For Halloween

I once inadvertently mentioned Halloween to a fervent Christian friend and provoked horrified reactions that it was a celebration of the dead and all things Satanic. Since we don’t traditionally go in for Halloween in England, and being an atheist, I’ve never had strong opinions about it, but knowing that IBSS indexes material on folklore, I was interested to see if I could learn more from searching the database.

Could I uncover evidence of unchristian devil worship? Do people believe in ghosts, demons and hobgoblins anyway? I jumped straight in and searched for ‘ghost beliefs’, getting 46 hits. I found articles about ghosts in the USA and England: ‘Five ghost tales from Boyle country, Kentucky’, Owens, E. (1958) and ‘‘Sensible proof of spirits’: ghost belief during the later seventeenth century‘, Bath, Jo (2006). I then came to the amazingly Halloweeny ‘Jeszcze raz o upiorze (wampirze) i strzygoni (strzydze) [On lamias and vampires once again] ‘, Kolczynski, Jaroslaw (2003). Kolczynski gives an ethnohistorical account of beliefs in Poland in the 19th century. Lamias (which I’ve not heard of before) are defined as the living dead. This evokes Halloween’s blurring of the world the living and the dead: the night before All Saint’s Day is considered the only time the dead can walk amongst the living.  Indeed, the abstract’s description of the lamias’ physical forms reads almost like a list of Halloween costumes! A living ghost with no skeleton was believed to become embodied by witches or magicians, whereas walking skeletons were considered to have escaped their journey to the world of the dead. The sinister connotations of some birds are also explained: “The demonic soul was believed to be able to leave the human body and to occupy that of a bird which, in turn became a dangerous demon”. All of these vampires/lamias were thought to strangle victims and drink their blood.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that folklorists have explored historical beliefs such as the above, but has much academic attention been given to modern day Halloween rituals? There are 16 such articles in the IBSS database.  ‘Halloween from Pagan ritual to party night’, Rogers, Nicholas (2005-2006) looks like it would give an interesting background for geeks like me who are more interested in history than fancy dress! In ‘Tricks of festival: children, enculturation, and American Halloween‘, Cindy Dell Clark (2005) explores children’s experiences of fancy dress through participant observation. Her conclusion that “children gain ascendance through costumed trick-or-treating” seems a little far-fetched (surely terrorising the neighbours would be more likely to make children feel empowered) but I concede that it’s a novel piece of fieldwork.

I’ll never know how many people actually believe they might encounter the dead on Halloween, but I did discover a surprising piece of research on the attitudes of scientists. In ‘Probing scientists’ beliefs: how open-minded are modern scientists?’, Coll and Taylor (2004) used interviews and questionnaires to establish the attitudes of science teachers in the UK and New Zealand. According to the study, while scientists dismissed superstitions as being socially grounded, they were less ready to write off belief in ghosts. “There is a strong socio-cultural aspect to other beliefs and personal experiences, and strongly held personal beliefs are influential, resulting in the scientists keeping an open mind about contentious beliefs like alien life and the existence of ghosts.” It’s a shame that the abstract doesn’t offer any quantitative analysis to elaborate on this, but I suppose it can be hard to pin down what you really think. I myself am in the odd position of simultaneously not believing in ghosts and occassionally feeling a chill when dwelling on the topic for too long!