“This book crawls into your psyche, peeling back the cosy layers of Halloween nostalgia to reveal its chilling roots in ancient horror.” - Haunted magazine

HALLOWEEN. The night when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. When ghosts walk and corpses writhe, and innocent souls had best beware.

Let acclaimed storyteller Brice Stratford take you on a wild and witchy ride, fascinating and unnerving in equal measure, through the twists and turns of Allhallowstide, and the forgotten history of Halloween and the wider Hallowmas season.

With ghost stories, ancestor worship, bone fires, otherworld pixies, Pagan belief and archaic, Christian mythology along the way, Stratford shares for the first time the deeper tales and stranger lore that lurk beneath the tricks and treats we know so well, and the ancient flame that keeps the Jack o’Lantern lit. Light the candles, lock the doors, and prepare to be unsettled.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.

‘This book crawls into your psyche, peeling back the cosy layers of Halloween nostalgia to reveal its chilling roots in ancient horror.’

A storyteller, historian, folklorist and actor-director, Brice Stratford runs the Owle Schreame theatre company, specialising in obscure historical productions and research as practice. Past work has focused on the British ritual year, and the folk drama and storytelling traditions associated with the seasons. A regular fixture at folk and fright events across the country, he has published two other books, New Forest Myths and Folklore and Anglo-Saxon Myths: The Struggle for the Seven Kingdoms, and writes regularly on culture, history, architecture and the arts for the Critic, the Spectator, the British Theatre Guide and Apollo.