Why Tales of Samhain?

Samhain (usually pronounced SAH-win with a silent m in English) is a Pagan festival that begins at sunset on the 31st of October and lasts until sunset on 1st November.

Samhain marked a time of year when the space between the mortal world and the spirit world was at its thinnest and spirits could easily cross from their deathly realm to the living world. Christians later adopted this festival of All Hallow’s Eve on the 31st of October and All Saints Day on the 1st of November although Samhain is still an important festival celebrated by many modern Pagans. Of course, the 31st October is now commonly known as Halloween and is a time to enjoy a scary book, film or to decorate your house and dress up as a ghost or a werewolf and go Trick or Treating or to a Halloween party.

So why have I named my website Tales of Samhain? Well, ever since I was a child I have loved Halloween and now, as an adult, I have several boxes of Halloween decorations stored in the garage that come out every year. I have always enjoyed tales of monsters lurking in forgotten places and enjoy feeling a spine-tingling shiver at someone’s retelling of a ghostly encounter. I have had one or two of these myself but they are for a post for another day! I also enjoy reading fantasy and science-fiction and this passion for these genres influence many of my past times and choice of TV viewing. It therefore, seemed a suitable name to encompass my writing interests!

Over the last years, I’ve really started to enjoy writing short stories, starting with those that I have sporadically written for my classes to use in school and then some written just for fun. I thought I would start to share these stories online and create a library of stories for children of all ages to enjoy based upon monsters, the supernatural, fantasy, science-fiction, legends and ancient myths – all the things associated with Halloween and all the things that I enjoyed as a child and still enjoy today.

I hope that you enjoy reading my stories as much as I enjoy writing to them and over time I hope to build up a collection of stories or Tales of Samhain so please visit back from time to time to see if there are any new stories up on the website!

Thanks for visiting Tales of Samhain and thanks for reading my first blog post.