Autumn serves as the perfect time to revisit paranormal influence on pop culture, and all the reasons we like to get involved.
With Halloween approaching, many familiar spooky sights and sounds come to mind. A haunted hayride, a scary movie, a costume party, or a playlist of festive songs for the holiday may creep into your head.
But Halloween traditions are nothing new, and actually go far back; the celebration is thought to have originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs; the holiday, All Saints’ Day, incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows’ Eve, and later Halloween.[1]
Aliens in particular have played a prominent role in popular culture, especially at this time of the year, since the mid-20th century. Humanity has conducted a tireless search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, from radios used to detect possible extraterrestrial signals, to telescopes used to search for potentially habitable extrasolar planets.
This fascination has dominated in works of science fiction, and thanks to Hollywood's involvement, has continued to capture the public's interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Aliens are often portrayed as aggressive, adversarial, or scheming, possibly just because this makes for easier action script writing.
One of the most influential early examples of aliens in pop culture was HG Wells'War of the Worlds;(1898), which popularized the notion that advanced, malevolent aliens could invade the earth. The Orson Welles radio adaptation in 1938 is one of the most infamous episodes in alien storytelling, as many people actually believed a real alien invasion was underway.
As our scientific understanding has advanced, our ideas about the nature of otherworldly beings have changed accordingly. Instead of god-like creatures living in magical places, modern aliens are usually thought of as flesh-and-blood creatures evolved from unusual but natural environments.
More recently, the popularity of aliens has made a smooth transition to interactive digital media, and benefited from some modern twists. A fitting example of this continued interest is the BigHut Games app Alien Jump – Lab Escape. This game, for participants of all ages, features non-threatening, cute aliens that were captured by evil scientists, and the players’ challenge is to help them escape from the lab. The three highlighted characters are alien Zippy and his friends, and they are involved in a daring get-away adventure, using the scientists’ own inventions against them.
Along the way, coins can be collected to upgrade items, powerful jetpacks enable players to fly, and many powerups are available to help in the ultimate escape. Friends can compete with each other in the alien fun, as everyone attempts to be the first to reach the exit.
The app, now optimized for Intel devices, offers beautiful and colorful graphics, and over 60 levels filled with dangerous traps, and challenging twists and turns. Alien Jump is completely free to play, but also offers items that can be purchased; this feature can easily be disabled on individual devices based on preference.
The ways in which we recognize Halloween and incorporate its traditions into popular culture have certainly evolved over time, but at least in the case of aliens, these modern portrayals couldn’t be more fun. As the leaves fall and the nights get chillier, we can delight in the scary elements of Halloween with a whole new level of interaction and believability in the digital age. To start your extraterrestrial adventure now, download Alien Jump – Lab Escape here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bighutgames.alienjump
[1]http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween