Accessibility Links
Halloween and Tales of Canadian Ghosts
It was the Irish pagan festival of Samhain, a night when the dead and the living edged near one another, whence came Halloween. On the night of Nov. 1, and with the dying crops, souls returned to walk the earth. Spooked pagans bolted their doors and extinguished the cooking fires that attracted witches. A rap on the door came from villagers dressed as dead relatives: "Trick or treat?" Best give the souls a treat lest they do something rotten. Canadians have kept the ancient belief in souls haunting the living alive, telling frightening ghost tales for the past 50 years, and not just on Halloween.
Last updated: November 1, 2012
Page consulted on December 28, 2012
All Clips from this Topic
-
CBC's Assignment presents tales of Maritime witches.
-
The spectre of murdered Mr. Muller, first keeper of the lighthouse, is...
-
Halloween has its origins in the ancient pagan festival Samhain, celeb...
-
Margaret Marinoff tells her father's Placentia Bay ghost stories.
-
The tradition of trick or treating began as a way to appease souls of ...
-
Can a parapsychologist convince Peter Gzowski that ghosts exist?
-
In 1979, Pamela Bell tells a ghost story sitting by the fire in her ha...
-
The spirit inhabiting a restaurant in an old Masonic Temple has a pret...
-
Abraham Lincoln stalks the White House.
-
Parapsychologists are recorded during an exorcism at a haunted rural N...
-
A tour of the city's ghostly haunts.
-
Commercialized Halloween began in 1980s.
-
It was the Irish pagan festival of Samhain, a night when the dead and ...