Fall Tales - Trick or Treat

🎃 Preface 🎃

General

Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.

This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of bobbing for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.

All Souls' Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints' Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

This little book would consist of my entries for the "30 Days of Spooky Tales" a prompt series for October, hosted by adultfiction Microbytes chicklit and Paranormal 

And though the intention of the prompt and the series is to create spooky or frightful tales, I think mine have ended to be creepy or humourous - but then it would fit the tag line of the title: "Trick or Treat"

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Disclaimer

These are fictional stories and and the names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or, in rare cases, actual events used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Further, the stories are set in various timelines and histories, which are based on the resources freely available on the internet and are subject to my limited understanding of the same. There are references to and mention of various religions and races, which must be read in the light of the time period they are set in and not judged by the light of the current century circumstances.

Finally, there are certain medical instances mentioned in some of the stories; the factual accuracy might not be proven but the same are medically plausible.

So please read this as what they are meant to be - fictional stories.

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Credits:

Cover: Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay; ;

Banners: Preface and Postface - Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay; 

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Copyright:

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