Know any good ghost stories? Any spooky tales of the weird and uncanny? I don't. Of the very many I've heard over the years, I can't recall a single one. You'd think after years as a Boy Scout and countless hours spent around campfires in isolated patches of national forests, I would have picked up a terrifying yarn to spin this Halloween.

Unfortunately no; and to be honest, in the Boy Scouts most of our campfire banter revolved around knife-sharpening techniques, lies and farting. I was never big on horror stories anyway. For me, they rarely delivered the expected payoff of benign terror that makes them enjoyable in the first place, mostly because I couldn't help thinking that the witches and goblins that populated these tales were kind of cool.

Ghost stories offered evidence that my little-kid fantasies were real: that there was more going on here than my own childish life, that right around any given corner lurked a parallel world that was scary and uncontrollable but also hugely exciting. Some part of me hoped deeply that monsters really were under my bed.

Of course, by college you realize that you were pretty stupid as a kid, that witches were probably just misguided old women who got burned for being cranky and that ghosts are mostly just used to sell you candy products. The mystique of Halloween gets blown away with the rest of the childhood detritus-Santa Claus, cowboys and your dreams of becoming an astronaut-leaving you with the vague feeling of being had.

At this age our scary stories tend to come from CNN, and we're more likely to be haunted by credit card debt than ghouls and goblins. Some of us have encountered real demons, the kind that are usually left out of kid's books-serious illness, depression, the death of family and friends.

The simple joy of a good scare has been obscured by a deeper knowledge of some of the real terrors the world has to offer. Now that we're older and wiser, now that we don't have to invent things to be afraid of anymore, does Halloween have a point?

I would say this is just the cynical voice of an aging, decrepit 22 year old, but for once it seems like society agrees with me. By many accounts, the classic Halloween of safe thrills and merry pranksterism is on the outs, not just for adults, but for everyone.

The New York Times just ran an article two days ago detailing the rise of "retail trick-or-treating" (cruising for candy at a shopping center or business district) and the subsequent decline of the more traditional, neighborhood variety. According to surveys from the National Confectioner's Association (hey, where else are you going to get hard data on trick-or-treating?), nearly 20 percent of American families plan on taking their kids to a mall for Halloween. When asked why, most parents cited safety concerns. Apparently, the threat of a razorblade-studded candy apple from a creepy neighbor was too much for some adults to risk.

I saw the same thing first-hand in my own town. The streets of my neighborhood used to be a Mecca for candy-grabbing and good-natured mayhem, hundreds of hyped-up kids swarming the sidewalks. Now, my mom reports she's lucky to get five, maybe six rings at the doorbell, and those are often from youths whose parents are escorting them around in the family mini-van.

I know it's usually misguided to psychoanalyze an entire society based on isolated examples, but it seems to me that, ironically enough, we've become too scared for Halloween. We're so frightened now that we can't even handle a holiday based on the premise of harmless terror. And that's damn sad.

The best Halloween costume I ever saw was when a guy in my neighborhood dressed as Osama bin Laden. It was Oct. 31, 2001, and here was this idiot traipsing down the street in robes and a turban, a half-assed cotton beard hanging from his face, throwing handfuls of flour into the air from a canvas bag labeled "Anthrax."

Some people were scandalized. I thought it was awesome. That guy was everything Halloween should be: terror and fear brought down to our level, made ridiculous and accessible, if only for one night.

Most of us spend much of our lives in a state of low-level anxiety, dimly aware of our own mortality and other horrors waiting at the edges of our comprehension. On Halloween, we get to become what we're scared of, and realize that what we thought were ghouls are really just kids in cheap rubber masks. If it's true that as a society we're too fearful to celebrate Halloween, that only means we need Halloween more than ever.

Brian Kindle is a Trinity senior. His column runs every Tuesday.