transcript
show notes
Halloween didn’t start with candy. It started with fire, fairies with a grudge, and a night when the barrier between worlds went thin. In this episode, we trace how Samhain became trick-or-treating, then follow a grieving Victorian folklorist named Dorothea Vane around the world through her ledger, The Calendar of Open Doors. We visit Wales, where the last child home gets chased by a headless woman, and Rome, where the dead were paid off with black beans. We stop at the glowing cemeteries of Poland and the giant kites of Guatemala. We also cover Haiti’s Fèt Gede, where the dead are the funniest guests, and the Hungry Ghost Festival, where the front row is left empty on purpose. Then come Cambodia’s Pchum Ben, India’s crow-fed ancestors, Madagascar’s dancing with the dead, and a Japanese ghost-story game that is deliberately never finished. Every tradition lights a flame, sets out food, and leaves a seat open. Dorothea found one night that nobody claimed, and she set a place for it. Don’t sit in the front row.
