TRACING THE PATH PODCAST

This fascinating narrative explores the unlikely convergence of random events that ultimately shaped modern Halloween traditions. Beginning with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which honored the dead on October 31st, the story traces how various cultural and historical elements intertwined.

These include the Irish legend of Stingy Jack and his lantern, 18th-century fears of reanimated corpses fueled by the Murder Act of 1752 and Luigi Galvani’s galvanism experiments, and the rise of Gothic literature.

Key literary figures like Mary Shelley, with her novel Frankenstein, and Washington Irving, who popularized tales like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, significantly contributed to the imagery of monsters and the macabre. Finally, the Great Potato Famine brought these traditions to America, where the carving of pumpkins replaced turnips, and the cumulative influence of these stories, including the coining of “Halloween” by Robert Burns, led to the playful yet spooky holiday we know today.

Samhain: The Beginning

Is there a word to describe when random events all lead to one conclusion? There isn’t actually a word for that. Serendipity, on the other hand, is when a development of events ends in a happy or beneficial way. Zumblanity is when a development of events ends in an unlucky or unhappy way. And mathematicians call a random sequence of events that converge to be called pointwise convergence.

Here in this story, you be the judge. Happy, unlucky, or random. This is the origin of Halloween.

Halloween today is the celebration of death, of fear, of monsters and other scary things. But mostly it is the joy of getting candy and dressing up as something you consider to be fun.

And while monsters go all the way back, perhaps 40,000 years, all the way back to 3 BC in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the convergence of events that lead to Halloween begin in the 18th century.

Our story begins in Ireland with the ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain. Samhain is a clear illustration the people had with the dead and also the beginning of our events.

Samhain historically takes place at the end of each year’s third quarter coinciding with the time of the annual harvest, the time animals begin stockpiling food for the winter, and the clear indication that darkness is coming earlier each day.

With night overpowering day, it was thought the Lord of Death was overcoming the more powerful Sun God. Thus, it was on this day, October 31st, that the veil between the living and the dead was the most transparent, which allowed those who died in the last 12 months to return home to visit the living.

These loved ones, these hallowed souls were both feared and celebrated.

Samhain would involve a great festival to which everyone would make great food and attend festivities. Those who would fear the arrival of the dead would wear masks and ghostly gear in order to fool the spirits into believing they were too of the spirit world.

When they left their homes, they would leave sweets outside their front door to prevent the spirits from coming inside.

With religion becoming a stronger component of the Irish identity, a story is born out of Samhain.

It was a tale invented to create a fun-loving culture, but like all things, it created some unintended consequences.

It tells the story of a mean self-centered drunkard named Stingy Jack. He was so mean and ill-considered, he attracted the attention of Satan. And so one day, Satan appeared ready to take his soul. But Stingy Jack was also clever.

When Satan attempted to take him away, Jack convinced him he should be allowed one last drink. And Satan agreed.

But without money, Jack convinced Satan to turn himself into a coin so he could buy his last drink. Jack quickly put the coin in his pocket and then covered it with his crucifix necklace which trapped Satan.

On the agreement that Satan leave him alone for 10 years, Jack released him.

Then 10 years later, Satan returned to find Jack stumbling home drunk from a night at the pub. Jack spied Satan, knowing full well his time had come. But Jack convinced him to first climb a tree and retrieve for him an apple before the long journey.

And once Satan climbed the tree, Jack carved a cross in the tree, once again trapping Satan.

Satan begged and pleaded. But Jack only released him when he agreed to never take Jack’s soul.

Then sometime later, after Jack took his last breath and died, St. Peter refused such a mean and self-centered man access to heaven. And Satan had already agreed he could make no claim. So, Stingy Jack was stuck in the place between life and death, between heaven and hell.

However, Satan gave him one final gift, a blazing ember to help lead his way, to which Jack carried it in a carved turnip root.

At that moment, he ceased being Stingy Jack and became the roaming Jack of the Lantern.

Buried Alive then Revived?

But religion itself would create a new fear. As Christians believed in Jesus, they believed that the dead could come back alive, some indicating that all believers would be revived on Judgment Day. 

In the 1740s, this fear would have English parliament actually passing a law.

At that time, the English judicial system was facing an increasing number of murders and thus they spent considerable time debating how the situation should be handled. They had to figure out what to do with the convicted. and then how to prevent further murders.

The Murder Act of 1752 was designed to settle both.

It did two things.

• One, it rapidly accelerated the conviction and sentencings of murderers down to 2 days. 
• And two, to prevent these murderers from coming back to life on judgment day, they sentenced some to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land far, far away.
• And others were sentenced to death followed by being cut into pieces or dissected. 

But in 1803, the rule took it one step further. You see, our next random event was in 1786 when the scientist Luigi Galvani made a discovery doing experiments on the bodies of deceased frogs.

He found out their spinal cord carried an electric charge.

When he touched the spinal cord with electricity, the frog’s legs would move. They’d extend, curl, and contract. He proved electricity could reanimate animals, which he called galvanism.

When he died in 1789, his nephew Luigi Giovani would continue it. It was Giovani who would convince the English court in 1803 that instead of dissecting the body of a murderer who had been hanged, that the court then give him the body to study and reanimate with electricity.

And in a public exhibition, Giovani made the jaw and eyes of the criminal open, clench, and quiver, beginning a new national fascination of whether a person could truly be raised from the dead by electricity.

What complicated the experiments is another fear of the 19th century. Since there was very little technology to determine if someone was actually dead or not, thousands of people presumed to be dead were actually buried alive.

So in the early 1800s, in exact contrast to the Murder Act of 1752, there were many patented inventions to prevent people being buried alive and rotting inside the shell. The Eisenbrand coffin had breathing tubes attached and others had bells that could be rung from the inside, and others tied strings to the toes of the deceased, then rising above the ground, visible to unlockers, and sometimes attached to another bell.

In fact, there was a London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial. The lack of medical technology actually brings us to the next event of our series.

Mary Woolstonecraft

In 1797, the lack of cleanliness and sanitation in the hospital contributed to the death of women’s rights activist Mary Woolstonecraft during the birth of her daughter Mary Godwin. Mary Woolstonecraft then contracted an infection and died in 11 days.

Mary Woolstonecraft was actually quite famous at the time as her was husband William Godwin.

She had written an essay titled Vindication of the Rights of Women about the lack of education women got that made her an overnight sensation and William Godwin had been a political philosopher and novelist whose friends included Thomas Payne, Arasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin’s father, and US Vice President Aaron Burr among others. \

As mentioned, Mary Wilstonecraft died while giving birth to her second daughter, which meant William Godwin, who only had gotten married because Mary got pregnant when went from being a single bachelor to a widow or parent of two children in the span of 9 months.

Little Mary Godwin grew up happy with William Godwin. She enjoyed growing up around such famous friends, and they lived on Skinner Street just down the road from where public executions took place.

While they never attended those, they often hosted lunches talking about them and learning about things like electricity and galvanism.

To honor Mary Wstonecraft’s essay on the education of women, Godwin invited his friends to come speak and teach Mary. One of those friends was Humphrey Davyy, the scientist who had discovered potassium, sodium, calcium, and magnesium among others.

He had worked on doing his own galvanism experiments. In honoring women himself, he insisted that all his evening events at the Royal Society be kept open to them.

William Godwin also took Mary to learn from the famous poet Samuel Taylor Coolidge and even from Aaron Burr. At the age of 13, he sent Mary to a boarding school for a short time and then to learn from a family homeschooling in Scotland.

It was there she met the poet Percy Bysse Shelly. While Percy was married, he fell in love love with Mary. And when William Godwin found out, he disapproved vehemently.

And soon Percy and Mary left secretly to live in France.

And while away, Mary got pregnant and gave birth. But sadly, 11 days later, the infant died, leaving Mary in a state of depression with vivid dreams of trying to bring her baby back to life.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before she had another and she got to become a mom.

In May of 1816, Mary and Percy traveled to Geneva, Switzerland to spend time with their friend, Lord Byron, and his friend John William Polydori.

But 1816 wasn’t an ordinary one.

It was dubbed the year without a summer. Which brings us to the next event of our Halloween convergence.

Arrival of Frankenstein

Just 9 months prior and 7,800 m away in the Dutch East Indies was the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history. 

The explosion hurdled ash into the air for 10 days, covering most of the earth. It caused crop failures, food shortages, and flooding, killing 110,000 people.

For Mary and the crew in Geneva, it meant rainy, hazy conditions that largely left them to find indoor activities to fill their time. There, it was Lord Byron who suggested that they each try to come up with a scary story.

With Lord Byron, a lauded writer each of them understood the magnitude of the moment they were being offered.

And Mary, who had read all her mom’s papers, wanted to show women could write things just as important as men. And in the course of a day, she laid out a story. She had brought with her a book of essays by her friend Humphrey Davyy, which may have contributed to her story.

But from this young 18-year-old mother, she crafted the story of a man who was brought to life by a man using electricity. The monster would have no name, so the story would be named after the scientist who brought him to life, Mr. Victor Frankenstein.

Lord Byron wouldn’t write anything noteworthy on that trip, but his friend John William Polidori did. He would write something revolutionary. He called it the Vampire.

It took 2 years, 1818, for both to be published, and surprisingly neither story offered the author any credit. Polydori’s The Vampire was accidentally attributed to Lord Byron, and Mary’s story of Frankenstein was published anonymously.

However, both were instantly successful, playing off the Gothic themes and fears of the day.

At the exact same time and for the same reason, another story was instantly successful in America. Which brings us to our next step on the convergence of Halloween.

Hello Mr. Irving

To this, we must step back a little bit to 1783 when the city of New York learned their American revolution with the British was officially over that week.

Our hero, Young Wash, was born to a British Navy man and his wife. Wash’s father was a Navy petty officer on an armed packet ship that sailed between Falmouth, England, and New York City.

Having spent time in New York City, he and his wife decided to move to New York back in 1763 to be part of the merchant class in Manhattan.

Proudly American now, they named their first son Wash after General George Washington. And even in 1789, just before his inauguration, Wash got to meet George Washington. While he wasn’t much of a student, he did love adventure stories and went to the movies often.

Unfortunately, in 1798, an outbreak of yellow fever put New York City in a period of terror. Like the volcano that had caused many deaths, resulting in Mary writing Frankenstein, yellow fever resulted in Wash’s parents sending him to live with friends in upstate New York in an area called Sleepers Haven.

There, Wash found his love of nature, creativity, and writing.

Despite that, his parents had him studying law, a subject he had zero interested in. Instead, he found himself writing letters to the New York Morning Chronicle, a newspaper that happened to be co-owned by Aaron Burr, and he commented on the city’s theater and social scene.

His published letters garnered much attention, so much so Aaron Burr even sent them to his daughter.

Though he actually passed the legal bar exam, Wassh and his brother started their own satirical magazine designed to poke a little fun at New York, and it became immediately popular. One of his pieces, which eventually became a book, was called Deidrick Knickerbocker: A History of New York.

New Yorkers fell in love with his fictional character, eventually referring to themselves as Knickerbockers. And in the satire, he would often label New York City as another Gotham, which happened to have been a town in Nottinghamshire that mocked itself as being stupid.

Thus, the terms Knickerbocker and Gotham became mainstays in New York.

But getting back to our Halloween story, Wash spent a good amount of time in both New York, Sleepers Haven, and the Catskill Mountains.

Then in 1817, his brother’s shipping business in Liverpool, England, was failing, and Wash wanted to help. Even though he didn’t have much business acumen, his satirical magazine had only lasted 20 months.

So when he sailed Liverpool.

He quickly realized there was nothing he could do. He didn’t have enough business knowledge.

However, a friend had introduced him by postcard to a writer he loved. That writer was Sir Walter Scott, though at this time he was merely Walter Scott.

Wash loved Walter Scott’s romantic poetry. Being named as sir came later after writing Rob Roy and the Ivanho novels.

So, with the postcard in hand, he charted off off to nearby Edinburgh to meet him. Not only did Mr. Scott welcome him, but also shared his adoration of the Knickerbocker stories.

Wash spent 7 days with Scott and was reinvigorated as a writer. Then traveled a bit through Europe, soaking up its history in folktales like Stingy Pete before returning to New York.

There he published his newest piece, The Sketchbook of Jeffrey Crown, which ran in the magazine called First American Installment. To delight of the world, it was wildly popular.

In the first edition, a story called Rip Van Winkle made Wash, attributed as his real name, Washington Irving, an overnight success.

Then, a few months later, in issue number six, his story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, about the Headless Horseman, would make him one of the most influential writers in American history.

Now, beyond the folktale of Stingy Jack, The world suddenly had Frankenstein, the vampire, Rip Van Winkle, and a Headless Horseman in a very short period of time.

Not being able to foresee the future, however, Washington Irving would move to Paris in 1823 to pursue a career as a playwright. 

And there he would meet Mary Shelly. But despite her Frankenstein fame, he would meet her at her lowest point. Mary never knew her mother and her first daughter died at 11 days. Then her friend John William Polydori, who wrote The Vampire Story, was overcome with depression and took his own life with cyanide.

And then a year prior in 1822, her husband Percy Shelly had gone to Lenoro, Italy for an engagement with Lord Byron. But his boat got caught in a storm it couldn’t weather. His badly decomposed body washed ashore after 10 days, to which he was cremated on the beach.

After the cremation, it was discovered that his largely calcified and waterlogged heart didn’t burn, so Mary Shelly actually kept it. as a reminder of him.

On his trip in Europe, Washington met publisher John Murray, who then published his stories in Europe, making him the first American author to achieve international fame.

It was this fame that led him to the attention of another great author. He not only gained a fan, but also he mentored Mr. Edgar Allan Poe in which our Halloween story takes another giant step.

And Finally, Edgar Allen Poe

Like Mary Shelly, Edgar grew up with his own tragic tales. He was born in 1809, but by 1810, his father had left and his mother died, leaving his foster parents to name him.

And as he grew up with academics as the focus, his parents sent him to a boarding school in the UK in 1817, the same time Washington Irving was in Europe.

Poet] tried the military and a variety of other jobs, but at his core, he wanted to be a writer. Making a living being a writer wasn’t easy nor commonplace. So, he ended up moving around, often in New York City, Baltimore, Boston, and Philly, finding jobs.

He found jobs writing for magazines like Southern Literacy, Gentleman’s Magazine, and Broadway Journal. And then in 1827, he put out his first book, Tamarlain and Other Poems, which was inspired by Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coolridge, both family friends of Mary Shelley.

But it was the Cholera epidemic of 1832 that changed Poe’s world.

He was living in Baltimore at the time, a city of 80,000, and witnessed the terror it brought to people, including the death of his best friend, Ebenezer.

Exposure to such death changed the focus of his writing.

While Mary’s Frankenstein prayed on the fear of the dead reviving, and Polidori on vampires sucking your blood, Poe would return Gothic horror to its more isolationist roots, the fear of being alone, being buried alive, and going insane.

It was 1839 when Poe reached out to Washington Irving about his upcoming tale, The Fall of the House of Usher.

It is there that we see premature death, isolation, and insanity in one story.

In the following year, he released The Pit and The Pendulum poem about the torture a prisoner was about to experience and it was creepily released at Christmas time.

Then in 1843, Poe released The Telltale Heart about a murderer who buried his victim beneath the floorboard of his house, but slowly goes mad thinking he and others could still hear the beating of its heart.

Some believe The Telltale heart was based on court cases Edgar covered as a magazine reporter. But could it be the heart of Percy Shelly that Mary held on to with her own hands?

Poe’s significance in this story is more than his Gothic thrillers that enthralled so many.

His death in 1849, as mysterious as it was, came at the convergence of events for Halloween.

The Grim Reaper

For in the 1847, 1848, and 1849 period, the world is introduced to the Gothic thrillers of Poe, the stories of Frankenstein and Sleepy Hollow gets more popular. And the next disaster is about to move millions of people. 

You see, in 1848, Ireland faces its greatest threat, the Great Potato Famine. So, the culture that brought us the story of Stingy Jack is forced to move around Around the globe. Over 2 million moved to America, where pumpkins far outnumber turnips, marrying the tales of Sleepy Hollow and Jack of the Lantern.

1847 is also the year Bram Stoker is born.

While Stingy Jack leaves the UK, Stoker would grow up inspired by Polidari’s book about the vampire and would create the character Dracula.

And yet, there remain one more critical step. in the formation of Halloween.

Up until 1848, death did not have a name for perhaps the 40,000 years that preceded it.

In ancient Celtic traditions, the Lord of Death was said to gain strength in the fall as darkness overcame the light.

And in many cultures, death was depicted in art and stories as a scythe carrying man who brought fear wherever he went.

The Greeks called him Kronos and sometimes Thanatos.

But in 1847, with all our converging events, Reverend Menses published a book called The Circle of Human Life, where he stated that your life would be a good one if you made it to the ripe old age of 70 before meeting the Grim Reaper.

In 1847, death got a name, the Grim Reaper.

Now all of our events have converged in the year 1848.

After 1848, American teens found October 31st the perfect time to pull pranks, taking advantage of the Samhain and Halloween vibe. But it wasn’t long before neighbors would offer treats in hopes the teens would find another person to prank.

In so doing, modern-day Halloween was born.

In the 20th century, one man would become the face of Halloween.

He’d star in America’s scariest movies, including The House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Invisible Man, Abbott and Castello Meet Frankenstein, and The Raven. His name was Vincent Price.

You may know him.

You may know him best from the rap at the end of Michael Jackson’s Thriller and the perfect description of today’s episode. 

Darkness falls across the land.
The midnight hour is close at hand.
Creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize y’all’s neighborhood.
And whosoever shall be found without the soul for getting down
must stand and face the hounds of hell or rot inside a corpse shell.
The foulest stench in the air,
the funk of 40,000 years, and grizzly ghouls from every tomb
are closing in to seal your doom.
Though you fight to stay alive,
your body starts to shiver.
For no mere mortal can resist
the evil of a thriller.