The Real Monsters Behind Halloween

Samhain falls on 1 November, and because the Gaelic day began at sunset, it started on the evening of 31 October. It marked the end of the harvest and the start of winter, the darker half of the year. Old Irish writing names it from the 800s onwards, and a 10th century tale lists it first of the four seasonal festivals, alongside Imbolc, Bealtaine and Lughnasa.

In the tales, Samhain is a time when the boundary between our world and the otherworld grows thin. The aos sí, the fairy folk, could cross more easily, and people left out food and drink to keep them sweet. The Hill of Ward in County Meath, known as Tlachtga, is thought to have been the site of a great Samhain gathering and bonfire.

That's the solid part. A lot else gets added online, so here's how the evidence stacks up.

The name itself is Christian. All Hallows is an old name for All Saints, and the evening before it, All Hallows' Even, was shortened in Scots to Halloween. The Western church fixed All Saints on 1 November, and All Souls followed on 2 November in the 11th century. Together they made Allhallowtide, a time for remembering the dead.

Customs gathered round it. In England and elsewhere, people went souling, calling door to door for soul cakes in return for prayers for the dead. In Scotland, guising, going round in disguise and reciting a verse for food, is recorded from the 1500s. Robert Burns wrote his poem Halloween in 1785, full of fortune-telling games.

In the 1800s Irish and Scottish emigrants took these customs to North America, where they grew into the Halloween most of us know now. The phrase trick or treat first appears in print in 1917, in a Canadian newspaper.

In the 1800s, people in parts of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England hollowed out turnips or mangel-wurzels at Halloween and carved grotesque faces in them to make lanterns.

The name jack-o'-lantern is older than the carving. In the 1600s it meant a man with a lantern, or the strange flickering lights seen over boggy ground, the will-o'-the-wisp. The legend of Stingy Jack grew around it: a drunkard who tricked the Devil, was barred from both heaven and hell, and was left to wander forever with a coal glowing inside a hollowed turnip.

In North America pumpkins were bigger, easier to carve and everywhere at harvest time. A pumpkin lantern is linked to Halloween in print by 1866.

The banshee

The banshee, in Irish bean sí, is a woman of the fairy mound. Her cry, a keening wail, warns that someone in the family is about to die. In the lore she's linked with old Gaelic families, is often seen combing her long hair, and accounts of her go back to at least the late 1300s. Scotland has a relative, the bean nighe, the washer at the ford, seen washing the bloody clothes of those about to die.

The púca

The púca is a shapeshifter who might appear as a horse, a goat, a cat, a dog or a hare. It could bring good luck or bad. In some places it was said to spoil the wild fruit at the start of November, so nobody would pick blackberries after Samhain. Shakespeare's Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream is often seen as a version of the same mischievous spirit.

Halloween at the table

Samhain makes a brilliant session hook: for one night the door to the otherworld is open, and anything could walk through. Put a banshee's wail at the start of the evening so the players know someone is in trouble, and let them spend the night working out who. Our haunted manor encounter kit has a ready-made setting.

Or let the púca turn up three times in three different shapes, and see if anyone notices it's the same creature. Bonus points for anyone who refuses the blackberries.