Ghosts and Halloween

I suppose it is only natural that ghosts became associated with Halloween. After all, the holiday was borrowed liberally from the Celts.
At the end of the harvest, when the Earth began to die (ie winter set in) the Celts through a party that lasted 3 whole days. During this time, the high members of the Celtic religion would communicate with those who had died to get prophecies for the future. You see the Celts believed that those who died just crossed over and as the barrier between their new non-physical world and ours was at it’s thinnest, this facilitated communication.
When they got ahold of the holiday, the Christians believed that it was at this lime those poor souls who had died the year before and now resided in Purgatory returned. These spirits sought a body or revenge, if they had been murdered. From this belief came the tradition of dressing up in costume to fool the returned spirits. (Although this wasn’t the only reason)
It should be noted that Samhain was celebrated with a community bonfire. Each person brought home a piece of this fire to light their hearth for the coming year to ensure that next year’s harvest was good. (and if you couldn’t light it with the offering, you were doomed to a bad harvest).
Since the Christians and Celts traditions intermingled for many years, perhaps this is where the tradition of telling ghost stories around a fire started.

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