Ronda Priest: Queen of Halloween
A few of the many faces of Ronda Priest, chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice Studies - and Halloween enthusiast. |
In Dr. Ronda Priest's laboratory, in the eerie glow of a black light, you'll find a tank full of shrunken heads, children stretched out on a buffet table, and the top half of a corpse squirting red liquid out of one eye.
It's Halloween and Priest, chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice Studies, "is like a kid again." This weekend she'll host her fifth annual Halloween party, and the laboratory – which also includes a giant coffin that serves as the bar – is one of the party features her growing list of guests has come to look forward to.
Obviously, Halloween is her favorite holiday. "Halloween is fantastic," she said. "As an adult, it's your one chance to dress up and be someone else. For some of us, we don't let our creative side show very much, so putting together a costume is a chance to do that. You take on that other identity and boom - you let your hair down a little bit. It's very freeing. Taking on that new identity gives you a license to be a little more social – and a little bit tackier."
Her past costumes have included Jackie Kennedy immediately following the assassination of JFK; a star-bellied Sneetch from Dr. Seuss's Sneetches and Other Stories; Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" covered in pea soup with a bed and false legs around her waist; and Mrs. Brady from "The Brady Bunch."
One of her favorite costumes was based on the classic "Star Trek" series. "I'm a 'Star Trek' geek so I got a bootlegged pattern from the original series and made a uniform. I had to send away for a special patch and everything. Last year I was a Spartan cheerleader from 'Saturday Night Live.'"
This year she'll be Curious George while Dr. Steven Williams, associate professor of sociology, will be the Man with the Yellow Hat.
"Academics make the best Halloween-goers because they put together a thinking person's costume, such as historical characters not everybody would know, or creative plays on words. You don’t see a lot of standard superheroes or normal store-bought costumes at the party. There have been some fantastic costumes over the years."
She recalled a cat lady covered in cats, a tea bag, and a "cereal killer" with knives stabbed into boxes of cereal attached to her body.
Priest's extensive Halloween décor extends outside of her home. The front yard is kid-friendly with pumpkins, chrysanthemums, and trick-or-treater figurines. "It's done more 'cutesy' so the kids in the neighborhood won't be afraid," she said. "They already think I'm this strange old lady." She keeps her graveyard out of sight in the back.
An extra room in her house becomes the laboratory. "The laboratory is a room lit with black lights, and I put up some psychedelic wallpaper, cobwebs, skulls, rats, eyeballs, and paper mache ghosts – just anything I can find around my house."
Last year she made shrunken heads out of apples and floated them in an aquarium. The laboratory also serves as the bar, with a giant-size coffin holding the drinks. The aforementioned corpse squirts cranberry juice out of its eyeball.
Her party allows her to express her creativity in a tangible way. "When you're an academic, your creativity is in your writing, so to me it’s a lot of fun because you can do it and then you can point to it," she said.
But the food is always the biggest hit. Some of her offerings include eyeball-covered strawberries and kitty litter cake. "I have little kid's clothes and instead of appendages they've got cheese and meat logs coming out of the arms and legs."
And all the fun supports a good cause. "In my effort to use parties for good and not evil, I accept 'Black Cat Donations' that go to the Vanderburgh County Humane Society to help their efforts in spaying and neutering strays and ferals."Wendy Knipe Bredhold
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