Fortean / Paranormal Events Or Tales Occurring On Halloween?

[spleek1]

As the one time of the year when most peoples thoughts turn toward the weird and unusual, does any one know of any Fortean events that have occurred on Halloween night. Discount the traditional tales of the Witches Sabbat and other ancient stories. Does the Halloween night of say the last 100 years stand out as being an epicentre for ghost stories, ufo reports, bigfoot sightings etc or does it just rank as an average night on the weird scale?:devil:

 

[spleek1]

I think they are scared that if they spread foot and mouth and wipe out the british sheep population,then they would be reduced to sacrificing a blow up sheep next year. Which could cause things to go with a bang. Either that or a frozen New Zealand lamb chop.
Apart from the witch craft element. Any other Halloween fortean events reported ever?

 

[Breakfastologist]

If not events, the general behaviour of most of the populace is pretty Fortean in a way, all these 21st century technological age of reason types going out collecting food for the spirits in more or less the same way that has probably been going on, in this part of europe at least, for the last 5000+ years is pretty odd.

 

[MrRING]

Also, a great book on Halloween that I recently purchased was The Halloween Book by Mark Oxbrow.

THE HALLOWEEN BOOK WEBSITE

"A good tale needs many things - among them suspense, threat, conflict and a gruesome villain. We only have to look at our continuing fascination with Vampires to see that a creature that drinks blood and eats human flesh taps the vein of some deep primal fear. Behind the Vampire tales are legends of blood drinking supernatural hags and nightmare creatures that drained the life from sleeping folk...

...Deep in a pitch black cave sits an ancient hag. She pulls her tattered woollen plaid shawl about bony shoulders and brushes a strand of dark hair back from her face with a twisted hand. She peers out into the inky shadows with her one good eye - a single white eye against the blue-black skin of her wrinkled face. Like a winter full moon in a midnight sky. She sits and waits for the sun to set, for the night of Halloween to come. There, in the quiet darkness, the Cailleach waits for her reign to begin...

...we find in the tales of the Cailleach Bheur a melting pot of cultural traditions, forgotten religions and anthropomorphised seasons. ( From time to time you need to use big words..) Storytellers have seldom been shy of taking a good tale and reworking it for their own local audience - so features of the landscape are given names and stories to suit their characteristics and curious tales from faraway lands are changed to fit existing native characters. There do seem to be half remembered glimpses of the rites of some ancient religion - with the dark goddess of former times worn down to giantess and hag but its nature was lost to us millennia ago."