Witch Hunting

Meet the town

Before we begin this journey, let me tell you a little about this town and its folks. Whitacre is a very small town, so small that hardly anyone ever heard about it. It is located in the north of British Columbia, Canada, between Fort Nelson and Muskwa. Living here meant peace and quiet for the adults and elders, but death by boredom for everyone else. 

That is until Halloween came along. 

Surprisingly Halloween (and Christmas of course) was the time of the year when the town seemed to be actually alive and fun. There would be decorations and pumpkins on every porch and window, kids running around with costumes on trying to scare each other. The atmosphere would be as if ghosts surrounded us and spirits haunted us wherever we went. But the biggest event in Whitacre was the annual "Halloween Fest" organized by the town for every Halloween. Each year has different themes: we had the "Evil scientist and their inventions" for example Frankenstein's monster. They were more specific themes like "Dracula and his minions" (Some people actually came as Minions from Despicable Me believe it or not).

This year will be "Witchcraft and Wizardry" and the president of the committee organizing this event is I.

Hello, my name is Ailis Brian and I am 19 years old. I was actually born in Ireland but my mother and I moved to Whitacre when I was 10 after my father passed away. My mom, Eva Niamh, is from Montreal and my dad, Kenneth Brian, was from Dublin. They met at Bristol University in England. Shortly after graduating and getting married, they decided to move to my father's hometown. He managed to get a job as a history teacher, whilst my mother was pregnant with me. He was a very passionate man; he loved his job and his family. But I believe the one thing he loved most was Halloween. See, I do not know anyone who loves and knows so much about this day as much as him. He has made so much research about it, reading and writing essays and even a thesis. It was his life's goal to find out the actual truth about this mystical holiday. He actually got our whole family interested and passionate about it too.

We had this tradition that whenever the month of October started (We called it Monstober, a combination between "Monster" and "October"), mom would have to bake cookies in the shape of specific monsters every day and I would draw them and put them on our wall. Dad would tell us stories every night until the actual day of Halloween, which also happened to be my birthday. We were a happy family until that one Halloween where everything changed.

October 31st, 2005 [on the night of my 10th birthday], my father passed away in a car crash on his way home. With too many painful memories of her husband in Dublin, she decided that we were moving to Canada when she got offered a job as a kindergarten teacher in Whitacre.

And here I am now, 10 years later organizing an event for Halloween/ my birthday/ the anniversary of my father's death. No pressure.