Halloween Superstitions

Halloween is a fun time of year! Kids and adults alike enjoy dressing up in costumes and going from door to door for treats. Harvest festivals are popular outlets for those children who, for religious reasons, don't celebrate Halloween, and who doesn't enjoy telling ghost stories at this time of year!

This page is purely for entertainment purposes, intended to give you something to have fun with or to weave into your Halloween traditions this year. I don't know about you, but Halloween is my favorite time of year! The fall is fantastic, and these superstitions will give you plenty to think about and spook yourself over for years to come!

These superstitions are meant to be fun and aren't meant to be taken seriously.

Before we get started, however, I'd like to introduce you to the root of Halloween, a Celtic festival known as "Samhain," which refers to the last harvest of the year.

Many of our Halloween Traditions are rooted as much in Christian (Catholic) symbolism as they are in pagan symbolism. However, the root of most of the superstitions that we associate with Halloween come from pagan mythology and the Celts, who celebrated Samhain, the time of the last harvest during which they believed that the veil between the worlds is the thinnest.

Modern pagans continue to practice Samhain to this day. Like their ancestors, they believe that the veil between the worlds is thinnest at this time (the end of their year and the beginning of the new one) and that the dead can pass through the veil in order to communicate with the living.

This is a time of divination and of communion with ancestors.

Pagans, even in modern times, believe in the existence of magic, and that all things in nature have power. This means that for them, some of these superstitions are more than old wives tales: They are based on genuine pagan practices. While the intention of this article is to be fun rather than informational, you should take this into consideration: For some people, this is serious.

Black cats, and specifically a black cat crossing your path, have long been considered to be bad luck. For this reason, they are associated with Halloween, a holiday steeped in tradition and superstition. It is believed that if a black cat crosses your path by midnight, that you will soon die.

Many believe that black cats are witches familiars, devils who communicate between the spirit world and the witch. While many witches do keep familiars, they come from many different species and there is no pure evil in the craft in the way that many people believe.

Some also believe that a witch can turn herself into a black cat.

Black cats are, of course, in no way bad luck. In much of Europe, black cats are considered to be not bad luck, but good luck to the person who keeps a black cat in the house. Treating a black cat well is said to bring good fortune to the owner. If you pluck a single white hair from a black cat without getting scratched, it's said that you will have good fortune and love!

The veil between worlds is said to be at its thinnest at Halloween, making it a good time of year for divination.

Halloween has long been considered the best day to practice divination (fortune telling). Many modern witches like to practice divination at this time of year because it is believed that the results will be more accurate. In the past, women used Halloween as a day to divine the name or the face of their future mate.