The fear generated by the idea of the deceased returning from the hereafter to purge their faults or to appropriate a living body was the cause of the appearance of certain rites, beliefs and celebrations that sought to prevent this transition from disturbing the tranquility of the living.
The Celtic culture is what has most influenced our current conceptions about the return of the spirits of the dead and their desire to "scare" the living. In the first days of November the celebrations of Samhain were celebrated, that constitute the antecedent of the English night of Halloween or the catholic of the Day of deads. Samhain (cho-ouinn), means "the end of good time".
In the fifth century BC, the Celtic summer officially ended on October 31, and the first of November began the new year. The ancient Celts believed that on that day the spirits of their deceased relatives throughout the year returned in search of living bodies with the idea of possessed them. For them, on that night the laws of space and time were suspended, as well as what we considered rational, so that the hereafter could access the world of the living and relate to it.
Naturally, nobody wanted to be possessed. Therefore, on the night of October 31, the locals let the fires of their homes extinguish, so that the low temperatures made them undesirable for the spirits, who seem to be somewhat chilly. Their habitual inhabitants disguised themselves to take the streets and not to be recognized by their ancestors, at the same time as they made a hellish noise, with all kinds of percussion instruments, to ward off the spirits of any possessive temptation.
The chronicles tell us that if someone neglected these precautions, and an ancestor of his happened to take possession of his body, he was burned at the stake for the warning of the living and the dead.
The night before this main festival of the Celts (they counted by nights instead of by days), the whole community had to attend the meeting under the threat of losing their sanity if they did not. It consisted of an assembly in which the debate on the divine and human was followed by an endless feast based on pork and wine. The meat of the animal to access immortality, and the fermented drink, to reach a state of trance that facilitated communication with the dead without the danger of possession.
During the three days that followed, the Celts used to stage the enigmas of life and death around a great bonfire that exorcised the bad geniuses, while purifying the group and the land. The Druid priests had been responsible for generating the new fire by rubbing two oak sticks, like a cross. The assistants took embers from the fire and took them to their homes to light the renewed fire, which would burn uninterrupted throughout the following year.
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