Happy Halloween from the OU Library!

To celebrate this spooktacular day, we’ve found some amazing resources for you in the online library…

Where does Halloween come from? While many cultures have a day in their calendar which celebrates a ‘day of the dead’, the origins of the date of Halloween are contentious. In the Christian calendar, 1^st November is known as All Saint’s Day (or All Hallows Day) and is the first of three days known as ‘Allhallowtide’; a time to remember the dead. The word ‘Halloween’ is a contraction of All Hallows’ Evening – as it is celebrated on the evening preceding Allhallowtide. However, the Celtic celebration of Samhain was also traditionally celebrated at this time – marking the end of harvest season and the beginning of winter. It was celebrated with the lighting of bonfires, mumming and guising – with people going from house to house in costume, reciting verses in exchange for food.

[[[image-0 medium left]]] What do you think? You can learn more about the history of Halloween in ‘The Halloween Encyclopedia’ on Credo Reference.

If you enjoy dressing up for a bit of Trick or Treating, or to attend a Halloween party, the odds are that at one time or another you will have dressed up as a witch or a vampire. But what is the history behind these two scary characters?

From the hook nosed scary cackler to the glittery giggly ‘good’ witch, and more lately the distinctive House Scarves of the Harry Potter characters, the idea of the evil witch has become a comic caricature. But only a few short centuries ago, people believed that these magical, evil creatures did indeed exist, and blamed them for anything from crop failure, to bad luck, to illness and death. Thousands of people, both women and men, were executed for the crime of Witchcraft – which was made a capital offence in England in 1563.

One of the most famous witch trials in England tool place in Lancashire in 1612, when 12 women from the Pendle Hill area were charged of using Witchcraft to murder ten people. Ten of the accused were found guilty and executed. This ebook, ‘The Lancashire Witches’ is a study of these famous trials, looking at the socio-economic factors of the time, how the trials are represented in modern culture, and compares the historical events to modern day Wicca.

And what about the not so humble Vampire? Since Bram Stoker’s novel ‘Dracula’ was released in 1897, the Vampire has been part of our popular culture. Although vampire stories existed before this date – the earliest vampire fiction dates back to the early 1700s - it is Stoker’s Prince of Darkness that has endured as the definitive vampire archetype.

But myths of vampires have been in existence as far back as the ancient civilisations of Babylonia, Greece, Rome and Egypt, and all across Europe. This ebook, ‘From Demons to Dracula : The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth’ looks at the history of the Vampire myth throughout the ages, from the early myths through to modern cinema portrayals.