Ghosts and writers love Halloween

THE WAY THINGS ARE

The storm cracked across the sky like a brutal artillery barrage just as the Adventure Club group had decided to make camp by the lake. The sun that had lit their path through the woods in dappled, gentle warmth was being swallowed by grey clouds, and within minutes wind-driven hailstones riddled the cold surface of the lake. Suddenly, the mood of the Adventure Club was not so adventurous anymore.

‘Oh, shoot!’ Said Josh who never swore, ‘we are in the y’know.’

A chorus of indecision followed until Ethan, a former boy scout who always swore and remembered to bring things the others forgot, yelled as he peered into his binoculars, ‘Shut the …. up! There’s a building over there.’ They all followed his pointing finger as he added, ‘Hey! Great! It’s got a sign, “The Welcome Inn”.

As the downpour increased, beating viciously at them, they ran enthusiastically towards the hotel that seemed like an answer to their prayers. Well, at least Dwayne’s prayers: he was the religious one. But we know the hotel will not be what they expected and it’s likely only one will survive to tell the grisly tale that unfolds.

We’ve read so many horror stories, seen so much on screens big and small, we know how they usually end. Yet what better time to sit back and enjoy a ghost or (possibly human) ghoul story than on Hallows Eve.

Halloween’s origin, like other pagan elements, was incorporated into Christian services. For Irish Celts it was the 1,000-year festival of Samhain, a harvest celebration and preparation for the onset of winter. The ancients believed that fairies and ghosts of the dead came out to party and cause mischief on that night Recently, I saw Halloween pumpkins on sale here; Cyprus is being converted to join in the Eve.

Before the American influences flew in on broomsticks from across the Atlantic to Ireland, we used hollowed out turnips with a candle stump placed inside to illuminate creepy grins and eye sockets. The tasty turnip was pushed aside for the larger and plumper pumpkin and our request for ‘Any apples or nuts?’ or any nice fruit offered, became ‘Trick or treat?’ As an old friend said, nowadays they want bars of chocolate and sweets whereas when we were young fruit that wasn’t homegrown was a real delight as were exotic Brazil nuts. We made our own masks and costumes, mostly from assorted clothes of older members of the household, and we felt safe going door-to-door in the chill dark of an Irish autumn evening, secure that we were on familiar turf and knew everybody around us. Unlike the movies, there were no horrible creatures or people lurking in the shadows to harm us.

There would be traditional games and then, feeling sleepy, our appetites assuaged with the bounty of our begging rambles and delicious homemade Barmbrack bread, an elder would turn off the lights till only the glow of the fire remained. Then came the stories, most of which we had heard before but which still had the power to send a thrill of unease into our stomachs and prompt us to sleep with heads under the bedcovers.

One of our tales spoke of the night my father lay dying when a knock came to the back door. There was no one there and neither should there be for there was no back entrance to the long, dark garden. But a frog leaped into the house. Frogs in Irish superstitions can be ominous. Knocks, it appeared, warned our clan of a death to come. In the ensuing silence, some bright spark would knock on something to scare us.

As I grew up the cinema provided the tremors of nightmares. Christopher Lee’s brilliant Dracula terrified me. But ghosts and their stories faded until one night in the UK a knock woke me from my sleep. Going to the door cautiously, there was no one there and I was sure it hadn’t been a dream. The stillness of the night unbroken, I went back to bed. The following day I received word from home that an uncle had died.