At Halloween we can pander our taste for spooky events. Our fascination with the supernatural seems boundless. The thing is that weirdly enough; people have a fascination with death. It appears that we all will experience it, so the topic intrigues most of us.
Scary facts
We continuously wonder how excruciating the process of dying will be. What will happen afterwards. So, during Halloween we get menacing reminders of death, with people even dressing up their children like ghosts, skeletons, zombies, and devils.
Vampires, zombies, and the undead – we can’t get enough of them. Here are some facts: blood-sucking vampires arrived in Britain from Eastern Europe and werewolf tales came from France, belief in the walking dead can be traced to medieval England.
Rumor has it that in the late 12th century, William of Newburgh recorded accounts of reanimated corpses in Alnwick and Berwick-on-Tweed. A monk at Byland Abbey wrote down some “facts” concerning revenants, one of which emerged from the grave at night to terrify local folk and their dogs.
The Alnwick corpse was a real annoyance. It is said that in 1196 it roamed the streets every night, its “pestiferous” breath causing many to die from the plague.
The Berwick corpse was regularly seen around the city, being chased by a pack of barking dogs.
So, needles to be said that ghosts took over after the medieval period, although the old beliefs remained on in attitudes to criminals, witches, and suicides.
Unlike the tales of the walking dead, ghost stories were not all scary. In this case, the ghost case, the story could change because it could be a loved one, returning to comfort the bereaved; or a wraith, the specter of a living person who was far away, come with a warning for a friend.
The ones that looked the same as they did in life usually had a purpose, some unfinished business.
Love
Love divination was another popular pastime during Halloween. A common method was to place chestnuts on the bars of the fire to see what would happen: “If he loves me, pop and fly. If he hates me, lie and die.”
Halloween is a night of costumes, fun and candy which happens only once on 31st October every year. Halloween celebration provides people with an opportunity to dress up in a scary manner.
People have choice where to attend celebration, go trick-or-treating or remain haunted in houses.
The celebration
As a matter of fact, Halloween tradition and celebration has got rich ancient religious beliefs, stories and history.
Halloween, or Hallowe’en (a contraction of All Hallows’ Evening) is a celebration observed in a number of countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows’ Day.
Halloween celebration was established over two thousand years ago in Celtic Ireland by farmers. At the beginning, it was known as Samhain by the Celtic farmers which meant end of summer. This was a time to forget about the summer and hope for a productive winter.
Nowadays, Halloween has become famous in the entire world. People have forgotten the history behind it and it generates billions of dollars every year through selling of costumes, decorations, candy and even films with themes of Halloween.
Ok, but it’s been ages now since all of these inventions came to be and yet we are still fascinated by this day and all that it entails.
Halloween is a night we can pretend to be someone else, setting aside our worries or regrets. However, when we remove the mask the next day, reality comes back into our lives like a relentless zombie. There is something about transforming into another creature that catches our imaginations. Another interesting fact is that in order to get along in the world we constantly pretend to be nicer or happier than we really are. On Halloween, it’s okay to come out as a mask-wearer and feel relief we no longer have to hide.
