Halloween Read online

  HALLOWEEN

  edited by

  Paula Guran

  For My Kids

  May the magic of Halloween

  always be part of your lives.

  Copyright © 2011 by Paula Guran.

  Cover art by Andrey Kiselev (Fotolia).

  Cover design by Telegraphy Harness.

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

  All stories are copyrighted to their respective authors, and used here with their permission. An extension of this copyright page can be found here.

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-320-4 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-283-2 (trade paperback)

  PRIME BOOKS

  www.prime-books.com

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, contact Prime Books.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction by Paula Guran

  Conversations in a Dead Language by Thomas Ligotti

  Monsters by Stewart O’Nan

  The Halloween Man by William F. Nolan

  The Young Tamlane by Sir Walter Scott

  Pork Pie Hat by Peter Straub

  Three Doors by Norman Partridge

  Auntie Elspeth’s Halloween Story by Esther M. Friesner

  Struwwelpeter by Glen Hirshberg

  Hallowe’en in a Suburb by H.P. Lovecraft

  On the Reef by Caitlín R. Kiernan

  The Sticks by Charlee Jacob

  Riding Bitch by K.W. Jeter

  Memories of el Día de los Muertos by Nancy Kilpatrick

  Halloween Street by Steve Rasnic Tem

  Tricks & Treats: One Night on Halloween Street by Steve Rasnic Tem

  Memories by Peter Crowther

  Ulalume: A Ballad by Edgar Allan Poe

  Mask Game by John Shirley

  By the Book by Nancy Holder

  Hornets by Al Sarrantonio

  Pranks by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  Pumpkin Night by Gary McMahon

  The Universal Soldier by Charles de Lint

  Night Out by Tina Rath

  One Thin Dime by Stewart Moore

  Man-Size in Marble by E. Nesbit

  The Great Pumpkin Arrives at Last by Sarah Langan

  Sugar Skulls by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  On a Dark October by Joe R. Lansdale

  The Vow on Halloween by Lyllian Huntley Harris

  [Summary of Ray Bradbury’s “The October Game”]

  The November Game by F. Paul Wilson

  Tessellations by Gary Braunbeck

  About the Authors

  About the Editor

  Copyrights & First Publication

  AN INTRODUCTION TO HALLOWEEN

  Paula Guran

  The farther we’ve gotten from the magic and mystery of our past, the more we’ve come to need Halloween. It’s a festival of fantasy, a celebration of otherness, the one time each year when the mundane is overturned in favor of the bizarre, and everyone can become anyone or anything they wish. At its core, Halloween is a chance to confront our most primal fear—death—and attempt to control it or, at the very least, mock it. Ancient beliefs, religious meanings, a multitude of ethnic heritages, diverse occult traditions, and the continual influence of popular culture have combined to make Halloween a beloved holiday as well as a booming commercial industry.

  Festivals emphasizing the supernatural and death are common in almost all cultures and probably date back to prehistory. The first recorded festivals for the dead were those of the ancient Egyptians. Egyptians had no fear of the deceased, no concept of appeasing unquiet spirits. They offered love, respect, and rites for the continuance of a happy afterlife; they communed with dead ancestors and loved ones. Their rituals included bringing food to tombs and sharing it with the deceased. One of the oldest festivals (there were several) was Wag, celebrated on the first month of the first season of the year, the month of Akhet—meaning “inundation”—the season of the Nile’s annual flood. (Various sources disagree on Akhet’s correspondence to our calendar; dates very from as early as June 19 to as late as mid-August.) Wag evidently including colorful processions, music, offerings of food and drink for the dead, and hearty feasting and drinking for the living. References are made to “shouts of joy” raised at the Wag festival

  Modern Halloween is highly influenced by and probably originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. About 500–1000 BCE, the Celts—who at the time populated Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Brittany, and northern France—celebrated the first day of winter as their New Year. Winter began, in the climate of Northern Europe, in November. The end of summer marked radical change in the daily life of the pastoral Celts. The herds were brought down from the summer pastures in the hills, the best animals put to shelter, and the rest slaughtered. For the Celts, the period we now consider the end of October and start of November was a time of preparation, festival, and plenty before the coming of the long dark winter.

  As agriculture became a part of their lives, harvest time became a seasonal activity. The communal celebration became known as Samhain (there are a number of variant spellings, including Samfuin, Samhuinn, Samain). Linguistically, the word evidently simply combines the Gaelic words sam for “end” and fuin for “summer”—End of Summer. Samhain may have just been one night—October 31—or it may have stretched out over three days—October 31, November 1, and November 2.

  How Samhain was actually celebrated is unknown. Since the Celts left no written records, what we do know of it comes from secondary sources. Our conjectures are, at best, relatively educated guesses, but they still inform much of our modern Halloween mythos.

  Although the bounty of nature and the natural change of seasons were important aspects of Samhain, it was also a festival of the supernatural. Samhain was the turning point of the year for a people who believed that even minor “turning points”—the change from one day to the next, the meeting of sea and shore—were magical. The turning of the year, leaving the season of sunshine and light and entering the darkness of winter, was the most powerful and sacred of such junctures. The worlds of the living and of the dead were very close to one another at Samhain, the veil between the two at its thinnest. The living could communicate with those who had gone beyond; the dead could visit the living. In Celtic times, the dead were not considered evil or particularly dreaded so much as consulted and honored as ancestral spirits and guardians of the wisdom of the tribe. Celtic priests, the Druids, contacted the dead in order to divine the future and make predictions for the community.

  [In Halloween lore of the last two centuries or so, references are made to Samhain as a deity or Celtic “Lord of the Dead.” There is no evidence for such a god. The fallacy seems to have arisen in the 1770s before improved translation of Celtic literary work and modern archeology. It can be traced to the writings of a Col. Charles Vallency (who, for some reason, was trying to prove that the Irish originally came from Armenia) and then was later perpetuated by Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (Oscar’s mum) in her mid-nineteenth century book Irish Cures, Mystic Charms and Superstitions. It has gone on to be unquestioningly and inaccurately repeated in many sources over the years.]

  Although possibly later developed as post-Christian mythology, the Celts may have believed in faeries or similar magical creatures. They did not believe in demons or devils, but they may well have had these not-so-nice entities to deal with. Resentful of humans taking over the world, the faerie-folk were often thought to be hostile and dangerous. During the magical time of Samhain the faeries were even more powerful than usual. Humans might be lured astray by faeries. These unfortunates would then be lost in the fairy mounds and trapped forever.

  Faeries and their kin
weren’t the only ones causing mischief. The yearly turning point was also seen as a suspension of ordinary space and time. For order and structure to be maintained for the rest of the year, chaos would reign during Samhain. Humans supposedly indulged in cross-gender dressing, tricks, and highjinks. On the practical side, such behavior was an outlet for high spirits before the confining winter came.

  We know very little of Druidic religious rituals, but we do know Samhain was one of four “Fire Festivals” of the Celts. Hearth fires were extinguished to symbolize the coming “dark half” of the year, then re-lit from Druidic fires to signify the return and continuance of life. Bonfires were also part of this observance.

  Halloween can’t really be considered a direct outgrowth of ancient Celtic practices. Other cultural elements—including various harvest festivals—eventually became part of Halloween customs. Over the centuries traditions have been both correctly and incorrectly attributed to the Celts. Sometimes this has been done with an appreciation of the ancient ways. More often, cultural-centrism and historic revisionism so colored thinking that the past was unfairly interpreted.

  Early Christian missionaries intentionally identified contact with the supernatural as experiences originating with the Devil and inherently evil. The Druids, since they adhered to “false gods” were, therefore, worshippers of Satan. Later religious prejudice also lumped pagans in with Satan-worship and the resulting misinformation has been further propitiated. (For that matter, as we shall see, animosity between Catholics and Protestants resulted in the alteration of some Halloween lore.)

  As with other pre-Christian practices, Samhain was eventually absorbed by the Church. In AD 609 or 610, May 13 was designated as a day to honor the Virgin Mary and the martyred saints. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III (731-741) fixed November 1 as the anniversary for all saints (including the martyrs). October 31 became All Hallows’ Eve [Hallowmas or Halloween], the evening before All Hallows Day [All Saints Day] on November 1. (The word “hallow” was used in the Middle Ages as a synonym for “saint.”) Gregory IV (827-844) extended the celebration of All Hallows Day to the entire Church.

  The old beliefs did not die out so easily and just honoring saints was not enough to replace the notion of a time of year when the dead could travel the earth. A more abstract holiday commemorating all the faithful departed on November 2 began to be marked as early as the ninth century. Although Odilo, Abbot of Cluny (c. 962-1048), actually instituted the date. By the end of the thirteenth century, it was accepted by the entire Church.

  Not only did the Church give the holiday its popular name, it also sanctified the custom of remembering the dead on the eve of November 1. Other pagan traditions and religious practices were adapted by the Church and readapted by the people. “Soul cakes” were baked and given to the town’s poor in exchange for their prayers to help the dead in Purgatory enter heaven more quickly. Eventually young men and boys went “souling” from house to house, singing and asking for food, ale, and money rather than cakes.

  European beliefs began mixing this type of concern for the spirits of the dead and traditions of welcoming the dear departed with a fear of malevolent otherworldly manifestations. The Church associated anything supernatural with evil and the devil, so it became something to fear. Gifts of food and drink might welcome the dead, but they were also offered to keep less friendly ghosts and whatever else might be unnaturally walking in our world at bay; bonfires were now lit to frighten the Devil away.

  On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther, intending to stir debate, posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. (An occasion still marked in Lutheran churches as Reformation Sunday.) The religious reformation he sparked eventually did away with the celebration of Halloween for many Europeans. Reformation Protestants did away with the observance of saints’ days and without the “hallows” one can not have All Hallows’ Eve.

  The English, however, managed to preserve some of the secular traditions of the holiday with Guy Fawkes Day. (In 1605 a group of English Roman Catholics conspired to blow up Parliament, King James I, and his heir on November 5. They evidently hoped that in the confusion following, the English Catholics could take over the country. What came to be known as the Gunpowder Plot was foiled and in January 1606 Parliament established November 5 as a day of public thanksgiving. The day became known as Guy Fawkes Day for a conspirator who was arrested and, under torture, revealed the names of the other plotters.) Guy Fawkes Day borrowed a great many of the traditions used to mark Halloween that had fallen just six days before. Bonfires, pranks, begging, and dressing in costume became part of the occasion. In some parts of England, the festivities were virulently anti-Catholic.

  In the seventeenth century, immigrants brought a variety of traditions, beliefs, customs, and superstitions to what would later become the United States of America. The Puritan influence in New England left little room for any form of Halloween. Guy Fawkes Day (and its attendant anti-Catholicism), however, was celebrated until the Revolution. The Puritans also brought their fear of witchcraft and a history of persecuting witches to the colonies. Anglican settlers in Virginia brought not only commemoration of saints days, but a typically seventeenth century English belief in the occult. Many Germans who settled in the tolerant Quaker-run state of Pennsylvania had pronounced supernatural beliefs and mystical ideas. Catholics in Maryland and other colonies retained their Halloween-connected religious traditions. Spanish Catholic influence was felt in Florida. African slaves imported a belief in an active spirit world into the southern colonies Post-revolutionary America saw the popularization of harvest “play parties.” These community get-togethers were non-religious and—unlike other fall gatherings which were task-oriented for sorghum-making, corn husking, apple picking and paring, and the like—were just for fun. The early autumn parties often featured feasting on and fortune-telling games played with apples, pumpkins, and nuts (all seasonally plentiful) and the telling of spooky tales. A tradition of mischief-making on the night of October 31 was common in some communities as well.

  African beliefs and customs were imported with slaves beginning in the seventeenth century, but in the early nineteenth century, Haitians and others fleeing unrest in the Caribbean strengthened the Voudoun culture in the South and mixed new mythologies of the dead, witchcraft, and divination into the Halloween cauldron.

  Almost 7.4 million new immigrants from all over the world came to the United States between 1820 and 1870 and each nationality brought its own traditions and customs. Spanish and Mexican Catholic traditions of el Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) were strong in the Southwest. But the Irish had the greatest influence on the overall celebration of American Halloween. (From 1825 to 1845, Irish famines drove 700,000 Irish Catholics to the U.S. Another 300,000 entered between 1847 and 1854.)

  In County Cork, All Hallows was marked with a mummers’ procession of young men claiming to be followers of Muck Olla (a boar from Irish folk tales). Led by Lair Bhain (White Mare) who wore a horse’s head and white robes, the group went from house to house noisily beseeching householders to impart food, drink, or money in return for a promise of prosperity in the coming year. Similar masquerades were popular in other Irish locales.

  Young Irish women and girls marked the night with various methods of telling the future. The divinations most commonly foretold the identity of future spouses or one’s destiny in love.

  Although the jack o’ lantern did not start out as a lantern at all, the Irish were instrumental in the evolution into this now-quintessential symbol of the season. “Jack o’ lanterns,” like “will-o’-the-wisps,” was originally a name for the flickering light produced by ignition of swamp gas, the gaseous product of decomposing organic matter consisting of methane and phosphine (or possibly piezoelectricity generated by tectonic strain). “Jack o’ lantern” was also used in a folktale—with many variations in many cultures—as the name of a man with a lantern who tricks the Devil.

  Irish v
illagers have used carved-out turnips and occasionally beets—abundant in late autumn—to make cheap lanterns with which to light their way as the evenings darkened toward winter. (The term “jack o’ lantern” first appeared in print in 1750. The reference was to a night watchman or a man carrying a lantern. The meaning applied to carved pumpkins is first attested, in the U.S., in 1837.) Some say these vegetable lights were carved or painted with scary faces to frighten the spirits away on Halloween. In the U.S. the pumpkin supposedly took the place of the turnip, but the abundant squash may have, at first, merely been a seasonally convenient way to used short candle stubs.

  Halloween pranking may also have been an Irish import. Probably originally an outlet for mischief that could be blamed on supernatural entities, the pranks were primarily only slightly bothersome—a cabbage tossed down a chimney or knocking on doors and running away. American pranking evolved into slightly more troublesome endeavors such as moving gates or tying them shut, disassembling a wagon or carriage on a barn roof, soaping windows, stealing doormats, overturning outhouses, blocking roads with bales of hay, and “egging” houses.

  Pranksters aside, by the 1880s upper and middle class Americans thought of Halloween as a quaint holiday brought to America by genteel English people. This seems to have been the result of the popular fiction and articles in children’s and ladies’ periodicals of the day. They downplayed Irish Catholic connections and provided social tips on entertaining with parties for children, young adults or both. Parlor games (such as bobbing for apples and jumping over candlesticks) were popular. And although death and magic were de-emphasized, divination—especially that involving romance—was a major part of the revelry. Halloween was seen as much of an occasion for matchmaking as for mild fright. Ghost stories in the ladies’ magazines became less involved with ghosts and more inclined to be tales of love with mildly Gothic trappings.