Halloween Antics

    by Charlotte Hinger    

                      

She's gone. She disappeared. She was the central character in my neighbor's elaborate Halloween display last year. Did she and her poor baby find their way to an unmarked grave? All of her cowboy companions have vanished too. 

                                                                  

As October wanes and the evenings close in, the world seems to slip naturally into shadow. Pumpkins grin on porches, ghosts flutter in windows, and the scent of autumn—earthy, smoky, faintly sweet—hangs in the air. It’s Halloween again, that most theatrical of nights, when we flirt with fear and celebrate the things that go bump in the dark.

But before candy bowls and plastic skeletons, Halloween had much older, deeper roots—roots tangled in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced SOW-in), a time when the boundary between the living and the dead was said to blur. Samhain marked the end of harvest and the beginning of winter—the “darker half” of the year. Bonfires blazed on hillsides to ward off wandering spirits, and offerings were left to appease those who crossed over.

When Christianity spread through Europe, the Church rebranded the old pagan festival as All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day. The traditions, however, proved resilient. People continued to carve faces into turnips to frighten away spirits (a practice that would later morph into our familiar jack-o’-lanterns once Irish immigrants found American pumpkins more cooperative). The ancient door-to-door ritual of “souling,” in which the poor prayed for the dead in exchange for food, evolved into trick-or-treating.

And so, what began as a sacred rite of survival and remembrance slowly became a cultural masquerade—equal parts reverence and mischief.

For those of us who write crime and mystery, Halloween feels like the perfect metaphor. It’s about masks and secrets, about the thrill of the unknown, and about how darkness—whether literal or psychological—always finds its way into the light. Beneath every costume, there’s a story; behind every ghost tale, a truth trying to claw its way to the surface.

So this October 31st, as you hand out candy or slip into costume, remember that you’re taking part in something ancient—a night born of fire, fear, and fascination with the thin line between life and death. A night tailor-made for mystery.

Happy Halloween, from all of us at Type M for Murder.