Each year I celebrate elements of both Halloween and Samhain. On my path, Halloween revolves around trick-or-treating with the kids, telling scary stories, and throwing a party for friends and family that ends in a group ritual attended by pagans and non-pagans friends alike. Samhain (which I typically celebrate around November 7 when the sun reaches 15 degrees Scorpio) is a deeply mystical and sacred time, filled with magic and remembrance and something that I generally celebrate alone.
To honor the traditional thinning of the veil between our world and the spirit world that is honored on our October 31st holiday, please allow me to present three "ghost stories" from my path. Each of the following really happened and is shared here the way I remember the event unfolding. There are many more where these came from. If the idea is well-received, each year at this time I'll share another installment of spooky fun.
A Ghostly Bristle
It was the spring of 2001 and I was curled up with my daughter on her bed, reading her a bedtime story. At the time, I was still married and we lived in a home that had been in my wife's family for a couple of generations - long enough for the one-time farm to be enveloped by an ever-growing city. As Moira and I read the children's book together, I felt a presence in the hallway outside her bedroom door. We both simultaneously looked up and saw an old ghostly woman shuffle past my daughter's doorway and into the home's only bathroom. The apparition was dressed in slippers and a night gown with a floral print robe thrown over her sleepwear.
Having seen a spirit or two in my time, I shrugged off the encounter and went back to reading the book. Moira was soon enraptured in the tale as well and eventually nodded off to sleep.
Deciding to head for bed myself, I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, only to find that my toothbrush had been horribly mutilated. The center strip of bristles had been worn down to the plastic and those surrounding it were brown and bent away from the center of the toothbrush. It looked as if someone had used it to scrub a hot radiator and the bristles had melted or burned away.
The kids' mom had no idea what had happened to it and the toothbrush had been fine that morning when I'd last used it. As odd as it may seem, the only explanation we could come up with is that the ghost had used my toothbrush to brush it's teeth!
A Better Excuse Than, "My Dog Ate My Homework"
In September or October of 1984, I was up late one night doing some last minute work on an assignment for my English class that was due the next day. I had headphones on, the overhead light in my bedroom was turned off and I was working by the light of a small lamp that sat on the headboard of my bed. Without warning, my room was suddenly icy cold, as abruptly as if I'd been pulled out of a warm bed and thrust half-dressed into a walk-in freezer.
Instinctively, I raised my head and there, at the foot of my bed, stood a being. It was a tall, dark, robed presence, the hood of its robe completely empty except for two red eyes that seemed to glow without emitting any light. Without either of us moving, I heard its baritone voice speak clearly in my mind, "If you'll pledge your soul to me, I'll bring you into your full power." With the speed of a well-honed reflex, I banished the being from my room - and it instantly disappeared.
My heart racing, my veins filled with adrenaline, I got out of bed to get a glass of water from our kitchen on the other end of the house. As I reached the sink and began to fill the glass from the tap, I glanced out the kitchen window. A wall of unbelievably dense fog, reaching all the way to the ground and standing as tall as a man was slowly approaching our home. While nocturnal fog is a common sight in the Pacific Northwest, something about it - it's density, it's height - made me uncomfortable.
My glass filled, I headed back toward my bedroom, stopping to peek out the living room window which looked out the opposite side of our house. The fog was approaching our home from that direction too. I sat down my glass and ran to a third window. The fog was coming from that direction as well! Running into my parents room, I woke them up, peering out their window which faced the final direction of the compass.
We were in the exact center of a wall of impossibly thick fog, the bank extending almost six feet off the ground, as if an unholy army approached our home from all sides.
My parents, well-steeped in Christianity, began to pray. We bound the fog from coming onto our property and, sure enough, it stopped at the very edge of our grass. We continued to pray for a time and slowly the fog began to recede, finally disappearing into the night.
Visiting the Circle
It was the summer of 1992 or 1993 and a Taoist friend who had been celebrating with our coven asked if I would perform an Initiation ceremony for him. He wasn't Wiccan but felt that such a ritual would help him on his path. I agreed and, after asking him his expectations and desires for such a rite, it was decided that he and I would honor the milestone at night on a beach on the Oregon Coast.
In the midst of the ritual, I found myself facing the ocean while Aaron had his back to the waves. From over his shoulder I watched a woman in a simple, long white dress walk out of the ocean, cross the boundary of our circle that we'd inscribed in the sand, and join our rite, stopping a short distance behind my friend. Not wanting to influence the energy of the ritual, I continue the ceremony until we reached a natural stopping point.
"Aaron?" I asked. "Did you notice anything different about this ritual?"
Without pause he replied, "Do you mean the woman in white that's standing right behind me?"
"Yeah. Why do you think she's here?"
Aaron shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think she means us any harm."
"I don't think so either," I replied. "I think she's just here to observe."
"That's what I'm getting too."
We continued our rite and, as the ritual began to wind down and we prepared to ground the energy, our ghostly visitor left the circle and walked back into the ocean, disappearing once more beneath the waves.