Ghouls' Night Out

Scariest picture ever
Originally uploaded by the management.

Above is the crown jewel of the management's collection of zombie-movie film stills. Now that is fucking terrifying.

I am not a superstitious person, but there is some deeply spooky shit going on as Halloween approaches. First and foremost, last night, as a lunar eclipse rendered a full moon an eerie blood red, the Boston Red Sox swept the World Series. Now baseball is not my bag of treats, but I know a line from the book of Revelations when I see it. Have the dead started to rise yet? Because they soon shall.

A few posts back, we mentioned the great John Carpenter's The Fog. Well, come to find out they've just greenlighted a remake. Spooky, right?

Halloween, a brief tutorial
In addition to being the band Glenn Danzig started after leaving The Misfits, Samhain is the ancient Celtic festival that marked the end of the harvest, the autumnal equinox, and the coming of winter. One of the four main "sabbats," or festivals, of the Celts, it is also the primary pagan progenitor of Halloween.

McBain's Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language says that 'samhuinn' (the Scots Gaelic spelling) means 'summer's end'..." Summer and winter were the only seasons (which makes a shitload of sense in Ireland and the British Isles), so it signals the transition between the two.

Samhain (pronounced "sow-in") is Irish Gaelic for the month of November. Samhuin is Scottish Gaelic for All Hallows (or All Souls Day), Nov. 1.

Celtic traditions held that on the night of the Feast of Samhain, the barriers between this world and the next become whisper-thin, allowing some of the dead to walk among the living. Understandably freaked-out villagers would hollow out turnips and make them into little lanterns (this tradition was transferred to the pumpkin in America) and light massive bonfires to ward off the shades of the underworld.

Knowing full well that the church could never eliminate these pagan traditions, the papacy turned to the oldest and most reliable trick in Catholic history: they adapted the indigenous traditions to chrch doctrine. In 1006, Pope John XIV recognized Samhain as All Hallows Eve; the night before All Souls Day. "All Hallows Eve" was gradually shortened to the colloquial "Hallowe'en." Ta-daa!!

One other thing: the wearing of costumes was originally intended to trick spirits into thinking the wearer was just another spectre. Neat, right? Zombie camouflage.

For more on Samhain, visit your local library. Not one for fancy book learnin'? Check out the HowStuffWorks entry.