We Need to Make a Lin Shaye Day

October is rounding to its end on arguably the most fun holiday of them all: Halloween. Young or old, we love Halloween for its mysticism, candy, and most importantly its spookiness. Some of us (myself included) watch horror movies every day of the year and delight when others select thirty days of horror movies to post about or even ask for our recommendations on what to watch (the best compliment a horror nerd can receive).

This article is for those of us who love horror movies every day of the year, who find no greater cinematic joy than being scared or filled with existential dread, for just a few minutes of our at-times-monotonous days. We puzzle over movies to recommend in October because there is no possible way to find the perfect, niche, iconic horror movie that everyone will love. Some people don’t like Nightmare on Elm Street for Christ’s sake! Or the Blair Witch Project! What is wrong with people??

Maybe I’m just heated because my friend said The Lodge was too slow after I recommended it.

“Not everyone has good taste, and that’s okay” — a therapist I can’t afford, probably.

But one thing I believe all horror nerds can agree upon is, Halloween is better with very specific themes. A zombie movie marathon, for example, should always include Train to Bhusan. An alien horror movie marathon requires The Thing. Jordan Peele is a god and should also have a day attributed to himself, once he releases more movies that we can talk about with normal people for months and months.

And, most importantly, Lin Shaye deserves her own special holiday. She’s a horror great and will never get the recognition she deserves because the recognition she deserves is an entire holiday dedicated to her character work.

I first saw Lin Shaye in Insidious, where she played a badass medium and stole the show so hard she is now the main character of the entire franchise.

Then, pow! Everyone loved her. She was in dozens of movies including one called Big Ass Spider (iconic) and Matchmaker Santa (creative). Soon, she found her strength in big production horror movies like Ouija, Abattoir, The Midnight Man, The Grudge (2020), Darkness Falls, and more.

These are invaluable additions to any horror nerd’s October entertainment specifically because (with the exception of Insidious), they are not classics. And they don’t need to me.

Rave all you want about horror classics like The Shining, The Omen, The Birds, and countless other “The” movies, but there’s a special place in horror for horror movies that don’t try to be anything but scary. These movies take little thought, but that is the beauty of them. It’s brings to mind the moments at sleepovers attempting to retell stories we’ve heard to scare each other.

These simple horror movies are nostalgic without necessarily even existing before we’ve seen them. They all rely on rules that horror nerds know by heart, things like covering windows with sheets to keep out spirits and never playing with Ouija boards. They are the simplicity that we need in our lives.

And Lin Shaye is the queen of all of them.

Not to mention how damn hard it is for an old woman (and she is actually old, nearing eighty), to be successful in Hollywood. Beauty norms are the real horror, amirite?!

Let’s make a day in her horror honor.