GUSTO: BitchSlap by Elizabeth F. Stewart: The gloves are off.

Oooo, it's Halloween again, my pretties--that scaaary time of year, when all the monsters and witches and evil spirits come out! Now, the Bitch dasn't dabble in the occult, nor is she psychic, nor is she blessed with clairvoyance. Nonetheless, she is oft troubled by flickering visions of marauding monsters, heartless witches and cruel spirits which materialize before her eyes day and night. The Bitch is a clear-sighted multi-media news whore. Call her a cynic, but she says, who needs that hollow, rotten, rictus-grinning Jack O. Lantern when we have George W. Bush? See, kids that's the real spirit of Halloween. We don't need no stinking fiction. Why hazard a rollercoaster when one can suffer the whirlies from opening investment statements? Why watch a slasher film when one can develop cringing jitters by walking solo down a dark urban alley? Why watch a bimbo gobble cockroaches on "Fear Factor" when one can chug bad milk and hurl?

Halloween is inherently spooky. It has fascinating and complex ancient origins in Celtic and Druid cultures. It was believed that on the night between Oct. 31 and Nov.1 "the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred." Their traditions evolved over centuries and were adapted by the PR geniuses of the early Christian church, turning those dates into "All Hallows Eve" and "All Souls' Day."

Why do people want to go all topsy-turvy, go out in get-ups? Because the Bitch frequently plays dress-up as a part of her sex life and is an art director with a serious costuming background, Halloween feels like Amateur Night; what St. Patrick's Day binge-drinking is to active alcoholics. But so many insist on making Halloween a traditional fancy-dress event! How did the costume custom come to be? Historychannel.com says: "On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits."

One of the traditional "scary" Halloween characters, the stereotypic evil crone Witch (not a Wiccan), is at least connected to the spirit, or occult world. That is a generic "scary" costume, but there is a contemporary "adult" variation on it: the "Sexy Witch."

The Bitch finds this to be a harmless, but puzzling and silly conceit. However, considering the extensive worldwide torture and slaughter of women accused of being witches, the concept of "Sexy Witches" gives the Bitch pause.

There was Samantha on "Bewitched" who was cute-sexy, but hopelessly square and married to that terminal dweeb, Darrin. Her mother, Endora, utterly dripping with ennui and drenched in disdain for "Dimwit, or Divot, or whatever it's name is," was too divine--an "Older Sexy Witch."

And then there's the grotesque, irrepressible Elvira, the Monster Truck of "Sexy Witches," lurid trailer trash with a hydrocephalic '80s metal-head beehive shag. She is a dirt-ball cleavage clown, but the Bitch admits, this goofball-goth hootchie mama, has some "self-branding" smarts.

"Sexy Witch" is really just a seasonal variant on the vamp and dominatrix archetypes, symbols of aggressive, independent female sexuality, said to be threatening to insecure males. Seen as dominant women, through their cunning they could entrap men into marriage, blackmail them, give them social diseases, and drive them to drink or gamble! Aaaaa--Dames: They're no good, I tell ya!

Moving along the witch continuum to the "not sexy" and "evil" end, is the "crone." These old dears literally have been taking a beating for eons. Some theories hold that there were pre-Christian Goddess religions and legions of older women, formerly held in high esteem in those cultures, who were executed as "witches" for a scandalous litany of excuses when Christianity took root. Over centuries it was basically open season on old ladies.

By 1485 the Catholic inquisition authorities published the "Malleus maleficarum," which declaims: "All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. … What else is woman but … a natural temptation … an evil nature, painted with fair colours. … Women are by nature instruments of Satan -- they are by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the original creation."

So, even though the ditzy "Sexy Witch" is just the Halloween vamp, she is "an instrument of Satan," after all! She's heavy-laden with more history-specific, ancient, moralistic, political symbolism -- all of which is actually behind the vamp and dominatrix archetypes themselves.

Just for fun, though -- The "Sexy Witch"? Do we want her because all women are just dead sexy? Do we make "Witches" silly and cartoonish in their sexuality to minimize the threat of their sexual power? Or do we just want a "Sexy Witch" because we like a big pointy hat over a nice rack and a set of killer gams on spikes?

Sigh. Before the John F. Kennedy assassination, (November 22, 1963, the exact day when everything went to hell in a genuine alligator handbag), Halloween was a wholesome kids' holiday. Sexy adult costumes weren't on the menu unless you worked at the Playboy club. The Bitch waxes nostalgic remembering when Halloween meant her mother would make her a beautiful angel or butterfly costume (though La Bitchette, the nasty little harridan, would throw a tantrum over some flawed detail). Adults' involvement was pretty much limited to costume making or buying, stocking up on all that candy. They either took the toddlers trick-or-treating, or stayed in and answered the doorbell to dole out treats and fuss over the kids' outfits.

Responsible parents never even worried about 7-year-old suburban kids going out in pairs to trick-or-treat. Was the world ever that innocent? The Washington Post reported that "New York's probation department has warned convicted pedophiles: Do not open your doors to trick-or-treaters, do not wear a mask and do not say 'Boo!' Cities in other parts of the country have similar programs geared toward keeping sex offenders away from children on Halloween."

Living in an urban child-free zone, the Bitch only supposes today's trick or treating is different: Mom A. dons a real hockey mask, greeting trick-or-treaters "in her cups," swilling a Suffering Bastard, wielding a live chain saw in one hand, delivering a rancid hail of withered bar fruit with the other, cursing the SOB who left her for that "Sexy Witch" bitch at the last Halloween party. Perhaps Mom B. is on Halloween Youth Bodyguard Detail, delivering kids to an officially-sanctioned seasonal costume-dress event at a properly-equipped local law enforcement facility on a mission to conduct "edible treat" analysis with instruments specially calibrated to detect foreign objects or substances of a metallic or chemical nature.

Perhaps Mom C. shepherds her kids for a Godly, but fun, jaunt to a Christian Halloween Hell House.

This is a haunted house with a series of rooms, each of which has a short but grisly modern morality play set inside. Small groups are led through to see them played out. The Bitch hates to spoil it, but, basically homosexuals and abortion-recipients die horrible deaths at the hand of the Devil. Those deaths are the most hideously portrayed, but also dead are those who take drugs, drive drunk, or don't accept Jesus as their personal savior. The Columbine High School shootings prove a rich source of dramatic material as well. It is rightwing Christian "infotainment," and is more excellent evidence that real life is much scarier than make-believe.

Low-tech as ketchup on a white sheet, it has to be tons more chilling than anything the vast riches poured into Universal Studios can deliver; and it has to be more horrible than anything a real ghost could do in a real haunted house.

Now, is this scary because of the draconian beliefs of rightwing Christians? Or, is this scary because they express them in such revolting, violent ways sure to impress the weak-minded, which could result in yet more repression of abortion rights and hatred toward homosexuals? Or is it just inherently yucky?

The Bitch loved a documentary film on this phenomenon, called "Hell House" which details an annual event produced by the Trinity Assembly of God Church outside of Dallas. Although Trinity was one of the first groups to mount one, Hello Houses have proliferated, and instructions are available from the more experienced groups to help novices start their own Hell Houses. The film is newly available on DVD.

If the genuine Hell House weren't jaw-slackening enough, the Bitch discovered, for your Halloween amusement, a completely over-the-top Baptist Hell House, with a "Clickable Interactive Floorplan" virtual tour experience. Enjoy!

Elizabeth F. Stewart, AKA "The Bitch of Dupont Circle" (BoDC), was lovingly given this Nomme de Perv by her mentor in the leather community, because she is a bitch, as well as a denizen of that 'hood in Washington DC. She is an art director (see www.efstewart.com) and writer (see also www.pervgrrl.org), whose fave hobbies include cracking wise, dressing up, getting off, telling others where to get off, and arranging things in an attractive fashion.