The spooks are out tonight…

Make sure you’re wearing something that can be seen. Reflective is always good lights that you carry are even better.

Don’t shine lights directly in people’s eyes…

You knew that…

No trick, great treat… Free advice.

Tonight

See and be seen by using reflective tape, bright colors, and flashlights or glow sticks. Always cross streets safely using crosswalks and making eye contact with drivers. Finally, inspect all treats for tampering before eating.

Evol uoy.

Back Masking… Spooks

The concept of backmasking—embedding messages or audio into a track that can only be understood when played in reverse—occupies a unique crossover space between audio engineering, esoteric philosophy, and classic Halloween lore.Here is how speaking backwards and backmasking connect to the occult, Halloween traditions, and spooky pop-culture mythology.

1. Occult Origins:

Crowley and “Reversal Rituals”Long before magnetic tape or vinyl records existed, reversing language and action was a staple of Western occult traditions: * Aleister Crowley and Law of Reverse Motion: Prominent 20th-century occultist Aleister Crowley advocated for practicing reverse actions as a way to train the mind and break standard patterns of perception. In his book Magick in Theory and Practice (1919), he suggested that practitioners train themselves to speak, read, and write backwards, as well as play phonograph records in reverse, to unlock hidden willpower and spiritual awareness.

* Inversion in Rituals:

Historic folklore often framed reversal—such as reciting the Lord’s Prayer backward or walking counter-clockwise (widdershins) around a church—as a method to summon spirits, invoke curses, or signal allegiance to dark forces.

2. Backmasking and the 1980s “Satanic Panic”

In the 1970s and 1980s, the esoteric idea of reverse audio exploded into mainstream pop culture and moral panic. * Subliminal Demonic Messages: Religious commentators and media figures claimed that rock and heavy metal bands were hiding subliminal demonic messages in their music. The theory was that while a person listened to a song normally, their subconscious mind was decoding hidden backwards messages praising Satan, promoting dark arts, or instructing listeners to engage in chaotic behavior. * Famous Urban Legends: * Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”: Critics alleged that playing the forward phrase “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow…” in reverse yielded statements praising Satan.

* The Beatles:

Rumors claimed that playing tracks like “Revolution 9” or “I’m So Tired” backwards revealed occult clues or secret messages (such as the infamous “Paul is dead” legend). * The Reality (Pareidolia): Musically, most instances of “evil backmasking” were cases of auditory pareidolia—the human brain’s natural tendency to force recognizable words and meaning out of random noise or reversed phonetic sounds.

3. Spooky Tropes & Halloween Horror

In horror films, haunted attractions, and Halloween traditions, backwards speaking is used as a shortcut to evoke the uncanny: * The Uncanny Valley of Speech: Human speech relies on specific phonetic cadences, glottal stops, and breathing patterns. When speech is reversed, the acoustics sound familiarly human yet fundamentally wrong—creating an immediate sense of dread or unnatural presence.

* Possession & Spooks:

Horror movies frequently use reversed audio to depict demonic possession, ghost voices (EVP / Electronic Voice Phenomena), or alien communication. It suggests that a entity is operating outside the natural laws of time and language.

* Playful Halloween Easter Eggs:

Musicians and producers often lean into the spooky aesthetic deliberately. Rather than evil invocations, actual intentional backmasking is usually tongue-in-cheek. Bands like Pink Floyd, Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), and They Might Be Giants have embedded reversed messages ranging from joke recipes to warnings about ruining phonograph needles by playing records backward!

We will see you in November. Front to back.

ouh huo