Undead

Today, I’d like to talk about a song that rarely fails to lift my spirits: Bela Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus!

This song is simple and complex all at once. It coaxes me to slow down and listen to every layer of sound, each instrument creating more tension and anticipation as the seconds tick by. The complementing and sparse, deep notes from the piano create that air of mystery—a feeling of foreboding. When Peter Murphy’s voice comes echoing through that thick musical darkness, it’s like a wolf baring its teeth and snapping: danger is upon us. Being the incredible vocalist that he is, Peter breathes life into the song, creating varying degrees of drama that are enjoyable to follow.

Practically, this song embodies the feeling of watching an old Dracula movie: everything’s in black and white, textures are either faded or washed out, sound has both a muffled and sharp quality to it, and special effects rely on drama and builds rather than fancy makeup and computers. There’s a certain purity in that era of movie-making that Bauhaus carries into Bela Lugosi’s Dead: the simple mixed with the complex.

When I listen to this song, it’s sensory overload for me: I can taste candy corn, smell smoke, dead leaves, and the autumn breeze, feel the summer turn to fall on my skin, and hear wolves howl, witches cackle, and ghosts moan. Through this song, I can see a vampire in the shadows, showing its wet, too-white teeth; my heart skips along with the rhythm, knowing that an instant later, that vampire will be right next to me and ready to feast. This song gives me the feelings I get while reading Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree or watching Hocus Pocus (only Hocus Pocus lacks some of the spookier qualities that The Halloween Tree and Bela Lugosi’s Dead encapsulates). This song gives me the feeling of walking down a dark alley at 3am, enveloped in fog, and being the scariest thing in town: a feeling of invincibility and peak spookiness.

The reason why I love this song so much is because it summons the Halloween feelings I miss during the off season. It brings me to a dark, warm, jack-o-lantern lit place that I call home inside my mind—my happy place!