With the Halloween holiday coming up in Western culture, I thought that it would be beneficial for me to trace back my roots and discuss my own experience with spirits. I come from an African household, and my experience with Halloween drastically changed throughout the years. Halloween is a Western holiday with its extravagant costumes, free candy, common pranks, and ghostly ambiance . It is the one time a year where people can dress up without any judgment and kids can take candy from strangers. Its historical roots come from an ancient religious Celtic festival called Samhain, modern-day Ireland. The concept of this festival was that, during this time, souls of the dead would return to the homes in which they lived when they were alive. In order to ward off the spirits, people had to dress up in costumes.
I come from an African household, with one parent born in The Republic of Benin and the other in America. My parents were both quite tentative about me celebrating Halloween, but they didn’t really have a choice, considering that we celebrated it in school. After I begged and pleaded with my parents to let me participate in both the school activities and the personal activities (such as trick or treating), they finally allowed me to participate. There were rules, though.
- No playing severe pranks on anyone; so no tricking, just treating.
- No ghoulish costumes; in their opinion, vampires were allowed because they didn’t exist.
- All candy is acceptable but must be ‘checked’ by my parents; even if that meant that they took some pieces away
At a young age, I was only permitted to trick or treat with my family or in large groups of friends. As I got older, I had the opportunity to hang out more with my friends. This new method of celebrating Halloween meant watching Americanized horror movies or telling ghost stories. Being that most of my friends were Tumblr kids, the stories were a bit more paranormal than the usual true crime stories (which I could survive).
One thing I noticed while living this Westernized life was that my cousins had a completely different Halloween experience than I did. For one, they did not play around with the idea of telling ghost stories. It wasn’t meant to be a fun thing, but more of a warning. As opposed to ghosts being their worry, it was the idea of spirits. As West Africans with roots from Benin, for them, it was more common to treat spirits with reverence than with jokes.
“Bottom line: don’t mess with spitrits.”
There were a variety of stories that people would tell that would express a difference between the ‘good’ spirits and the ‘bad’ spirits (just a note: my explanations have been Westernized in order for people to understand). Although they were not necessarily labeled as ‘good’, it was more like they were there to guide or help you. They would typically observe you and protect you from harm, either from the spirit world or the physical world. The opposite goes for ‘bad’ spirits. It is more likely that they exist to cause you harm, either mentally, physically, or spiritually.
Although every family treats the spirits around them differently, my family makes an effort to include the ‘good’ ones in our life. For example, if we were to buy an expensive bottle of alcohol, we would pour some out for the spirits and ancestors to enjoy first. There may be certain prayers that we complete in honor of them or to offer them gratitude for watching over us.
As for the bad spirits, there are normally explanations given pertaining to how to protect yourself or what to do if you encounter any. It would be obvious to avoid them, but you normally don’t have a choice. There are certain drinks that our families take on certain occasions to ward them off as well as to protect ourselves from harm. It is not uncommon, though, to not know what you are drinking or what this would be doing for you. The general idea is that you want to avoid all attachments or negative energies as best as possible, and there are very few ways to project yourself in that manner.
The overall idea coming from an African household is that you don’t play with the idea of spirits–good or bad. Telling ghost stories is all fun and games in Western culture, but it could cause a bigger and different issue in another country. For example, my cousins sometimes still wear costumes, and that is different because they are replicating something that isn’t real. But playing with Ouija boards and telling ghost stories could cause implications for your future life in terms of negativity, either spiritually or physically. Bottom line: don’t mess with spirits.