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All Hallows’ Eve: The Vigil of the Departed
When twilight falls on 31 October, the Christian calendar and the old pagan year meet.
The Eve of All Hallows—from Old English hālga ǣfen (“holy evening”)—was the vigil before the Feast of All Saints.
Yet in spirit it still carried the echo of Samhain, the Celtic festival of endings and beginnings.
In pagan belief, this was the night when the barrier between worlds dissolved: the dead might revisit hearth and home, and the living could glimpse the Otherworld. Fires blazed, food was laid out for ancestors, and villagers disguised themselves to ward off or impersonate wandering spirits.
The Revenant of Hereford: Walter Map’s Medieval Walking Dead
It’s Halloween, or ‘All Halliow’s Eve’, stolen from the pagans! You might think it’s all jack-o’-lanterns, witches, and restless spirits, but long before pumpkins and trick-or-treaters, medieval storytellers were already spinning tales of the restless dead. One of the most chilling comes from Walter Map, a 12th-century courtier, wit, and author of De Nugis Curialium (Courtiers’ Trifles).
Did you know, Walter Map is a character in Rachel Elwiss Joyce’s second novel in the ‘Nicola de la Haye Series’?
Map’s collection of gossip, marvels, and supernatural tales contains one of England’s earliest written accounts of a revenant — a corpse that would not rest quietly in its grave.