We light candles in hollowed faces and dress as things we are not.
Every year, on this strange edge between October and November, we pretend at fear — but maybe it’s the one night we come closest to honesty.
Halloween is older than its masks. Long before trick-or-treating and plastic skeletons, the Celts celebrated Samhain — the turning of the year, when the veil between the living and the dead was said to thin. Fires were lit to guide spirits home, or to keep them away. The harvest was ending; the light was dying. Everything was changing.
And so people made stories — of ghosts, monsters, and creatures that crossed boundaries. Of death that wasn’t quite death, and life that wasn’t quite life.
In that way, Halloween isn’t about horror. It’s about thresholds. Between summer and winter. Light and dark. The seen and unseen.
Between who we are and what we might be.
Maybe that’s why we wear masks — not to hide, but to reveal. For a single night, we can become the shadow that walks behind us.
The self we usually keep silent.
So when the night comes, and the air smells of woodsmoke and damp earth, look a little closer. Listen.
What waits in the dark isn’t always a monster.
Sometimes, it’s you.
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