Why Do Teens Love Witchcraft So Much?

Photos by Carmelo Varela

A week ago, in a fit of Halloween-inspired whimsy, my friend Helen and I gathered $100 worth of herbs, tea candles, and a tiny cauldron and tried our hands at sorcery. It didn't exactly work out—after we cast a protection spell, the door creaked opened and suddenly slammed shut, freaking us out enough that we blew out the candles and called it a night.

Whether it was due to our rank amateurism or something else, the spells didn't "work" any way you slice it—in the following week, both of our bikes were stolen, as was my editor's, and nothing seemed to go right for just about everyone I know.

I know real Wiccans don't dabble in black magic, but it's undeniable that witch-y stuff is in vogue right now. Urban Outfitters sells books on moon spells, Tarot cards, and something called "Wiccapedia" next to volumes of the Rookie Yearbook and bound collections of mac and cheese recipes. Girls walk around Brooklyn wearing T-shirts with pentagrams. You can rent a witch on Etsy. But is this just a surface-level trend, or is paganism really having a moment?

Read: What Halloween Is Like in Federal Prison?

To learn more, I called up Helen A. Berger, one of the only scholars who studies the pagan community, and probably the only one who has studied its appeal to teenagers and young women. "It's definitely not a micro-trend," the sociologist who works at Brandeis University told me. "It's not something I'm surprised to hear is popular in Brooklyn, though."

VICE: How many people are pagan in America right now? And how does that number compare to the past?
Helen A. Berger: It is growing, but it was growing at a very fast rate in the 1990s and into the early 2000s. And every indication is that rate has slowed down. It continues to grow but not quite as fast as it had been. That's at least the best estimate. We in the United States do not include religious affiliation in our Census, which makes it more difficult to figure out.

How do you measure this without a Census question?
Most scholars, myself included, look at things like attendance of pagan gatherings and purchases of pagan books, like The Spiral Dance, which has sold millions of copies, and books by Scott Cunningham. The latest American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) had the number of pagans in the US at around 360,000, but I think that's low and there's well over a million at this point. It's still a minority religion.

During the teen-witch craze, when they were first airing Sabrina and all those shows, there was a large increase. The media has an effect on people's behavior. That doesn't mean, by the way, that they weren't all serious. Some were and some were not. We looked at participation in online sites—new people joining discussion groups—and saw there was an increase but in a slower rate than there had been in the 90s and early 2000s.

Were any of these girls who loved Charmed doing witchcraft in covens or just in their bedrooms?
Disproportionally people were doing this alone. I did one survey that showed a little under half were doing it alone, and then another one later that showed 75 percent were solitary practitioners.

People who were doing it in groups were getting involved in one of four ways. You can go on something like WitchVox, which is the largest international site. There's also notices in metaphysical bookstores. If you're a college or university student, or to some degree a high school student, you can find groups through your school. The last major way is through friends.

I'm assuming that there are more people walking around New York wearing Pentagram shirts than there are in the Deep South? And how is popular opinion toward magical religions changing in general?
Most of the data does suggest that it's an urban/suburban phenomenon. US pagans are more likely to say that they had experience discrimination, but they were also more likely to be out of what they call the "broom closet."

In Boston, where I live, I would say there's not much discrimination. Some Wiccans may disagree with me, but I think it's rather mild here and in places like San Francisco, where there's a large community of witches. But in some parts of the country, like the Bible Belt, yes . I think part of the reason we have gay marriage is because so many people came out of the closet, if you're objecting to gays, you're objecting to your cousin, your niece, your child. I think that as pagans come out, more people will say that's their religion and they're perfectly normal people.

What about Wicca appeals to teens besides Sarah Michelle Geller?
When anything appears in the media, particularly something that is widespread, it gets people's interest. It's just like how if we went to war with a country, everyone would suddenly be looking up that country. But what we found was that the people who stayed in the religion said they were more interested in the rituals and feeling connected to the Goddess and to nature and to getting a sense of empowerment in their spiritual path.

Those weren't the ones who ended up staying. Something typical would be four girls—boys tended to do it alone—and the majority of them dropping out. As one young woman who stayed told me, "I originally came in because I had a bad relationship, and I wanted to turn my ex-boyfriend into a frog. That was actually the first book I got." Of course it didn't work. But she came for the magic, but she stayed for the spirituality.

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Former Inmates Explain What You Should Do When You Get Out of Prison

This article was originally published by The Marshall Project.

All photos below by Ivar Vong

Over the weekend, about 6,112 people will be freed from federal custody, the largest one-time release in US history and the result of a sentencing restructuring for drug offenses.

What should those people expect when they get out? The Marshall Project, in partnership with WNYC in New York, asked six men who spent long stretches of their adult lives behind bars to explain what it's like to re-enter society and what they learned along the way. Some of their advice: take it slow with romance, be honest with your kids, and think about getting a cat.

Some of the men live at the Castle, a New York City residential facility for ex-offenders run by the nonprofit Fortune Society, while others go there regularly for social service programs. The responses were edited for length and clarity.

Edgar Simpson, 49, in prison 1991 to 2007 for manslaughter. All photos by Ivar Vong / The Marshall Project

"It was a cultural shock. I didn't have anyone to walk me through what had taken place in society. You feel embarrassed. I just felt there was a rush into society instead of walking a person in.

You have to be around grounded people when you get out of prison. Ones that can say, 'Take your time. Do this and do that.' Ones that are walking with you.

One of the biggest mistakes I made was jumping into a relationship. I've been away from female companionship for so many years that when I came out it seemed like a goal to be with a female. I wish I would have waited until I was more stable."

Saquan Dubose, 34, in and out of state prison, first in Pennsylvania and then in New York, from 1997 to 2015 for robbery, gun possession, and selling drugs

"The way that you survive in prison is not the way that you will survive out here. That's two different worlds. You have to deal with your anger. I meditate now. I'm more humble. The big boulder that was on my shoulder, I would say is a little rock now. Learn some art of fighting, that takes away some of the aggression. Training, punching bags. Things like that. Try something else to do with that aggression, that anger, put it somewhere else.

You have to be tired of going back to prison. For me, I've been seeing prison since I was a kid. So I am going to do whatever it is out here to make sure that I will never go back there. If I have to go get me some boxes and sleep across the street in Riverside Park rather than to be in a cell, it's that serious for me. I am tired. I feel like an old man."

René Peterson, 63, in and out of state prison from 1971 to 2013 for robbery, burglary, and drug possession charges

"When I first came home , I almost beat this white boy up because he was talking on the bluetooth, the ear piece. I said, 'Say it to my face, white boy, so I can beat the shit out of you.' And I am en route to parole! Then I see someone else talking to himself. In these 22 years, everyone is walking up the street talking to they fucking selves.

I'm still learning. I can't text for shit. I ain't fast like that. My spelling is up to par. But then mothafuckas get mad at me because I spell so proper. They got the slang text. LOL. All that dumb shit. I don't know that. I am just going to spell the goddamn word. They be saying, 'You be writing fucking books man when you fuckin' text.'

Your son don't have to love you. There is resentment. When you get old and you come home, it's, 'Man, don't try to play no dad shit. Get the fuck up out of my face.' And you got to eat that. It's not always a good note to go looking for your kids."

Ervin "Easy" Hunt, 61, in and out of state prisons from 1972 to 2002 for gang violence, robbery, and selling and possessing crack cocaine

"Something that resonated with me in staying home is that I remember the movie The Shawshank Redemption. There is a line that Tim Robbins says to Morgan Freeman: 'You get busy living, or you get busy dying.' That's my mantra to anybody going through this. You don't appreciate your freedom until it is taken away from you.

Today I had do two things that depended on me to live: My cat and my plants. My cat, she's amazing. She talks to me. She picked me from the ASPCA. She went around the room twice, and looked at me, and said, 'Meow.' I said, 'Oh, shit, you are talking to me?' It has to be something greater than you that will restore you to some type of sanity.

Know that you are worth more than what you are doing. You have to go outside yourself. You have to think, who else are you important to? Sometimes a life is not important except for the impact that it has on other lives."

Frederick LeBron, 63, in and out of prison from 1977 to 2007 for selling drugs, mainly heroin

"You are accustom to living a certain lifestyle. If you don't have that, you will go out and get it. And you've been doing that all your life. I've been dealing drugs. My father was dealing drugs. My mother was dealing drugs. My uncles were dealing drugs. To me that was the thing to do. Every time I came out of jail, I was trying to do the right thing. But for some reason, I wanted more. And since I couldn't get it, I went out and got it the way that I wanted to. A lot of people who come out, they need support.

Don't force being a parent. You come in and say, 'I'm your father. I want to see what's going on. I want to be part of your life. And I respect you. And I respect the idea that you may not want to call me dad. I understand because I haven't been here for you.' You make your kid understand. Be honest with your kids, man. Once you are honest with your kids, you can deal with whatever is coming.

Derek Kelly, 54, in prison from 1987 to 2012 for murder

"You are not used to people being up on you and bumping you. Your defenses are up. People in the street are more disrespectful than the people who were in jail. People step on your sneakers, they push you, they don't say, 'Excuse me.' None of that. In jail, people say, 'Excuse me.' Everybody knows their place. Here, nobody knows their places. So it was very uncomfortable, I was just afraid to go get on the train all by myself and go to Queens. It literally took me three days before I could travel.

You need to have a plan. And if you don't have a plan, you need to make one soon. For school, work, how you are going to sustain yourself when you are home.

Find somebody you can talk to and be real with yourself."

To listen to audio interviews from this story, visit WNYC here. This article was originally published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook and Twitter.

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Latest on VICE: Latest on VICE: Robot Hotels, Keith Richards, and #FreeRasool

So far in 2015 we've continued to explore new frontiers and cover the frontlines, from Pablo Escobar's ex-hitmen to robot-operated hotels. Latest on VICE has been away for a little while, but we're back with whole new slate of videos for you to check out. Here's what you've missed.

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Inside a Costume Shop During the Last-Minute Halloween Rush

When we met in the 70s disco aisle, Richard Parrott was in a dark blue suit, a black shirt, orange tie, Joker-red hair, and fingernails coated with red stop signs for a recent charity he attended. On the streets of Manhattan, he might stand out. But in his own store, he's like any other customer: He's getting ready for tomorrow.

"Halloween used to be a children's holiday," he said, before stepping aside to help a young woman grab a garter from the top of an emptying shelf. "But they can wear these costumes whenever they want. Adults can't.

"So now, it's the equivalent of St. Patrick's Day: it's this one time when those boundaries can be broken for us," he continued. "And it's a fashion event."

All photos by Michael Marcelle

Parrot is the President of Ricky's NYC, the most popular chain of costume stores this side of the Hudson. And today—the 24-hour countdown to October 31—is basically what his "beauty shop," and, seemingly, thousands of New Yorkers above the age of 18, live for.

On Broadly: Warlock Claims Innocence In Legal Battle Against Witch

When I arrived at lunchtime on Friday, the line stretched the entire length of the interior, with Pitbull blasting from the speakers to keep people's blood pulsing. Every time I blinked, the line grew. And apparently, that was nothing compared to the day before—at least not yet.

Mike Tacuri, the store manager, weaved me through a maze of costumes ranging from a young Justin Bieber (for kids) to "Goddess Lustalicious" (for whoever), just to show how long the line grew on Thursday. But today, he said, was the busiest day of the year, by far; the holiday itself landing on a weekend probably helped, too. He'll be here until the customers leave, a time which is anyone's guess at this point.

"This is Christmas. This is bigger than Christmas," Tacuri told me, squeezing in between five people trying on five different costumes. "This is every holiday wrapped into one."

"We're essentially preparing all year round," Parrott added. "The conversation never stops." He later told me that this specific spot, on 14th Street and Fifth Avenue, was 8,300 square feet of flair, and only a month old. It had been built in less than three weeks in September; a rotting RadioShack next door was knocked down to accommodate the hundreds, if not thousands, of costumes from China that were put on the shelves over the course of three hectic days.

Ricky's is open year-round for all your wig-shopping needs, but a lot of New Yorkers only come here in the run-up to Halloween. On October 30, it's the kind of place where you can overhear questions like, "Do you think I can fit into this tutu?" and statements such as, "I like the Princess Leia slave costume because it's just a bra," and phone exchanges that include, "It's a costume party: there's gonna be food, there's gonna be liquor, and there's gonna be strippers... Yeah, bitch."

Make no mistake: In New York, Halloween is an adult holiday. There's only one shelf of toddler costumes, but an entire alcove devoted to dildos and sexpot costumes like "Fantasy Player" (a baseball cap and jersey with a deep, deep V-neck) and "Roaring 20s Honey."

One employee named Shawn said the item people kept requesting was a full-naked body suit (Ricky's didn't have it). Another employee, Max, had to think for a second when I asked him the same question. His list was ultimately more tame: Alicia Silverstone's character in Clueless, Jack Skeleton from A Nightmare Before Christmas, space helmets, and a Reno 911! officer. Weirdly enough, he noted, Red Riding Hood was the big-ticket item this year for women.

The men I encountered seemed more into Star Wars, understandable with the long-awaited sequel on the horizon. I ran into two 21-year-olds, Joshua and Mitch, while they were through Vader masks, lightsabers, and Chewbacca onesies. "We just haven't had time to get one of these until now," one said.

The time constraint was the number-one reason customers gave for being in this beyond-packed cavern on a Friday afternoon. In an already-over-scheduled world, it's tough to find the time to choose between an Insane Clown Posse mask and a zombie Bill Clinton.

Parrott shrugged off this last-minute nature as symptomatic of the growing global Halloween industry. "Brick-and-mortar places used to be scared of e-commerce, because they thought everyone would buy their costumes online," he explained. "Actually, it's quite the opposite. Now, more people are coming in with their phones and just pointing to a photo they found on Instagram. 'I want that.'"

The people who spend weeks crafting a costume aren't in Ricky's, at least not at this last minute: Everyone here is looking to get in and get out. Truth be told, it's not the friendliest place on earth to be in the middle of a rush. Signs everywhere remind customers that all sales are final, and, after a while, endless Top 40 can be dizzying. The store crackles with the unique pre-game energy you only get when you cram together hundreds of people who plan to be masked and shitfaced in the dark 24-odd hours from now.

One customer, a 30-year-old named David, had already picked up what he described as a "mix between a cat and a zebra" at a 99 cents store near his house in Brooklyn. But he was here, at Ricky's in Manhattan, for reasons he almost couldn't explain. "Being a part of this madness," he said, looking for something to make his cat-zebra hybrid a sexy cat-zebra hybrid. "It's a part of the tradition."

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Comic Artist Stephen Graham Gets Scary High in This Halloween Comic

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The Man Who Wrote 'Friday the 13th' Is Bummed They Turned Jason into a Killer

Image via Deviantart user SivArt1981

For having written Friday the 13th—arguably the most iconic slasher franchise in the history of iconic slasher franchises—Victor Miller is a remarkably sunny guy. He talks to me from the backyard of the home he shares with his wife of over 50 years, Tina, in Alameda, California. As he speaks to me, I can hear him sucking on a cigar over the phone.

Born in New Orleans in 1940, Miller's father was a cotton broker who later sold insurance. Miller went to Yale, and then got a Master's Degree at Tulane, and eventually found himself hovering around the periphery of Hollywood screenwriting success. He eventually met director Sean Cunningham, with whom he collaborated on a couple of children's movies about sports. The pair eventually realized that the youth of America didn't want family-oriented Bad News Bears knock-offs, they wanted — as proven by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween — tons of blood, a good amount of screaming and the ever important nubile flesh.

After the unexpected success of Friday the 13th, Miller spent a bit more time on screenwriting, working with Cunningham again to adapt Mary Higgins Clark's A Stranger Is Watching, whose trailer ominously boasted, "The book that describes it is now the movie that shows it," before spending the next 25 years enjoying a robust career writing for soap operas such as All My Children, General Hospital, and Guiding Light.

Between the long shadow of Friday the 13th and the lasting impact of daytime soaps, you could argue that Miller has had a monumental influence on American pop culture, though given how humble he is, he'd probably disagree. Along with Halloween, Friday the 13th helped set the fundamental ground rules for slasher flicks. They are:

1. Begin with an historical evil, some event in the past that has implications that extend to the present—such as Jason Voorhees drowning because the camp counselors who were supposed to be watching him were too busy schtupping.

2. Create a landscape in which post-adolescents are on their own—i.e., that same summer camp, a generation later, when the counselors are frolicking around before it opens its doors to campers again.

3. Kill anyone who makes love out of wedlock.

These days, Miller's comfortably retired from the soap opera business, but he's still doing a bit of writing. He's trying to drum up funding for a slasher film called Rock Paper Dead, which he hopes can be "done for five million or under — even one million depending on the cast," and he's working on a satire he describes as Dr. Strangelove for the 21st century.

Though in the past Miller has expressed disappointment with the direction the Friday the 13th franchise eventually went, he seems comfortable with the knowledge that Jason Voorhees will be his legacy. Besides, he jokes, "every time they make a new , I get a little check."

Miller would also like it mentioned that if you send him the screenplay for your horror movie — his email address is on his website, he will happily read it and give you notes for free. Victor Miller is a mensch. I thank him for his time.

VICE: How tired are you of talking about Friday the 13th?
Victor Miller: It would be disingenuous of me to say I was tired of it because it just about made my career. So what kind of gratitude would that be? It does get a little exhausting but I remember all too well when I would go to parties and people would ask what I did for a living and I would say, "I'm a writer." They would say, "Well have you ever written anything I'd know?" and I'd say, "no." And that had its own lack of reward.

In the FAQ section of your website, you say you'd have preferred that they didn't make Jason the continuing killer.
Only because it completely destroys the motivation for Mrs. Voorhees! Which was the only thing I had going for me in that movie, which was that she was avenging her son and then it turns out that he isn't dead anyway.

Is the objection based just on continuity and how subversive it was to have the mother do it? Or do you think it's just less scary?
Well, that and that I wasn't invited to participate in the sequels.

Oh. Right.
The two put together make the whole.

Do you think you'd feel differently if you'd been asked to write the second one?
Oh absolutely. Absolutely. But they told me I was too expensive to write the sequel because sequels have to be made cheaper than the previous one. And I went, "Oh. OK." What did I know? I'd never written a hit movie before.

Fair enough. When's the last time you saw the film?
Today is Thursday? Last time I saw the film was Monday night. They have a really great film club at Dolby Labs in San Francisco so I went to a screening there. It was the best sound system I'd ever heard Friday the 13th shown on. I heard things on Harry Manfredini's score that I had never heard before and that was absolutely lovely.

You think the film holds up?
Yeah, Given what's been going on in terms CGI etc., I still prefer Tom Savini's work to most of the painting I see on CGI.

Do you consider the film your defining work?
Friday the 13th was a fluke. I'd rather have written Airplane! I don't consider myself an expert on horror. I just wrote Friday the 13th.

When did you transition to soap writing?
By the end of '82...

What are the similarities and differences in the moral universes of soaps and horror? You have this thing in both where evil is reoccurring and the bad guys don't necessarily get what's coming to them.
In a sense they're both based on Greek tragedy. Horror films are really Victorian. If you go out and get laid, you get killed. Whereas in soap operas, you go out and get laid, you have an illegitimate child and you claim the wrong person is the actual father. The universe of soap operas is not as punitive as that of horror films. Horror movies happen in 90 minutes or whatever and the good and the bad are punished, whereas in soap operas the good get punished for a little while and then they come out OK again. In All My Children, we had Adam Chandler, played brilliantly by David Canary, a wonderful actor — he also played his twin brother, Stuart — and he had done so many bad things to Erica that the network said, "He's got to go to prison!" I said, "What if Adam has a growth in his brain, that made him do all these bad things?" That way the judge would say providing he has brain surgery he can get off. So I wrote this wonderful line in that episode where they're operating on Adam's brain and they open up his skull and one of the surgeons says, "It's an abnormality. I've never seen one this large!"

So that's very different than horror. You can't afford to run around killing people. You have heroes. In soap operas you have a character type called "Love to Hate," like Dorian Lord on One Life to Live who people tuned in for. You couldn't just kill her. You'd have to build up a whole other Love to Hate!

Related: Columbian Devil's Breath

Right.
You know, OJ Simpson ruined daytime. When OJ's trial started we lost half our audience. When the trial was over lots of them didn't come back. They discovered all these cable channels that had real life dramas where real life people were being killed as opposed to fake people, and it was just easier. Worse than that, the cable and the networks discovered that it was much easier to make a reality show. You only have to pay Judge Judy and the bailiff and few other people. That's a lot different than than paying Susan Lucci's salary. It's been a sad loss for us but you can understand that, for instance All My Children was shot, when I was there, in NYC and the most expensive part (besides the salaries) was storage of sets because the real estate in New York is killer. Judge Judy's set never changes.

Switching gears, you have young a grandson. Has he seen Friday the 13th?
He has not seen it to the best of knowledge. His parents said, "I don't think so." He doesn't seem to be terribly interested in horror. He's much more into hip-hop.

Finally, what are you doing on Halloween?
I'm keeping the door closed and the light turned off. On Halloween, the traffic never stops; it just keeps coming so we just turn off the lights. I'm really not ready to see another kid coming up to my door with a hockey goalie mask. Not that I don't appreciate it. But it's tiring to keep getting up to hand out M&Ms.

Follow Zachary on Twitter.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

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Here's What Halloween Is Like in Federal Prison

Jim Goldberg/Magnum Photos

In the penitentiary, every day is like Halloween. After all, my neighbors are serial killers and drug lords who make their movie counterparts seem like pussies, and the choice between a trick or a treat is a matter of life or death.

Think Chucky on steroids.

I don't have the choice to wear a costume once a year and terrorize the neighborhood in a sugar-fueled candy craze. In here, a khaki uniform is the only available attire, and the mask that I wear is the thousand-yard stare. I've developed the aura that I'm a hardened convict who will run a piece of steel into another man over any perceived slight.

It's a mask that I've worn for over 13 years and will hopefully be able to shed after I'm returned to society.

At least my mask is an invisible one I've created to deal with my environment. Most men in the penitentiaries have their masks literally painted on in the form of prison tats. I've seen everything from a giant swastika on a forehead to "#1 Bitch Killer" as a mustache replacement. All of them were meant to achieve one thing: intimidate whoever comes near them.

"I've got horns tatted on my head cause I'm the white devil," says Will, a 40-year-old con from Tennessee doing 15 years for guns. "With these, dudes know I'm the devil 365 days a year."

I don't need a special day to make myself look like a mass murderer—it's enough just to hear that door unlock in the morning, and the roar of the building that accompanies it, to let me know it's time once again to become something I'm not. As soon as I jump out of bed, I put my mask on, and I'm not the only one.

"I've got 'Battletested' on my neck so motherfuckers know what's up!" says Bam, a 30-year-old from Indiana doing eight years for bank robbery. "I went against a hundred motherfuckers in a race riot. All I had was two knives. After it was over, I was covered in blood... most of it was other dudes. Freddy ain't got shit on me."

It's not all blood and guts and hard facades. In fact, Halloween is actually celebrated behind bars, at least according to the some of the women I've corresponded with in the state system.

"We'd paint our faces and play games like charades on Halloween," says Crystal, a 29-year-old Latina who served an 18-month sentence in New Mexico for a DUI. "We'd all pitch in and cook a big meal for everyone in the unit. After we ate, we'd pass out candy to each other and watch scary movies on TV."

"We'd switch it up for Halloween. The studs would dress like fems and the fems would dress like studs," says Jessyka, a 32-year-old woman from Pennsylvania who did ten years in the feds for bank robbery. "We'd make plastic canvas baskets with ghosts on them and fill it with candy for friends or lovers."

None of this would ever go down in the federal penitentiary. The most you could hope for on Halloween is your road dog hooking you up with his honey bun from the chow hall—even when you know he smuggled it under his nuts to get it past the kitchen cops.

Who needs the fake fear of Halloween in here? There are so many dudes doing life in here—some for brazen murders on the streets and more for brutal penitentiary killings. The total disregard for human life is bred into those of us that have grown up with lunatics as our surrogate families. We stuff our feelings down in our stomachs and turn ourselves into monsters.

But no matter how hard we try to keep our heart strings in check, the holidays will always bring up reminders of the things we've lost.

"On Halloween, me and my three sons would go to the haunted corn field and all laugh at each other for getting scared," remembers Remy, a 35-year-old Michigan native who's fresh in on a 20-year bid for guns and kidnapping. "When we'd get home we'd all paint each others faces like zombies and head out to one of the rich neighborhoods for trick or treat. After we'd get back, I'd make them dump everything in one pile and split it up evenly."

As we're talking, Remy looks off in the distance and his eyes glaze over from the memories dancing through his head. "Arguing was a daily thing with my three boys, but I taught them to always share and take care of each other. Man... We didn't have much, but we had each other," he confides.

It's days and times like these that prison really gets to us. We can deal with the prison politics and everything that comes with it. We can deal with the cops harassing us and destroying the meager possessions we have to our name. But the separation from our family and friends is what really breaks us down. The chance to actually be ourselves, to take the masks off that we've created and be totally free never seems to arise. Any holiday is a reminder of a better life we had years go, one that's never coming back.

Of course, some convicts refuse to let the holidays get them down.

"Down in Guatemala, it's called El dia de los muertos," says Sharky, a 43-year-old member of the Sureños gang. "My dad runs a strip club and every year we had a big concurso with all the dancers. They'd dress up as bad ass brujas or enfermeras and the winner took home 500 Quetzales . Damn fool, I can't wait to get out and party down in Coatepeque."

Sharky only has one year left underneath the gun towers before he's a free man. Just like me, he has over a decade of horrors ingrained in his mind. But soon we'll wake up from this horrid dream and be able to spend the holidays with our loved ones.

Once we're free, there's one thing that I know we won't be dressing up as for Halloween, and that's as a prisoner.

John "Judge" Broman has also written for Gorilla Convict. Follow him on Facebook.

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VICE Cartoonists Remember Their Worst Halloween Costumes

It's that terrifying time of year when every blog and business feels the pressure to come up with Halloween-oriented content, even when they are supposedly aimed at adults. VICE isn't trying to make waves, so we asked our regular cartoonists to draw their worst Halloween costumes or memories and tell us a little about them. Check it out.

Stephen Maurice Graham

I have to wear glasses all the time due to a childhood eye injury, so I can't really wear any costumes at Halloween that don't involve specs. This narrows down the choice a little, since Pinhead or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man would be silly with glasses. So I have to admit that I've joined the horde of Where's Wallies/Waldos that you will see thronging through the streets and parties this Halloween and every Halloween forevermore. I'm sorry, I know it's probably the worst and laziest costume, and I'm part of the problem, so I'm promising here and now to never do it again and be more creative. Happy Halloween!

Check out Stephen Maurice Graham's comic Michael.

Peter Bagge

I never had much interest or energy to put into making a Halloween costume, so in my younger days, they tended to be variations of a "bum" or a "hippie" (being a hippie/bum of sorts already made that task even easier). I eventually invested in a cheap, standard, one-size-fits-all polyester skeleton costume that I've been wearing every Halloween for the last 25 or so years. So this is both my worst AND best Halloween costume!

Look for comics by living legend Peter Bagge on this very site soon.

Leslie Stein

One of my favorite Halloween memories is dressing up as Ghostbusters with my older brother Scott one year. Not an extraordinary or original idea, but it was the first—and only, I believe—time we dressed up together. He usually did stuff with his friends. So when he decided we should do this, I was beyond thrilled. My mother refused to buy us any pre-made costumes, so we slipped on OshKosh overalls, and my brother made our sick proton-pack guns out of Bristle Blocks.

Check out Leslie's Diary Comics.

Julian Glander

A couple times when I was a kid, it rained on Halloween. For health and safety reasons, I had to cover up my costume with this ratty Superman poncho. So I was Wet Superman two years in a row. Not the worst, but nobody likes a costume repeater.

Look at Julian's comic, Please Look at Me.

Anna Haifisch

I only wore a Halloween costume once. That was in 2008, in America. Halloween isn't very popular in Germany.

My friend Wolfy and me drew a flyer for a Halloween rock show at Tommy's Tavern. Before I left the house I taped "skeleton bones" on my sweater and jeans and biked down to Greenpoint to get loaded. One guy tried to be funny and yelled, "Get some food, skeleton. You look so skinny," or something. Hahaha, dude! A joke as weak as my costume.

Check out Anna's comic, The Artist.

Nick Gazin

When I was eight, it was during the very popular Operation Desert Storm. My dad put me in a World War I metal saucer helmet and an adult-sized camouflage uniform shirt. With a jigsaw cutter, he made a wooden AK-47 for me to carry along. When asked what I was supposed to be, my dad had instructed me to respond, "I'm liberating Kuwait." This unnerved 100 percent of the houses I went to.

Look for Nick Gazin DJing around New York and curating the VICE Comics section.

Happy Halloween, everyone. Cause chaos and fear!

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Close-Ups of Halloween in New York

Ben Baker is an NYC-based photographer who typically focuses his camera on politicians and celebrities. Every Halloween, however, he takes a break from his usual gig and dons a flasher costume he gets a reprieve from his everyday subject matter. For years, Baker has been donning a "flasher" costume—trenchcoat and all—and taking snaps of unsuspecting, drunk, Halloweenies in NYC. This stunt results in some people who are expecting to face nudity but instead find themselves looking a camera in the face. In honor of the holiday, Baker was kind enough to share some selects from Halloweens past and his motivations for the project. We will be updating the gallery as he sends through new ones .

VICE: Why do you flash?
Ben Baker: I carry a camera with me everywhere I go. I love Halloween and the flasher was the perfect way for me to shoot the night, like I would anyway, in character and really engage with people. It's no secret that NYC is filled with characters on any given day and that on Halloween it's like those same characters are on ten.

What's your camera situation in there?
It's pretty big... No, seriously, it's the heaviest camera that Canon makes, the same model that most war photographers use out in the field. I connect a cable from the camera through the sleeve of my coat and take the pictures with the cable release in my hand.

What has been one of your favorite reactions and has anyone caused you bodily harm?
I get the best reactions. People are usually a little shocked or confused at first, especially if I'm really close to them, but in the end, they're usually amused. I love it when people are offended and think I'm actually about to flash them! What I don't do is flash groups of really drunk guys, because that can get pretty ugly. I once flashed a couple of cops on Christopher Street. One laughed and the other called me a pervert and told me to get lost. I did what I was told because I definitely didn't want to end up at Rikers in that outfit.

What makes Halloween in the city so chaotic?
New York is naturally chaotic. But on Halloween, everything is turned up a notch and for someone like me who's trying to capture the times, it's the best night of the year. The scary days are over in NYC, but the scariest thing I've encountered on Halloween in recent years has to be the classic old guy or gal in serious S&M gear that they wear all year round.

In your other work you're very much a studio photographer, what's special about catching people in that in between moment?
I am usually in a suit and tie photographing presidents and billionaires for magazine covers, where I'm trying to create and capture an unguarded moment while nervous staff are in the background trying to keep everything sanitized and run by the clock. With this project I can let all that go and shoot as someone else, it just happens to be 3 AM in the bathroom of a club and I'm literally shooting from the hip.

Would you ever spend the evening actually flashing?
Why, what have you heard?

Who are some of your favorite street photographers?
Diane Arbus for her humanity, Bruce Davidson for the truth, and Winogrand and William Klein for cool. But this project I have to give respect to Weegee, the ultimate New York City street photographer.

Ben Baker is and NYC-based portrait photographer. You can follow his fancy work here. You can follow the rest of his flasher series here. See more of his work below.

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'A Father Is Fed His Son's Liver' and Other Terrifying European Children’s Stories

Illustrations by Craig Scott

Realistically, the scariest thing about Halloween is that as soon as it's over, we're all going to be bombarded with turkey bag commercials and endless "Do They Know It's Christmas?" loops. It's not Christmas, mate. It's November.

The only people who should be feeling scared this weekend are those who risk getting STDs from strangers at Halloween parties, and children. Kids scare easy. In fact, by preying on that very weakness, parents the world over have long told their kids all sorts of ghoulish lies to make them stop acting like tiny pieces of shit.

We asked a few of our European editors to share the most terrifying story they were told by their parents as children. It turns out that, in Greece, if you catch your mother having an affair, she'll cook your liver and feed it to your dad.

DECAPITATED GOAT BABIES (ROMANIA)

The Goat and Her Three Kids teaches you that if you don't listen to your parents, you die. This goat has two naughty kids and one nice one. She goes out and tells them to keep the door closed until she returns and they hear her voice. A wolf passing by hears what she says, tries to copy her voice, but fails to convince the kids to let him in. Then he goes to the blacksmith, gets his tongue and teeth sharpened, and tries again. The two naughty kids fall for it and open the door, but all three of them hide, just to be safe. The nice one, who was most wary of the wolf, hides in the best spot, so he survives. The other two get eaten by the wolf—except for their heads, which he arranges at the window, not before modifying their facial expressions to make it look like they are smiling, for their mother to see and believe they are well and happy to see her. Then he smears the walls with blood and leaves.

The goat returns to hear the whole story from her last kid. The goat then calls the wolf to dinner to honor the passing of her children, pretending not to know that he was responsible for their death. She sits the wolf down on a wax chair, lights a fire under it, and lets him die in the flames, while she and her remaining kid throw rocks at him. The end.

The story, written in 1875 by author Ion Creangă, is included in the Romanian educational curriculum from kindergarten on. That means the main recipients of the story are children between the ages of two and five. The story is supposed to teach children the consequences of disobeying their parents. It is also supposed to help them express their feelings better.

A FATHER IS FED HIS SON'S LIVER (GREECE)

The Murderer Mother is a classic folk story/song that Greek grandmothers sing to their granddaughters. The story goes that Constantine, the family's only son, comes home from school and finds his mother sleeping with another man. He threatens to tell his father about the affair and no matter how much his mother pleads, he refuses to back down. Constantine's mother sends him to his room, but soon after that follows him, slaughters him, and cooks his liver.

The father arrives home wondering where his son's gone and the mother tells him that he is still at school. He goes to look for him at the school but the teachers tell him that he'd left earlier. When he gets home, his wife serves him Constantine's liver. At that point, the murdered kid's spirit appears and spills the beans on what's happened. Naturally the father is more than a little miffed about eating his own son's organs and decides to hack the mother's head off with a sword.

Many historians believe that the story was originally written in the 16th or 17th century. The tale pops up in different versions in a lot of local folk story books. It's said that the story was meant to warn young girls about misbehaving. Point taken.

THE LITTLE BOY WITH NO THUMBS (AUSTRIA)

One of the short stories most Austrian kids have had to endure is called The Thumbsucker. As you probably would have guessed, The Thumbsucker is about a boy called Konrad, who just won't stop sucking his thumbs. His mother keeps telling him to stop, but he just won't listen, so she warns Konrad that he might just get his fingers cut off by a crazy-ass tailor. Next thing you know, his mom leaves to run some errands, Konrad keeps sucking his thumb, so the tailor actually shows up, performing a smooth break-and-entry and starts chasing Konrad with his big-ass scissors. He eventually manages to cut the kid's thumbs off.

The Thumbsucker was written in the 19th century by a German doctor called Heinrich Hoffmann, who had more than fucked-up views on child education. This guy wrote a lot of really popular stories—including one about a little boy who drowns because he was daydreaming too much.

TROLLS LIVE IN YOUR MOUTH (DENMARK)

The tale of Karius and Baktus is supposed to teach you to brush your teeth and eat healthy food. Basically, if you don't, menacing tooth trolls will mine your teeth into little troll houses and set up shop in there.

The story goes: A young boy named Jens has shitty dental hygiene and a right, old sweet tooth. Because of this, black-haired tooth troll Karius and his red-haired brother Baktus hollow out Jens' teeth, fashion them into gaudy little troll houses, and start living prosperously in his mouth. These sadistic, pickaxe-wielding, little dickheads spend their days rhyming about their favorite sugary foods and maniacally la-la-la'ing as they hack, hammer, and chisel away at Jens's teeth, while debating the oral real estate potential of Jens's incisor versus his molar. Their greatest fear is—you guessed it—the toothbrush, and as Karius gleefully comments on how Jens "hasn't brushed his teeth in weeks," Baktus shudders while reminiscing about that awful period, when the boy only ate carrots and rye bread. They blissfully rejoice whenever Jens ingests a Danish or other glucose-laden treats, singing about how they're growing "because of all the cake and caramel," and dreaming of a day when poor Jens's mouth will be filthy enough for all of their tooth troll brethren to come and join them. Ultimately, Jens pulls his shit together and goes to the dentist, who purges his mouth of the malevolent tooth trolls once and for all.

This wholesome tale was originally spun by Norwegian children's playwright, songwriter, and illustrator Thorbjørn Egner in 1949. It was first published in Denmark in 1958, and quickly became an essential component of Danish bedtime lore for generations of children to come.

THE OLD MAN RUBBING CHILDREN'S GUTS ON HIS CHEST (SPAIN)

In Spain we have a story called The Sack Man. It's not a complicated tale: It's about an old, ugly dude roaming the streets with an empty sack on his shoulders. He wanders about at night collecting lost children, children who've misbehaved during the day, and children who don't want to go to bed at night. He puts them into his sack and from there nobody knows what the hell he does to them or where he takes them.

The most worrying part of this story is that the man really existed—kind of. It all began in 1910, in Almeria in the south of Spain. Police documents of the time attest that a man called "El Moruno" paid a quack doctor a bunch of money, hoping he'd cure his TB. The "doctor" recommended drinking the blood of a child and massaging the kid's guts into his own chest. El Moruno obliged; the quack and two other men kidnaped a boy, kept him in a sack, cut his armpit in order to extract the blood, served the blood to El Moruno so he could drink it, and then they crushed the kid's skull with a rock. Then came the slaughtering: They opened him up, extracted the fat and the guts, and spread them on El Moruno's chest. The job was done but a money disagreement drove one of the men involved to the police station, where he told the whole story to the authorities. Everyone was sentenced to death.

Some people in Almeria still remember the old songs that people of the time sang about this horrific story. It was all so fucked up that we still frighten our kids threatening them with a visit by "the sack man."

A LITTLE GIRL GOES UP IN FLAMES (GERMANY)


Just like most terrible bedtime stories, The Dreadful Story of the Matches has one meaning: You'll die a terrible death if you don't listen to your parents. The protagonist of the story is a young girl named Paulinchen, who is left alone with her two cats. Her parents are out and she gets pretty bored. When she stumbles upon some matches, she decides that they make a fantastic toy and tries to light them. The family's two cats try to intervene and remind her that her father prohibited her from doing so, but she won't listen. She lights up a match and dances around with it, impressed by how beautiful the flames look when she moves. Naturally this doesn't end well. She manages to set her dress on fire, and only a few seconds later her whole body stands in flames. Her cats are crying desperately for help, but no one can hear the terrible screams of the child or the animals. Finally, Paulinchen dies, reduced to a pile of ashes. The only part of her that remains unharmed is her shoes. Her cats just sit there, crying, asking "Where are the poor parents? Where?" as if they were the real victims of this situation. The story ends with the author making some strange remark on how the cat's tears remind him of small creeks on a field.

The Dreadful Story of the Matches is part of Struwwelpet—the Saw of children's books. It was written in 1845 by psychologist Heinrich Hoffmann. His collection of short, scary stories make The Shining look like Minions and might be one of the reasons why Germans aren't known for their humor. Despite its gruesomeness, this story is told to children at an early age. Apparently you're never too young to learn that the most important thing in life is to listen to your parents.

SCARY, BLIND RUSSIAN LADIES (Poland)

Baba Yaga is an evil witch found in many Polish children stories. The most common premise is that if you quarrel with your parents and decide to leave home, you'll eventually end up lost in the woods—which is where the child-eating Baba Yaga dwells atop either a chicken's leg (pretty cool) or in a gingerbread house (pretty standard). She flies around in an iron "stupa" (a sort of urn or mortar), has a skeletal leg, and is usually accompanied by her cat, crow, owl, or snake. She's also blind (either completely or to some extent) but navigates unfailingly with her amazing sense of smell.

It's impossible to pinpoint the exact origin of the story, but researchers agree that Baba Yaga was an important deity in the Slavic mythology. The Baba Yaga is present in most Slavic cultures, but in Poland it always serves a malevolent character. Her role is a bit more ambivalent in Russia, where she often presents the protagonists with help and advice. But hey, here in Poland we somehow always assume that Baba Yaga is Russian (probably because of her "un-Polish" name)—there's never any love lost between the two countries. The sad truth might be that we're just scaring our children with a Russian old lady who owns a cat.

SANTA'S BEST FRIEND IS HALF GOAT, HALF DEMON (ITALY)

According to the stories Northern Italian grandparents tell their grandchildren, Saint Nicholas (i.e. Santa) has a devilish friend, called Krampus. Around Christmas, the wicked hairy devil—half goat, half demon—appears on the streets wielding a few chains and bells, a bundle of birch branches, and carrying a wooden tub on his back.

Unlike Saint Nicholas, who rewards well-behaved children with gifts, Krampus takes the streets to beat misbehaving kids with sticks. Sometimes he'll come through the window at night and get his claws and fangs stuck into the skin of particularly naughty kids as a way to release the anger he's pent up after a year in isolation. Eventually, he will throw misbehaving children into his wooden tub and take them back to his lair to punish them—and encourage good behavior in their friends.

Part of the German-speaking Alpine folklore, the origin of the Krampus remains unclear, although many agree on the story's links to pre-Christian traditions. In some Alpine areas, Krampus night takes place on December 5 and involves young drunk men parading around town dressed as the demon.

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The VICE Guide to Right Now: Don't Freak Out, but Ohio Cops Just Confirmed an Actual Razor Blade in Some Kid's Snickers Bar

You know how ever since the 1980s, X-Ray technicians have offered to screen their neighborhood trick-or-treaters' loot just in case some psychopath wanted to kill kids by inserting foreign objects into candy? And you know how when you were a kid you never actually got your candy screened and you were always fine? And you know how even Snopes.com says that whole thing is almost always a myth? Well, this week, for one kid in Ohio, it appears to have been true.

According to The Columbus Dispatch a 14-year-old girl in Reynoldsburg told police on Thursday night that she bit into a Snickers bar she collected during an outing for one of Ohio's "Beggars Nights" (their regional version of trick-or-treating, which seems to span multiple days). The razor blade was small, police said, like something you would find in a disposable razor.

The teen wasn't hurt.

Since the girl was a teen, she might traditionally be perceived as untrustworthy around Halloween, as VICE has previously documented. Much like the teens in Pennsylvania who deliberately framed a man in 1969 for supposedly putting razor blades in apples.

But Reynoldsburg Police Lieutenant Shane Mauger, who spoke to the Dispatch, went out of his way to emphasize that he thinks this was true. For what it's worth, he said that the officer who examined the candy was a 30-year veteran, and bought into the girl's story fully.

Police are investigating where the razor came from, and currently have not announced a suspect. If it really wasn't a hoax cooked up by the anonymous teen, it could have been an individual at home, someone working in a local store, or something that happened further up the candy supply chain.

Still, according to Mauger, you shouldn't freak out, even if you're in Ohio. "What we have right now is an isolated incident," he told The Dispatch.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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VICE Talks Games: VICE Talks Games with HALO Developer Frank O'Connor

In this inaugural episode of VICE Talks Gaming, screenwriter Max Landis (Chronicle, American Ultra) sits down with the franchise development director for Microsoft's colossal game series HALO. Praised for being among the best in the first-person-shooter genre, HALO has expanded its universe into other media—best selling novels, comics books, television shows, etc.—and O'Connor is in charge of maintaining creative consistency across it all. Landis and O'Connor's discussed their mutual creative process, the approach to managing a a franchise of this magnitude, and the evolution of gaming with the progression of technology.

The latest game in the series, HALO 5: Guardians was released this week and is in stores now.

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How Houston Is Being Duped by Bigoted Zealots

Photo of Houston via Katie Haugland

When Annise Parker was elected to the office of mayor in Houston in 2009 it was a loud message that the old, conservative oil and gas town was finally beginning to reflect the place many of its residents already knew it to be: a forward thinking, world-class city with thriving LGBTQ and arts communities and a long resume of innovations in medicine and tech which long ago outgrew its dusty, Urban Cowboy roots. She was, after all, the country's first openly gay mayor, and was now in charge of one of the most diverse cities in the US. It's ironic, then, that upon taking office, Parker learned that Houston was the only large city in Texas—and one of the only ones in the country, in fact—that didn't have on its books an Equal Rights Ordinance, one that adds an extra layer to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to offer protection against discrimination in public and private sectors.

It took many years and a couple terms, but Parker finally got an Equal Rights Ordinance passed for Houston in May of last year. Known as HERO, it grants citizens "an environment that is free of any type of discrimination based on sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, marital status, military status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, or pregnancy."

Pretty straightforward stuff. But the ensuing fight to keep the Ordinance on the books, which has been raging since May, has been ugly. And, as Texas Monthly executive editor Mimi Swartz wrote in an essay titled "What Houston's Reaction Says About My City," the tactics being used in an effort to defeat it are reminiscent "of an older Texas, the one I wanted to get the hell out of when I was growing up—the one that was a center of backwardness and bigotry I told myself Houston had left behind."

At the heart of the controversy over the Ordinance is a small section contained within it when first introduced, and since removed, that would allow people to use whichever restroom or locker room best fits their gender identity. Though it is no longer explicitly stated in the Ordinance, that sentiment is still implied, and it has become the entire focus of those who oppose HERO, which they've craftily rebranded "The Bathroom Ordinance." Almost immediately after it was voted in, five pastors, along with help from a conservative Christian group known as Alliance Defending Freedom, started gathering signatures in an effort to get HERO repealed.

Read on Broadly: California Healthcare Appeal Sets Precedent for Transgender Coverage

They gathered the required number of signatories, though there were allegations of forgery, and long story short, after a bitter back and forth court battle between pro- and anti-HERO forces, the conservative Texas Supreme court decided that the Ordinance either be repealed or put to a vote.

HERO will appear on the November 3 ballot, the same one on which Mayor Parker is seeking her third re-election. The war being waged over it is for nothing short of Houston's soul, its perceived image to the rest of the globe.

"Those leading the anti-HERO campaign have been at this for 40 years," Mayor Parker wrote VICE in an email. "Their entire pitch is based on whipping up fear about a misunderstood minority."

The "misunderstood minority" she refers to are transgender folk, and Parker believes HERO's opponents are trying to sell the public "a flat out lie": that a vote for HERO means men will be able to walk into women's restrooms indiscriminately.

As Swartz put it in her essay, anti-HERO forces are using "the bathroom tactic to mask its very real and very deep loathing of people who identify as gay or transgender." And anti-HERO ads offer ample evidence to support Swartz's point—one sees a grown man following a young girl into a bathroom, another stars former Astros' outfielder Lance "Fat Elvis" Berkman, who worries what the Ordinance and the "troubled men" it would benefit could mean for his wife and four daughters. (As a result, Mayor Parker pwnd Berkman via Twitter when she reminded him that he'd played baseball for other major cities that had an ERO in place, and the women in his life came out the other side unscathed. "Can you say hypocrite? she wrote.)

Pastors in Houston have added to the hysterics, and heated up the rhetoric. Ed Young of the 63,000-member Second Baptist church told his flock during a recent sermon that HERO "opened up our city to something I think is absolutely Godless."

Dr. Steven Hotze, a conservative and proprietor of the Hotze Health and Wellness Centerin Houston was very blunt in his opposition. "I'm not going to fight homosexuals with sweet words," he said from stage on a speaking event he'd billed as "Faith, Family Tour." "I'm going to fight them with God's word." He went on to compare gays to Nazis, saying both were "wicked."

Mike Huckabee, a resident of Florida and presidential nominee running on the platform of being unelectable, got involved too, imploring his Facebook followers to march on the steps of Houston's City Hall.

Unfortunately, the tactics of HERO's opposition, though crude and inaccurate, seem to be working. The latest polls see opposition and support of HERO running neck and neck, giving HERO a slight edge of 45% in support and 39% opposed, with 20% still undecided.

That 20% are who those "Bathroom Ordinance" commercials are designed to influence.

"Most Houstonians, like most Americans, have gay and lesbian friends, family, and coworkers. Yet most people don't personally know a transgender person—at least that they know of," Mayor Parker told VICE via email in an attempt to explain the oppositions' effectiveness. "That lack of familiarity means that it can be easy for people to have questions, or concerns, or made to be afraid. People often respond that way to something they haven't experienced before. The fact that they are facing this attack affirms the need for this ordinance."

To help counter the opposition, supporters are widening the focus of HERO, and reminding Houstonians that the fight for it is more than just about who can pee where. The Ordinance protects 15 groups from discrimination on the grounds of sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, marital status, military status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, and pregnancy.

Chris Valdez is the co-founder of Primer Grey, a Houston-based design and marketing company that has joined the fight in support of HERO. Along with photographer Lauren Marek, Valdez is tapping social media with a powerful, image-heavy project called we are HERO. The project's goal is to shine a light on a diverse array of Houstonians who would be protected under HERO. They've seen much success since the website's October 1 launch. "Facebook has spread this project further than we could have ever imagined," Valdez says from his Houston office.

Related: Watch VICE's investigation into transgender health access in Canada, 'On Hold'

"We'll win this," says Valdez. "It's a shame that we're putting equal rights on the ballot, but I know that Houston will come out on the right side of this, because that's the kind of city this is."

Follow Brian on Twitter.

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Comics: A Woman Finds the Silver Lining in the New Comic Series 'Ghost Girl'

Look at Ines Estrada's work on her Instagram, Twitter, website, and online shop.

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The VICE Guide to Right Now: Someone Painted a 'Rape Trump' Mural on the Mexican Border

Photo courtesy of Indecline

On a stretch of the Mexico/US border in Tijuana, not far from the airport, there is an enormous mural of Donald Trump, a red ball gag stuffed in his mouth, his signature combover perfectly styled, with the words "¡Rape Trump!" Nevermind that the Spanish word for rape is actually violar—the point is completely clear.

The mural, which was created by an art collective called Indecline, was spray painted there about a week ago and also features instructions on how to get to Trump Tower from Tijuana. The group's creative director (who asked not to be named) told me the art was in direct response to Trump calling Mexicans "rapists" during his presidential announcement in June, and again in a clarification of that speech, where he said, "What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc."

"Do I feel bad about saying he should get raped? No. Not at all," the creative director told me. "He's a pretty horrible person. This was a tongue-in-cheek response to the quote—just kind of throwing it back on him."

"We don't honestly expect anyone to crawl over the border and follow the instructions and find Trump and rape him," said the Creative Director, "but we want to raise awareness horrible shit he said. Controversy works better than something subtle."

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

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Your Local Shelter Probably Won't Let You Adopt a Black Cat Around Halloween

It's the week of Halloween, and maybe you don't know this, but if you suddenly wanted to adopt a black cat, you would probably have a hard time. That's because thanks to their association with witchcraft, accepted wisdom holds that Halloween is a time when people ritualistically mutilate black cats.

To test if this really was still accepted wisdom, I contacted some animal shelters near to our Los Angeles office, and they all told me they wouldn't let me adopt a black cat. One, The Lange Foundation—the type of animal rescue that takes in cats from city shelters before they can be euthanized—was willing to talk to me on the phone and explain: If someone were to call and ask specifically for a black cat, that would trigger the policy. "I would say 'not today!'" said one of the foundation's board members, Diana Nelson.

The policy is somewhat casual in its execution, however. Nelson gave the proviso that the Lange Foundation would be perfectly willing to let someone adopt one "if it's someone we know." In fact she told me black cat adoption had "never become an issue."

When asked I Nelson why, the policy became a little less clear. "We're afraid they're going to harm them," she said, "because apparently there are bad people."

We reached out to The Humane Society and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) to find out if they had official policies on the matter, but they did not return requests for comment.

In the late 1980s, animal shelters started to set aside black cats around Halloween in order to prevent people from adopting them. According to an Associated Press report from 1987, a woman went into a Chicago animal shelter that year and asked for a black cat as some kind of accessory for her Halloween costume. Weirdly, according to the story, the shelter let her adopt one on that premise, and a few days later law enforcement reported a dead cat.

The idea seemed to catch on. Throughout the 1990s, it was common knowledge that you couldn't adopt a black cat around Halloween.

Why? For the same reason kids couldn't listen to Marilyn Manson in the 1990s: Satan.

"It goes back to satanic rituals and the strange kinds of things that happen at this time of year," Jeanne Stoffel, executive director of the Ozaukee, Wisconsin Humane Society told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 1996.

It's hard, however, to find a definitive example of a cat-sacrificing ceremony on Halloween. A rash of grisly cat mutilations in California in 1999 appears to have occurred in the summer when there was a full moon. A series of incidents in Utah that were reported around Halloween of 2002, actually began in the spring, and also involved dogs. That story cited, seemingly as common sense, the idea that Halloween is the time of year when animal mutilations become more common.

That sort of thing doesn't seem all that likely in the modern Satanist Church, which shares more DNA with new age self-help philosophy than the P.A.G.A.N.s from the 1987 movie Dragnet. Religious animal sacrifice seems a little more plausible as a reason for black cats to disappear in areas like South Florida, where people practice Santeria. According to Santeria's official website, ritualistic animal slaughter is necessary if you want the spirits known as Orishas to show up to your party.

In 1993, the Supreme Court said animal sacrifices like those in Santeria were constitutionally protected. Still, despite animal rights groups occasionally targeting Santeria practitioners for reportedly killing dogs, sacrificing cats at Halloween seems to be an ugly rumor, according to activist groups like Canada's Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.

The policy against letting people adopt black cats on Halloween does appear to be relaxing. In the early 2000s, some shelters started dropping the policy. The rationale seems to be that adopting a cat from a shelter is relatively difficult anyway, and you can find a stray cat pretty much anywhere.

Paul Miller, director of the Washington County, Maryland, Humane Society told a reporter for Capital News Service in 2003, "Cats are readily available, free on the street," adding, "Those are the ones I'm concerned about."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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The VICE Guide to Right Now: There Might Be a 'Hocus Pocus' Sequel in the Works

Screenshot from 'Hocus Pocus'

Read: Witches of Seattle Tell Us About the Appeal of Magic

I was never allowed to trick-or-treat as a kid, so I mostly spent Halloween watching spooky movies by myself. My favorite was Hocus Pocus, the tale of three executed Salem witches (played by Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and a pre-Sex and the City Sarah Jessica Parker) who are brought back to life 300 years later, after an anxious-to-impress virgin lights the magical Black Flame Candle.

When it was released in theaters in 1993, the film was widely considered to be both a commercial and critical flop. But 22 years later,Hocus Pocus has solidified itself as a cult classic. And now, there are rumors of a sequel.

Hocus Pocus producer David Kirschner said in an interview with Yahoo! this week that he was definitely on board for a sequel and had even pitched the idea to Disney a couple of years ago. The studio wasn't down for his idea of a theatrical release (boo), but Kirschner said there was still a possibility of Hocus Pocus 2 as a Disney Channel Original Movie.

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The VICE Guide to Right Now: These Two Identical Strangers Took the Greatest Selfie of All Time

Guy on right is the husband of my friend

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'Exorcist’ Director William Friedkin Told Us Why the Film Is Such a Classic

Photo courtesy of Warner Brothers

It may sound strange to hear, but the director of The Exorcist , William Friedkin, never set out to make a horror movie. But when the film about a young girl's demonic possession came out in 1973 people fainted, wept, and fled the theater. Armed guards had to be posted at screenings. As Paul Mooney said after viewing the film with his friend Richard Pryor: "If you say The Exorcist didn't scare you, you're full of shit."

William Peter Blatty's novel, on which Friedkin's film was based, provoked a similar reaction when it was released in 1971. People were so unmoored by it that they banished it to linen closets, trashcans, and freezers. That Blatty's novel took its inspiration from the real-life exorcism by priests of a young boy in Maryland in 1949 speaks to Friedkin's original intention as a director. Which was to make not a horror movie, but a "realistic" "film about the mystery of faith."

Today, on Friday, October 30 at 6 PM, 42 years after The Exorcist was released, the so-called "Exorcist steps" at 36th and M Streets in Georgetown, Washington DC, down which a newly possessed Father Karras hurls himself in order to save Reagan's life at the end of the film, will be dedicated with a plaque that bears Friedkin and Blatty's names. Recently, I spoke over the phone with Friedkin about revisiting The Exorcist, 70s horror, and why the steps dedication means more than any of his Academy Awards.

VICE: It came as no surprise to me upon rewatching The Exorcist last night how well it still stands up. Not only how scary and transgressive it is and continues to be, but also how stately and deliberately paced it is. It achieves this wonderful combination between mounting dread and absolute restraint.
William Friedkin: Which is why I'm stunned when it appears at the top of virtually all horror-film polls. Because we didn't conceive of it as a horror film.

I felt that the story was great—I mean, really confounding, because it was so real. It introduces the supernatural as a part of real life. And so I wanted to respect that. Today, I will admit that it's a horror film. [Back then] I knew it would be disturbing to people, though I had no idea how disturbing. People were freaked out—for years!—and to some extent, still are. I appeared last night at a screening at the Soho House here in Los Angeles. Full-house audience. Mostly young people in their 20s and 30s. And they were as struck by it as when it had first come out. I don't think that the film has dated because of the way it was cast, paced, and presented.

The pacing is deliberate, and I wanted it to happen slowly because the story, as it affected the real people who inspired it, took place in just that way. I felt we had to go through all of that. You had to see the symptoms. You had to see the treatment that was given out by internal medicine and by psychiatry, and to see that it all had been tried and failed.

"There are only three reasons people go to the movies: to laugh, to cry, or to be scared."

Well, one of the reasons I think it's so effective as a horror film is the pathos you feel for the characters. I think that mainly comes across in the performances. And this time around, I was really struck by the performance of Jason Miller (Father Karras). How did you coax such an elemental and intense performance out of him?
I didn't have him in mind at all. He wasn't really making a living as an actor; he was a milkman in Flushing, New York. But he had written this play called The Championship Season, which won the Pulitzer Prize. It was a terrific play, and I saw it when I was in New York casting the little girl, and it seemed to reek of lapsed Catholicism. And it turned out that he had studied for the priesthood at Catholic University in Washington for three years, then had a crisis of faith and dropped out—very much like the character, Father Karras.

So it wasn't an instance of my having to hammer this into him. He understood it, he got it. He had lived it.

There were big stars that wanted to play that part. Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman. Many others. And I had an instinct to not hire a star. I did not want to put someone like that in a priest collar.

On VICE: Watch Teenage Exorcists:

It's interesting—you're watching the movie, and the acting is great, and the direction is great, but if you were to take away the good actors, by virtue of the direction alone, it would still be a scary film. I noticed that a large part of the film's beauty and its grotesquerie derives from this sort of piecemeal imagery that we get...
You're talking about the subliminal cuts [of the demon Pazuzu's face]. They're not in the script, they're not in the novel, but I've always believed that while are in a conversation with someone, or having a meal, or watching a movie, or even driving—images pop quickly into our mind's eye like fireworks. Almost like a waking dream. I became very interested in the idea of subliminal perception.

The first scene when you see Linda being examined in the doctor's office there's this two-three frame cut of the demon, and that's the initial makeup test, which I rejected. It wasn't organic, it was just horror makeup. , there's the scene where she cuts herself with the crucifix in the vagina. It occurred to me that she probably did that to her face, too. And so Dick Smith, the makeup artist, and I decided to have the makeup grow out of self-inflicted wounds to the face that become gangrenous so that there was an organic reason for the change in her facial features, which might certainly be demonic possession, or self-immolation.

I love that that was in the DNA of the film, right down to the makeup design. The other thing I was wondering about, though, were some more extended shots toward the beginning—like the ironsmith with the blighted eye in Iraq, the ghostly nun, the homeless man on the subway. I was looking at how those shots were working with sound effects and sound-editing in the film. I think that's where the fear comes in, for me. It's that accord between very, very economical visual imagery and sound-editing that really does it.
I treated the soundtrack completely separately. I created sound environments with my collaborators. What I had in mind, of course, was to recreate dramatic radio, which I loved as a kid. All these wonderful suspense radio programs. Inner Sanctum, Suspense, Orson Welles's Mercury Theater . But I always tried to work with soundtracks in just that way—where the soundtrack has its own life and its own importance.

Was "Tubular Bells" originally composed for the film?
I had commissioned Lalo Schifrin to write a score, and I didn't like the score. I felt the need for something that was akin to Brahams's "Lullaby"—a kind of childhood feel. I went to see the head of Warner at the time, and he didn't know what the hell I was talking about, but he said go into that room over there, the music library. There were a couple tables stacked with demos. I went through that stack until I came to this thing called "Tubular Bells" by a guy named Mike Oldfield. And had no interest in it—was not going to release it. It's a narration record. Because right after I play "Tubular Bells," Mike Oldfield starts narrating and talking about tubular bells, what they are, and how they sound. But I listened to that refrain, and it hooked me, and we won the rights to it. I think it sold 10 or 20 million records. And it was an accident.

" really changed the horror film—his novel, our movie. It was not a serial killer, a robot, a monster, a vampire, a zombie—it was something completely different, set in a realist world."

You know, it strikes me that many of the great horrors films of the 70s or early 80s have some kind of iconic classical score. Like, The Exorcist, The Omen, The Sentinel, Carrie, Halloween, Suspiria, Jaws, and at the end of course you have Alien and The Shining . Why do you think the 70s was such a golden age for that kind of film being made?
There was a lot more freedom of the screen then. It was not formulaic. In those days, the studios were open. You could make a film like The Exorcist and get away with it. But the form of course was inspired and influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley. Those were the people who invented horror films, because the first really significant horror films were things like Dracula, Frankenstein, and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

You know, the guy's name who should be up there with those three is William Peter Blatty, for The Exorcist . He really changed the horror film—his novel, our movie. It was not a serial killer, a robot, a monster, a vampire, a zombie—it was something completely different, set in a realist world. Of course, everything I've mentioned to you—the gothic horror stories that are the origin of all this—they're set in a totally fictional world. Nobody is pretending that Dracula or Frankenstein's monster are real.

Right, they take place in these kind of hyper-realities. There's something entirely otherworldly about them.
They're great! And they still hold up. But Blatty changed horror films.

"I'm not a fan of The Shining at all. That's kind of masturbatory stuff, I felt."

You've dabbled in many different genres over the years, most notably crime, yet every decade or so you seem to return to horror, or at least films with a strong macabre sensibility. Cruising, Jade, Rampage, Bug . What keeps you coming back to horror and the macabre?
I don't consciously return to any genre. I'm certainly drawn more to drama than to comedy. And I think there are only three reasons people go to the movies: to laugh, to cry, or to be scared. I think I come back to not horror films so much as high-intensity films about characters that have their backs against a wall and no place to go.

But you know, the horror film genre is a small brotherhood of real classics. The Shining—I'm not a fan of The Shining at all. That's kind of masturbatory stuff, I felt. I don't find it scary, and I also found it—a bit obscure. I don't know what the fuck it was about!

The films that have terrified me are Alien, Psycho, a Japanese film called Onibaba (1964)—one of the most terrifying films I've ever seen. And I loved this recent film The Babadook. It took me by surprise, and I believed it. I mean, it was largely about the difficulty of being a single mother with a troubled child. In other words, a realistic situation, with real characters, that I found to be profoundly moving.

On the Creators Project: Virtual Reality Horror Film 'Catatonic' Comes to Your Smartphone

With The Exorcist, as you say, you set out to make a high-intensity film, though not necessarily one of such majestically disturbing proportions. So what do you think was lost in translation there between you and the audience?
Nothing. People interpreted the film as they chose. Most people think of it as a horror film, so I've long since accepted that it must be. And I've learned over the years that the most terrifying scene is the arteriogram.

Yes! I absolutely agree with you. That is the most terrifying scene.
Medical science impinging upon the innocence of this little girl. Which is more disturbing than the demon.

My last question has to do with the dedication of the steps. How do you feel about it?
Let me tell you exactly how I feel about it. I have an Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director [ The French Connection ], and a number of nominations. There are probably hundreds of people who have won an Academy Award, but I don't think there are any who have a dedication like that on one of their locations. They're calling those steps now—in a historic district—in a historic city—the Exorcist Steps. My name is on the plaque. As is Blatty's. To me that's an absolutely great honor because the Academy may come and go. Its importance has been diminished over the years anyway. But that plaque on those steps is going to be there for a very long time.

Follow Adrian on Twitter.

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