Deep in the steely, industrial wilds of western Pennsylvania, nestled against the sludgy and monotonous course of the Monongahela River, there’s an amusement park beloved by many but unheard of by most. It’s called Kennywood, and it’s where, as a boy, I spent some of the best, sun-pummeled days of summer. Nowadays my love of Kennywood exists only in seldom-conjured reminiscences and nostalgia; I haven’t been back in well over three years, ever since commercialization took over, and classic rides like the Old Mill turned into “Garfield’s Nightmare” and the lazily-themed “Volcano Valley” area was introduced to appeal to a generation of park-goers to which I no longer belonged. Recently, however, a flood of memories came rushing back to me when I learned about the closure of one of the park’s most cherished thrill rides, the Gold Rusher. Not exactly the kind of “thrill” provided by the ninety-degree vertical drops and nauseating loops of today’s amusement parks, the Gold Rusher offered a much more tenebrous adventure, appealing to one of humanity’s greatest fears – the dark.

In 1952, William F. Mangels wrote, “Greatly popular at some resorts are the attractions known as Dark Rides. In these, passenger-carrying vehicles, which may be boats, cars, or small trains, pass through dark tunnels or closed-in passages at a very slow speed. Along the way, surprise scenes such as mechanical ghosts, flirting devils, and similar devices pop up to scare or amuse the slowly passing riders.” These dark rides such as the Gold Rusher are slowly, and sadly, becoming a thing of the past, being destroyed faster than they are being built. Call me a wimp, but I’d prefer a good old-fashioned dark ride to a roller coaster any day. There’s something about the unknown implicit in darkness that incites a terror in me more profound than that which I’ll ever experience from, say, Millennium Force. And it isn’t just me; it’s all of us. It’s a perfectly human fear. We’re all afraid of the dark.

But we’re forgetting about this. We associate being afraid of the dark with children, a fear no rational adult would still harbor. We grow out of it. Right?

If that were true, then dark rides would never be as successful as they are, or rather, were. While one would think that dark rides attract a younger population, go to any amusement park or boardwalk featuring one, and you’ll find that it’s a mixed crowd standing anxiously and nervously in line. Sure, it’s logical to assume that kids would be put off by the daunting hills and corkscrews of roller coasters or other rides, or maybe they’re just not tall enough, and go for the attraction that relies on a five miles per hour speed limit and phantasmagoric scenery. On the other hand, you can find just as many kids who quickly shy away from the inky shadows behind the creaking doors of the Gold Rusher eagerly rushing to wait in line for a two-hundred foot plunge toward the ground.

Of course, even the oldest, most mature of us have a reason to be afraid of the dark once a year – Halloween. October 31^st has traditionally been an excuse to embrace the dark and face the unknown, but sometimes it seems that we’re losing our sense of darkness even on this, the “darkest” day of the year. We rush to the latest blood-and-guts horror film or challenge ourselves to feats of endurance in the latest local haunted house – Halloween has become a bright and flashy thrill ride, not a dark ride. We can try to recover this darkness, however, by learning from history: millennia ago, this time of year was celebrated by the ancient Celts as the beginning of the “dark” half of the year. We can also learn from memory: too often we forget that childhood feeling of plunging out of the open door and into the night, pretending to be someone or something impossible, scavenging door-to-door for candy. Celtic lore teaches that on Samhain, the precursor to and the “original” Halloween, different sorts of doors are opened, as the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead become thinner and sometimes fade away completely.

There’s yet another door that begs to be opened into the darkness, not any occult darkness teeming with phantom spirits, but a much more intimate door; it’s the door to our own minds, the wellspring of fear itself. What bitter irony that our fear of the dark emerges from a place just as dark as, if not darker than, the inside of any amusement park ride. Sometimes, looking outward and waiting for the monsters to come out of the shadows makes us forget about the shadows inside ourselves. Renowned psychoanalyst C.G. Jung developed the concept of the “shadow” aspect, an unconscious complex made up of the suppressed and repressed aspects of the conscious self. In its most destructive manifestations, the shadow represents everything that the conscious person does not wish to acknowledge within themselves. In short, the shadow is that which we fear most about ourselves and often try to project onto others. Jung emphasized the importance of being aware of one’s shadow and incorporating it into conscious awareness. The shadow is not necessarily evil, even when it may appear to be. By working to merge our unconscious shadow with our conscious self, we would no longer have to worry about hiding our hidden self, or our darker faces.

By embracing our shadow, we embrace the darkness within us, and by doing so may be able to embrace the darkness without. It’s good to fear our shadow, just as it’s good to fear the dark. Fear draws us closer, makes us want to explore the unexplored. This Halloween, I challenge you: find your shadow, and make it your own. Incorporate it into your very being. You won’t find a better costume to scare people with than your own hidden self. Remember, what may seem dark doesn’t mean it’s to be avoided. There’s always, as Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson said, “gold in the shadow.” And besides, those fiends and ghouls jumping out at you from the murky depths of the dark ride you’re on – the spider falling down on you in the faux abandoned mine shaft of the Gold Rusher – in the end, when you wheel out of the exit and back into the bright lights and smiling faces of the midway, they always make you laugh.