Halloween – A Special Invitation

My online class A Halloween Happening, together with social historian Sarah Tobias, is next month on the 31st of October 2024. A recording & workbook will be sent afterwards to everyone who books a place. 
You can book your place HERE.

She doesn’t know if the spell will work.

A young girl, hopelessly in love, is in a room alone in early nineteenth-century Scotland. It is dark. In front of her is a large red apple. She has been told to divide the apple into nine pieces against the name of the Father and the Son.

She eats eight pieces of this apple with her back turned to a mirror, her face looking over her left shoulder so she can see her reflection. But only just.

Now she throws the ninth piece of apple over her shoulder.

She sees, faintly in her mirror, a dark handsome face smiling back at her. Is it the reflection of her future husband reaching for the apple she throws? Or has she imagined it? This is a Halloween ritual from Scotland in the early nineteenth century.

My earliest memory of Halloween is less dramatic and takes place under a white sheet with two holes cut out for eyes.

I’d borrowed the from another boy and it was my first (and last) Halloween costume. I remembered neighbours answering their doors in mock horror as I, and my cousins, thrust out paper bags. “Trick or Treat!” we cried as we got sweets put into our bags and we faded back into the cold night, off to frighten another house.

On the 31st of October this year I have plans to frighten people another way – through Zoom. 

The stories about food, Halloween and funeral traditions that I find on my research travels will be collected and woven together for a presentation with the wonderful social historian Sarah Tobias.

We are calling it A Halloween Happening.

We would be honoured if you could attend.

And let me leave you with another tale fit for Halloween.

In the nineteenth century, it was the custom that silk scarves were given to each man who attended a funeral.

One particular parson put himself forward to conduct many funerals. So often did he attend these melancholy occasions, that it was said that his wife could make herself a brand-new silk dress from all the silk scarves he collected for her.

There were rumours…

Until next time.