The Ghost Season in Dublin

Click the "Ghost Season" link in the sidebar, listen to the story of the ghost season around Halloween in Dublin and answer these questions:

1. How long was the ghost season?

2. What was done around the bonfires?

3. Who was the potato ghost?

4. What happened on All Souls Night?

5. Why would famine ghosts haunt them?

6. What happened at Rialto Bridge?

7. What is buried in the Robber's Den?

8. How many ghosts are named?

9. Why did they avoid combs?

The infamous Hell Fire Club in the dublin mountains where the devil is said to have appeared.

* The Origins Of Halloween *

A History Of Samhain & All Hallows Eve
by Chris McGowan

Part One: Samhain & The Pagan Roots Of Halloween
Night falls and a fierce knocking assails your quiet home. Mischievous laughter resounds outside. You open the front door and are confronted by George Bush, Osama Bin Laden, a gypsy, and a green witch. They rustle bags and yell "trick or treat." You hand them candy and send them on their way, to other houses decorated with spider webs, tombstones and glowing hollowed-out pumpkins. By morning, some of these dwellings (usually those with teenage inhabitants) will be decorated with shaving cream and eggs, their trees festooned with toilet paper. Meanwhile, at parties around town, adults dressed as vampires and French maids dance and drink into the wee hours. From whence did Halloween, this peculiar and seemingly all-American holiday, derive?
Halloween's roots lie in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, celebrated on a full moon around November 1. Samhain was the most important of the Celtic fire festivals, or holy days, because it was the start of the New Year. The harvest had ended, the last crops had been picked, and a chill was in the air. The dark half of the year was beginning. On the night of Samhain, the Celts believed that the souls of the dead were restless, on the move, and could cross over into the world of the living.

A Halloween reveller at a bonfire.