Halloween is a holiday with a fascinating history.

Its roots can be found in Celtic ritual celebrations held during the fall harvest in the early centuries. Through the Middle Ages it evolved into a holiday, which included offerings of food or drink. Somewhere along the line, it was dubbed All Hallows Eve, then eventually Halloween.

OK, so maybe "fascinating" was the wrong word.

The modern celebration is nothing short of a marvel, though.

Although most of us have probably never really harvested anything, our culture embraces the cult holiday as an excuse for kids to stay up late collecting candy from strangers, for college students to get drunk on a weeknight (for those who weren't doing that already) and for easily-offended people to demand that schools have "harvest" parties instead.

It's also a great time of year for the makers of crappy horror films, since it's about the only occasion their movies get watched.

In fact, if you, like many Halloween enthusiasts, are looking for such a scare, you may be doing yourself some good.

With their uncanny ability to make fun things boring, some scientists, including a noted UC-Irvine psychologist, told Forbes that facing one's fears can be healthy. In fact, doing so may help overcome anxiety, so Halloween is a perfect opportunity for some healthy scare finding and anxiety busting.

For example, if you're scared of those crappy horror films, go rent one. I recommend some of the worst — Frogs, Jeepers Creepers or something of similar caliber.

If you're scared of drunken guys dressed in drag and girls going wild, take a walk up Greek Row tonight. You will find them in abundance.

And if you're scared of overpriced coffee from a multinational competition-crushing corporation, stop by Starbucks this afternoon — anxiety cured.

Personally, I'll be sorting through recent national news headlines. What could be scarier than that?

Take, for instance, the revelation that the Federal Emergency Management Agency staged a fake press conference to address the California wildfires. Yes, from the people who brought you the Hurricane Katrina debacle comes a new national disgrace — designed questions asked by fake reporters intended to make an incompetent agency appear it has the latest national disaster in good control.

Frightening indeed.

Or how about the latest on the overseas war effort? President Bush asked Congress this past Monday for an additional $189.3 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, the U.S. troop death toll in Iraq nears 4,000, and Bush threatened to veto a bill to increase low-income family healthcare spending by $35 billion.

All are truly bone-chilling.

Finally, for a story that is funny, strange and scary all at once, consider the Associated Press report on a legal battle between New York journalist Leslie Keane and NASA regarding a 1965 UFO incident in rural Pennsylvania. Keane sued NASA for withholding documents about the agency's investigation.

Eyewitnesses claimed to have seen an acorn-shaped object the size of a Volkswagen being carted away by government officials, while NASA claimed it was only a meteorite. A U.S. District Court judge finally heard the case. Keane won.

I'm not sure which of those parts are funny, which are strange and which are scary, or whether it even matters.

And somehow, for all that fear-facing, I don't feel any less anxious.

Come to think of it, I can't wait until Halloween is over.

[Reach columnist Andrew D. Brown at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]