Our culture has become too weird and spooky to enjoy a costume party on Halloween. The last one I went to was almost 25 years ago. Our office had a party and about 30 people showed up.

It wasn’t too bad back then but the secretary who hosted the party turned her stereo up full blast and after everyone except me and my wife had several drinks, it was time to leave.

Actually, the costumes were not that odd at that party.

Years before that, we went to a couples costume party with the “young married” class from church. One particularly peculiar couple showed up dressed as each other. This was back in the 1980s, so we didn’t think too much of it.

Today, it would open the door to a lot of speculation.

Halloween is the national holiday for homosexuals. They get to dress up and parade around without too much attention. Although these days, it’s not as rare to see some guy dressed in drag in public.

I was in Boulder, Colorado, a few years ago and saw what was probably a college student with a beard wearing a dress and high heels while pedaling on a bicycle down an arterial street.

Halloween is great for those who dabble in the occult. This is no place for a Christian because the Bible forbids occult activity. Remember what happened to King Saul when he had a seer bring the Prophet Samuel back from the dead? It cost him his kingdom and his life.

I spoke to a friend who was a pastor years ago and he said that shortly after graduating from seminary, he took a job as youth pastor. They had a Halloween party and someone brought out a Ouija board. That’s a “talking spirit” board that is marked with letters. You apparently put you hand on it and ask questions and the board somehow spells out the answers.

My friend let the kids play until he realized that this was a real trip into demonic activity and then he stopped it.

Halloween brings out a host of horror movies every year and this year is no different.

Movies like Venom, The Predator, The Happytime Murders, Hell Fest, The House With A Clock in its Walls, Peppermint, The Nun and others are really, really bad for people. Why would you fill your head with these kinds of images?

There is another movie in the Halloween series, called Halloween, that is just out. I don’t even want to watch the trailer for this one.

The original Frankenstein was really, really scary, but he didn’t tear anyone to pieces.

People are bombarded with violent and scary images in movies, on the Internet and in video games. These productions have little regard for human life (or dignity) as they portray images no normal person would ever want to tolerate in person. And computer generated imaging makes these films much more graphic.

And there is the fascination with zombies. When I was kid, other kids liked to dress up like hobos and zombies because those costumes were easy to make. You just grabbed some of Dad’s old clothes and tore them a bit and got your Mom to put a fake beard for the hobos and red facial marks with lipstick for the zombies.

There’s an old adage: “Garbage in, garbage out.” It means that if you fill your mind with bad thoughts, that will translate eventually in to bad actions.

You wonder why there seems to be an uptick in mass shootings? Take a gander at the buckets of fake blood, amputations and beheadings walking around on Halloween. When you get a barrage of those images, taking the step toward actually committing a crime seems easier.

I know. It’s all just “harmless fun.” And I agree that it used to be like that. When I was a teenager, I had a plastic severed hand sticking out of my trunk that made it look like I had a dead body in the trunk.

But my point is that the sexual aspect and the demonic elements of Halloween seem to be accelerating. Movies that didn’t show the violence but alluded to it seemed scarier to me than seeing someone’s head blown off.

Young people are abandoning the churches they grew up in. There are several reasons but a fascination with the occult and with violence is an indication that the Bible lessons they should have learned in Sunday school didn’t take.

So, my strategy on Halloween is to hand out some kind of chocolate candy to the neighborhood kids, stay away from costume parties and avoid anything that is occult or violent.

And don’t go see modern horror movies.