Halloween Superstitions to try – or not!

An old tradition was that girls should go into a field and scatter hemp seed, while singing ‘Hempseed I sow thee, come after me and show me’ – sadly the tune has not been preserved. By turning round swiftly the girl should see a vision of the man who would be her husband.

The old tradition of bobbing for apples was meant to show who would marry whom – each bite was matched to the mouth of the biter and where a man and woman had taken bites from the opposite side of the apple it was claimed they would wed. You can update this by putting apples from which a small piece has been cut, and into which a fortune written on a slip of paper has been inserted, into a tub. People duck their heads and retrieve an apple with their mouths before drawing out the slip of paper and reading their fortune.

Mashed potatoes can show who will be the first to wed. Into the a mound of mashed potatoes you should hide a ring, a silver coin, a button, a heart-shaped charm, a shell and a key (wrap them in tinfoil for hygiene!). Then all the lights in the room are turned out, and each guest, armed with a spoon or fork, tries to find the hidden charms. The one who finds the ring win marry first, the coin signifies wealth, the button, bachelorhood or spinsterhood, the heart, passionate love, the shell, long journeys, the key, great success and power.

The old Celtic custom was to light great bonfires on Halloween, and after these had burned out to make a circle of the ashes of each fire. Within this circle, each person who had helped to make the fire would place a pebble. If, on the next day, any stone was out of its place, or had been damaged, it was an indication that the one to whom the stone belonged would die within twelve months.

Halloween Superstitions to try – or not!

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