Arnold Zwicky's Blog

From Ed Battistella on Facebook on 10/25, this remarkable Halloween display in a corner lot in Ashland OR not far from EB’s house:

(#1) A solid-dark figure of dread — not jolly fun, not even edgy fun — and mortal decay (remnants of its clothes  are falling away from the black skeleton), with none of the conventional features of skeletal Halloween memento mori (no white skull or face, but charcoal black; no stylized scythe, but a peasant’s scythe in black, with a rough wooden handle and a crudely hand-tempered blade), posing unsteadily amongst the detritus of material destruction, even the skull of a baby

The dark lord of death, the Grim Reaper, in autumnal haze, mid-day, on an ordinary suburban street, stalking the home of Southern Oregon University (where EB hangs out), the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Lithia Park, and strikingly liberal politics.

The reapers in cartoons — Grim Reaper is a sturdy cartoon meme — are more stylized. Some have blank black spaces where faces would be, some have white death’s-heads for faces, but they wear flowing black robes and carry stylized scythes, and they typically have bony feet. Just one example (I have posted dozens), from my 12/20/18 posting “Ask not for whom the reaper scythes”:

(#2) Death in Venice

Back to Ed in Ashland:

— EB: There seem to be a lot of grim reapers [in displays outside of houses] this year.

Adding:

— EB: You could note that Ashland is the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and has an annual Halloween parade.

Shakespeare above; the Halloween parade here.

And further recommending a creepy YouTube reaperfest, “Epic Halloween Prank” by Tom Mabe, which you can watch here.

This entry was posted on October 28, 2025 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Costumes, Holidays, Jokes, Linguistics in the comics, Signs and symbols. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.