^{Artwork courtesy of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum
Photos by Steve Desroches}

Provincetown’s History Told Through Artifacts

by Steve Desroches 

Halloween is a big deal in Provincetown. It has been for a very long time. Digging through town archives, particularly newspaper collections that date back 200 years, the autumnal holiday has been celebrated to high degree for many, many years. With New England long home to many Celtic immigrants, it’s no wonder the region embraced the mixing of the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in) with new ways once in North America. And with the art colony’s creativity and the LGBTQ community’s embrace of Halloween, the season leading up to October 31 has always been a special time in Provincetown. 

While each is memorable in its own way, some stick out more than others. Underground filmmaker and folk artist Jonathan Morrill captured some of the more spectacular Provincetown Halloween moments on canvas. Now based in Los Angeles, Morrill lived in Provincetown in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He’s perhaps best known for his cult classic Provincetown based horror films, Johnny in Monsterland (1990) and its sequel, Bride of Johnny in Monsterland (1992), both filmed guerilla style with no permits, as well as the documentary style film Drag Me to the Fair (1991), capturing the time Ryan Landry rented two school buses to take a bunch of Provincetown folks, many in drag, to the Barnstable County Fair, and Mine, Mine, Mine (1990), a conceptual music video featuring the Truro-based trio The Outskirts. Morrill also filmed 22 miuntes of raw footage of the Spiritus Riot of 1990, some of which was featured in the recent documentary, Spiritus: No Business Like Dough Business. 

In this Halloween in Provincetown triptych, Morrill depicts three legendary moments of the high haunted holiday at the Cape tip. The first is of the Black Flash meeting its defeat by local children. The Black Flash was depicted by the sensational media of the day in 1939 as “The Demon of the Dunes,” when in reality it was four teenagers carrying out an elaborate Halloween prank that lasted for about a week, frightening children, and a few adults, but ultimately being regarded as a well done trick on the town. The second is an interpretation of Jen Cabral and Ian Leahy’s epic 2008 Halloween party when they opened up the Grozier Mansion, now often called the Cabral Mansion, to the town. It was a party for the ages. And lastly, the third, is a creative interpretation of the scene at Captain Jack’s Wharf and the aftermath of the Halloween Nor’easter of 2011. It wasn’t just the weather that was wild as while the storm struck, Provincetown Town Hall was packed with costumed revelers at the revival of the Beaux Arts Ball, which that year featured a performance by Blondie’s Debbie Harry. All three paintings are in the collection of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum.