As Irish folklore tells, a black horse with glowing eyes sprints through the Emerald Isle’s raw countryside in the murky night, carrying a terrified countryman who can’t escape this ghastly ride. They gallop past eerie sites, which have now become tourist attractions – mystical fairy forts, prehistoric passage tombs, abandoned Royal capitals, and the ‘hell cave’ where Halloween was born.
While Halloween was popularised by the US in the 1900s, the holiday originated 2,000 years ago with Ireland’s pagan festival, Samhain. Now, Ireland is making moves to reclaim the celebrations, branding itself as the world capital of Halloween. An island-wide tourism campaign involving dozens of events, including fire processions, carnival parades, and Europe’s biggest Halloween festival has launched this month, in a bid to bring the holiday back to its original setting. Each event is designed around helping tell the creepy history of Samhain, during which supernatural beings ran riot across Ireland.
Inhabited for up 10,000 years, Ireland’s green fields, serene forests and raw coastline echo with riveting folklore. The Irish people respect the Celtic mythology, telling stories of these beings, like the aforementioned Puca horse. Some such tales are mere campfire stories, describing lost cities and invisible islands. Others are grounded in reality, like that of Samhain. Every November 1, on Samhain, Irish pagans would mark the Celtic New Year by chanting alongside bonfires at sacred sites such as Oweynagat hell cave – a supposed portal to Ireland’s mythical underworld, Tír na nÓg.
This subterranean realm bulges with Sidhe fairies, including leprechauns and pucas, which are infamous for supposedly abducting humans after dark. Sidhes are trapped in Tír na nÓg, which is supposedly separated from the living world by an invisible border. Every now and then, this barrier briefly dissolves. Sidhes emerge from the underworld to either save the Irish people or plunge them into disasters, like the Great Irish Famine, according to mythology. Samhain is the main moment this spirit invasion occurred.
During the early versions of this festival, Sidhes would pour out of Oweynagat cave and swarm adjoining Rathcroghan, the capital of Ireland’s ancient kingdom of Connachta. Meanwhile, Samhain’s human attendees prayed for protection from fairies, in between feasting, dancing and trading at Rathcroghan.
