I got into Le Fanu as a kid having been traumatised by the BBC dramatization of Schalcken the Painter. If you’ve not read Le Fanu yet, chances are you’ve come across one of the film or television adaptations, especially if you’re of my generation and therefore cut your gothic teeth on Hammer Films and the BBC’s Ghost Stories for Christmas in the 1970s. It is thus in every way appropriate that the father of the modern ghost story, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, was an Irishman…

While ‘Bealtaine’ (May Day) was a summer festival for the living, Samhain was a festival for the dead. (The pumpkin was adopted by Irish immigrants to America, being more physically impressive and a lot easier to carve than a turnip.) According to Irish mythology, during Samhain the door to what the Celts called the ‘Otherworld’ swung open, letting supernatural beings and the souls of the dead into the world of men. His lost soul has been wandering Ireland ever since carrying his lantern – lit by the eternal fire of Hell – and looking for a resting place. Freezing, Jack places the coal in a hastily hollowed-out turnip and fashions a lamp. To make him go away, Satan hurls a burning coal like a publican discouraging a stray dog. After a life of debauchery, Jack’s soul is barred from Heaven, but Hell won’t take him either. Before releasing him, Jack strikes a bargain that the Devil will never claim his soul. According to Irish folklore, the original ‘Jack’ met the Devil on the way home from a night’s drinking and trapped him up a tree by cutting the sign of the cross into the bark. Originally carved from turnips, the tradition of the Halloween Jack O’Lantern began in Ireland as a symbolic representation of a soul in purgatory.

And while pumpkins are carved and displayed as an invitation to trick-or-treaters, let us not forget that their original purpose was to ward off the evil spirits that walk on All Saint’s Eve, the same night as the ancient Gaelic festival of Samhain. Stephen Carver looks at the work of the influential Irish author.Īs the nights grow longer and colder and we move inexorably towards Halloween, the readerly mind turns naturally towards the ghost story. Le Fanu and the Golden Age of the Ghost Story

A ghost story the small hand