided to include the Mayan tradition from the Day of the Dead the Día de los Muertos. That’s when people go to have supper by the graves of loved ones and set up altars in their homes to honor those who have passed. That Muertos stuff was quite the cultural practice, so they wanted to give it a whirl.

Another super-interesting custom that Jordan and Jamie had heard about was something called souling. In Portugal that involved going house to house begging for bread called pão-por-Deus. It sounded a lot like trick-or-treating and they thought they could work that in, too. When they described the custom to other people, they got a lot of approving nods. The night was going to be good.

Nevertheless, souling in a graveyard would probably not be very successful, because the people buried there most likely didn’t have access to a kitchen so they could prepare it. If they took their own bread, they could pretend they’d gotten it from the neighborhood of gravestones. Jamie and Jordan were getting positively giddy and were quite impressed with their ideas as well as the irony of the whole thing.

Celtic lands could not be ignored, and Samhain, All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day - all those were fertile grounds for plucking ritual fruit. Jamie noted the importance of bonfires, which could purify but also serve to make sacrifices to the gods. Jordan recalled the night as one for divination, sometimes using stones. They might be able to manage a tiny fire off to one side of the cemetery, they thought. The stones would already be there.

So original. That’s what fusion is. And so the program was set, with a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

On to the graveyard...

The pair were now alone, getting ready to celebrate the evening. They had pop culture in the form of the “Monster Mash” song. They had the bread-for-the-love-of-God. They had the ingredients for the Mayan ceremonial supper. They had fire for the Celts. Each of them had also added a few extra things without telling the other, as part of the fun. 

The plan was simple: play the theme song, then enact one of the other cultural rituals, and alternate until they were tired. After that, spread out the blanket with the cushion and - whatever. 

Except for one small detail.

There was no internet reception in the cemetery. A person who likes that sort of humor might feel inclined to point out that nobody residing in the cemetery was likely to have any use for the internet, so why pay for it? Neither Jordan nor Jamie would have found it very humorous as they stood by an especially impressive pink marble headstone, unable to find coverage so they could play the song. It was supposed to provide the comical backdrop for the other activities that had been planned. It was intended to serve as the skeleton that would tie everything together.

There was no connection to the rest of the world by internet. That is a terrible situation for society today, especially its younger members. Now two people found themselves trying to stage a parody of Halloween using the dance music as inspiration, and juxtapose it with cultural rituals found elsewhere. Trying, but failing, and suddenly not laughing. They had revealed to friends what they planned to do, and some had said they’d never last the night.

Jamie and Jordan were determined to last the night.

They lay down on the blanket, close to one another, thinking only of staying warm and surviving. With Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett’s crew to sing and dance along with, they remained silent. One or the other gave an occasional shudder. They were in over their heads. It felt like they had stepped into an open grave made ready to receive an occupant. They did not like that feeling, not at all.

No ghouls, zombies, vampires, mummies, or other disreputable, disgusting, decrepit beings appeared that night. That was the impression Jordan and Jamie had when they left the grassy green expanse with its stone populace. Not that they had expected to see any such things. It had all been about the song, that silly song that never got old, and it had been around for more than five decades. And now, song or not, they had proven they had been capable of standing their ground in scary territory...

Jamie’s and Jordan’s friends crowded around, asking tons of questions, almost harassing the pair. They listened, then, bored with the ‘we just went to sleep’ ending, started discussing other things. That was when Jamie and Jordan carried some items out to the grass of the commons and began to arrange them in three groups.

The first group had candles, flowers, salt, water, food. Jamie and Jordan gave everyone a sheet of paper with, among other information, a quote from History.com:

The roots of the Day of the Dead, celebrated in contemporary Mexico and among those of Mexican heritage in the United States and around the world, go back some 3,000 years, to the rituals honoring the dead in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. The Aztecs and other Nahua people living in what is now central Mexico held a cyclical view of the universe, and saw death as an integral, ever-present part of life.

The second group had little cakes or rolls and some fruit. There was more information available. Here is a small sample of some things taken directly from Wikipedia:

The Pão-de-Deus or Santoro is the bread, or offering, that is given to the dead, the Molete or Samagaio (also called sabatina, raiva da criança (child's rage)) is the bread, or offering, that is given when a child is born.

There are records of the day of Pão-de-Deus in the 15th century.^[9] On 1 November 1755 in Lisbon, after the vast majority of the city's residents lost everything to the Great Lisbon earthquake the survivors had to ask for this bread in the neighbouring towns.

The third group had a small, but not miniature, bonfire that was ready to be lit. There were also some rocks that may or may not have had inscriptions. This time an example of the information provided comes from the Ancient History Encyclopedia, and is quoted exactly here:

Samhain marked the transition between the year’s lighter and darker halves and was celebrated throughout the ancient Celtic communities of Europe, including Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. Believed by the ancient Celts to be a liminal time when the veil between the human and spirit realms is lifted, Samhain is considered by many to be the precursor to contemporary Halloween celebrations. Samhain is also the modern Irish word for the month of November. 

Their friends did not comprehend a thing, because all they could see were three small areas with a few items in each. They knew nothing about what they had before them. Their natural reaction was to laugh, thinking Jamie and Jordan were playing a children’s game or pretending they were in a cemetery on Halloween night, last night. If so, staying there must have made them crazy. 

Nobody dared ask again about the monsters of said pop song, nobody mouthed a word concerning Dracula, nobody breather a syllable about the possibility of zombies. Haha.

Nobody believed in Halloween any more. Maybe they had seen that there had once been much more than things going bump in the night on October 31st. Maybe they were just curious enough to learn more about the relationship of the living with the dead, as history tells us, not Disney.

Much later that same evening:

“We still don’t know what a ghoul is,” said Jordan.

“Yes, we do. Well, I do,” replied Jamie. “According to Britannica, and I quote”:

Ghoul, Arabic ghūl, in popular legend, demonic being believed to inhabit burial grounds and other deserted places. In ancient Arabic folklore, ghūls belonged to a diabolic class of jinn (spirits) and were said to be the offspring of Iblīs, the prince of darkness in Islam. They were capable of constantly changing form, but their presence was always recognizable by their unalterable sign—ass’s hooves.

“That is so cool,” exclaimed Jordan. “So how did the ghouls travel so far?”

Morals of the story:

1. Do not underestimate the value of getting outside your comfort zone.
2. Do not be afraid to be afraid.
3. Be creative.
4. Dance and sing, alive or dead.
5. Do not be afraid to dig deeper. You may dig a grave or you may become an archaeologist, which means a very knowledgeable person.