You’d notice a dead man… wouldn’t you?

Undoubtedly, most would say yes. After all, a dead body is rather unmistakable. Except, of course, during the Halloween season.

It was under this unfortunate collision of circumstances that a Los Angeles man, Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed, 75, was recently found dead on his apartment balcony, dead from a shot to the eye in what authorities think was an attempted suicide. The kicker? According to the New York Times, the body had actually gone unnoticed for five days before.

The neighbors claimed the body looked like a very elaborate Halloween display. The body was reportedly flopped over a chair and somewhat visible from the street. Blood was also supposedly visible.

The bottom line, however, is that the body apparently did not appear to be real.

So what did it look like? A fake dead body? Since when do fake bodies look so genuine that they could be real? The answer is that Halloween has turned to what might aptly be called the “dark side”.

Long gone are the days of pumpkin patches, fresh piles of leaves, scarecrows, and trick-or-treating without worrying whether you’re going to make it through the night unscathed. Such things still exist, but have been eclipsed by much more exciting Halloween festivities. Like cannibal clowns. Or dead babies. Or life-size figures of horror movie characters complete with the moving chainsaw-wielding arm, sound effects, and the faintly nauseating smell of vinyl.

Not only has Halloween become completely commercialized, but it has turned from the epitome of childhood memories to something that parents should check out before deciding if it’s appropriate for their children. It has transformed from the annual autumn festivities into something decidedly much more sinister.

This Halloween, having had enough of trick-or-treating years past, I went to The Darkness, a haunted house which likes to tout itself as one of the scariest in St. Louis. Basically, I paid them so they could throw the most horrifying scenes they could think of at me in hopes that I might have fun.

I walked through scene after scene of babies splatted on walls, dismembered bodies hanging in plastic bags, babies lying in cradles with their necks twisted fully round, and even a slaughterhouse section where a pig brandishing a chainsaw lurked in the corner and jumped out at passersby. Obviously fake? Of course. Disturbing—most definitely.

So what happened? Somewhere along the line, some genius discovered that Halloween sells a lot better if it is extreme. No one pays $30 to walk through roomfuls of happily glowing jack-o-lanterns. It is most certainly not the same if a kid dressed as a pumpkin jumps at you rather than a clown with an obscene amount of bloodied pointy teeth.

We sell these things because, well, they sell. Forget catering to kids when you can make $20 or $30 a pop trying to scare the living daylights out of adults who can afford it. So forgo a family market. Profits are so much higher this way.

And are we happier this way—watching Friday the 13th and filling our heads with horrifying images? What kind of people are we? Besides the obvious money-driven aspect of ourselves, we must question the level that we are willing to stoop to.

What is the point of watching blatant carnage? Does it make us feel better? No. When we get down to the basics, it is just a sick rush we get from scaring ourselves as hard as we can. In doing so, we’ve overstepped the boundaries into material that’s simply tasteless.

This is what it’s led to. A dead man gets ignored for nearly a week because people just assume a dead person on display is absolutely normal. News flash, people: we have officially reached an all-time low.