It’s time…for ghosts, goblins, witches, warlocks, and, of course, the dead. It’s Halloween. But what was it about in ancient times, and where did it begin?

The customs of Halloween can be traced back to the Druid priests of the Celtics. It was the second most significant holiday of their year. The first was Beltane – the growing season celebrated from April 30– May 1. The second, October 31, was Samhain when the crops were reaped. It was believed that by harvesting all the crops by October 31, there would be no damage to them by ‘evil or mischievous spirits’ who’d return on the first evening of the dark half of the year. 

Druid rituals, deeply ingrained in the Celtic belief system, consisted of lighting huge bonfires, animal sacrifice, and burnt offerings of foods. The priests disguised themselves with animal masks to confuse the spirits.

When Christian missionaries set out to convert England, Pope Gregory, the head of the Church from 590 to 604 A.D., advised them not to force the conversion to end their culture but to incorporate as much of it as possible. It wasn’t a far stretch to succeed since saints in Christianity were credited with miraculous events that were supernatural in nature. Thus, the name Samhain, on October 31, morphed into All Hallows Eve – the night before the saints were revered. 

All Hallows Eve, over time, became Halloween, and the old beliefs did not completely disappear. The concept of spirits returning survived, and Christianized customs grew out of the old ways, with each country developing its own practices.    

In France, Halloween holds little attraction or fanfare. It is considered a very American tradition, and the French are never anxious to adopt American ways. Halloween in France is overshadowed by All Saints Day, on November 1, a national public holiday. The French attend specific religious services and visit cemeteries to lay flowers on deceased relatives’ graves.

The same may be said for the Netherlands. They, too, consider Halloween an American and commercial endeavor rather than a cultural institution. On November 11, the Dutch observe Sint-Marten, a children’s feast that resembles the American celebration of Halloween and is more widely practiced.

In Asia, Halloween has become popular. Hong Kong, the American festival has caught on, and in Japan, where it was first celebrated at the 2000 Tokyo Disneyland, it has taken on a life of its own. 

In Haiti, Fet Gede, or the Festival of the Dead, has an entirely different cultural backdrop. On November 1, All Saints, and on November 2, All Souls, those who practice Voodoo, the Vodouisants, pay their respects to Baron Samedi, the father of deceased spirits. Vodouisants dance in the streets, commune with the dead, and walk through graveyards, leaving food for their ancestors from their own tables. It more resembles Mardi Gras than Halloween.

In Italy, La Festa di Ognissanti (the feast of All Saints) or Hallowmas – short for All Hallows Mass, on November 1, is celebrated by spending time with family. On all Souls, Italians leave chrysanthemums on loved ones’ graves and bake cookies called fave dei morti. They are made with almond, butter, and flour and represent the beans of the dead, a tradition that has survived from ancient Roman times, when beans were used in funerary rites. 

Perhaps my favorite Halloween ritual is from Mexico: Dia de Los Muertos – the Day of the Dead. Mexicans wear bright makeup and dazzling costumes to parade, sing, and dance. A unique aspect of Dia de Los Muertos is the building of altars in tribute to deceased ancestors. Upon these altars are sugar skull-shaped confections and bottles of tequila, along with flowers and pictures of the dead. These offerings are believed to attract the spirits and reunite them with their living families. Other traditions include gathering at the cemeteries dressed in eye-catching costumes with colorful floral decorations, including symbolic marigolds. There, they enjoy traditional foods like pan de muerto (bread of the dead) and Calaveras (sugar skulls). From Mexico, we come to the United States, where all of our American Halloween traditions evolved from other countries.

Carved Jack-o-Lanterns began with a legend about a man named Stingy Jack who trapped the Devil and only let him go on condition that Jack would never go to Hell. When Jack died, Heaven didn’t want him, so he wandered the earth as a ghost for eternity, with a burning lump of coal in a carved-out turnip (now a pumpkin) to light his way. Eventually, people began carving frightening faces on their pumpkins to scare away evil spirits.

The custom of wearing creepy costumes began with Samhain. The Celts believed that in costume, they would be mistaken for ghosts and left alone by actual spirits. And then, there is Trick-or-Treat. 

One theory is that during the Middle Ages, on All Souls Day, children and some adults collected food and money from neighbors in return for their prayers for the dead. Eventually, that was replaced with non-religious practices, including songs, jokes, and other tricks if the treat wasn’t forthcoming. The ritual of door-to-door seeking handouts has long been part of Halloween, but we are long past the days of giving fruits, nuts, coins, and toys. We now are every dentist’s dream, devouring $3 billion-plus dollars of candy.

Bobbing for Apples is not as American as Apple Pie. It stems back to a courtship ritual of the Roman festival honoring Pomona, the goddess of agriculture and abundance. Young men and women could “predict their future relationships based on the game. When the Romans conquered the British Isles in 43 A.D,” the Pomona festival melded with Samhain. 

No discussion would be complete without Pranking. Playing pranks varied by region, but the pre-Halloween tradition known as “Devil’s Night” included good-natured mischief. When Irish and Scottish immigrants came to the U.S., they brought the practice of celebrating Mischief Night as part of Halloween.

Igniting huge bonfires also began with the Druids, and over time, believed to light the way for souls seeking the afterlife. Bonfires are no longer common, at least not in big cities. In today’s world, souls need good eyesight because the most they get is candlelight.

  So, my witches, warlocks, ghosts, goblins, and mischief makers, you now have some customs, traditions, and history. Enjoy it with the candy and treats. 

Happy Halloween! Francine Paino  a.k.a. F. Della Notte

By

Francine Paino, aka F. Della Notte

Mundane worlds can become amazing when writers are plunged into them. Looking through old family photographs, I came upon a picture of a handsome young man whose start in this country could have been better. He worked as a pin-boy in a New York City Bowery bowling alley a hundred years ago. My story, The Runaway Pin Boy, was inspired by this long-deceased uncle’s difficult adjustment to a new country and culture.

 Francesco Libretti was born in Sassano, Italy, in 1910, emigrated to the U.S. in 1921, and by age 14, he began his short-lived career as a runaway who found work as a pin-boy in a Bowery bowling alley, but here, the similarity stops. 

But where did it begin, what was it like back then? How were the mechanics of setting up pins handled?  

Bowling. A sport that feels as American as Apple Pie is not an American invention. It’s traced back to ancient Egypt, 5200 years ago, in articles found in the tomb of an Egyptian child. Described in its primitive form, nine pieces of stones were set up, and a rounded stone “ball” was rolled to first make its way through an archway made of three pieces of marble. The sport spread from its Egyptian roots into Western Europe, and was brought to the U.S. by the first English and Dutch settlers. It gained popularity through the mid-1800s, played by men only, as it was not the clean family sport we enjoy today. Thus, it faltered when the do-gooders associated it with gambling. Any yet, by 1850, there were four-hundred plus bowling alleys in New York, earning the city the title “Bowling Capital of North America.”

The sport revived in the late 19th century and remained popular during the Great Depression, at least for those with a disposable income. Bowling was a game for  roughnecks and the wealthiest who could afford to build their own private lanes. For the common man the game took place in honky-tonk bars where lanes were built to increase income, with or without alcohol,  and by 1939, there were 4,600 bowling alleys across the U.S. 

Until 1952, when the automatic pin-setters were introduced, picking up and resetting the pins fell to pin boys, often called pin monkeys. They stood at the end of the lanes, perched on narrow ledges or standing up in trenches, waiting for the heavy balls to fly down and slam the heavy wood pins. The pin boys then scrambled to each lane, reset the pins, and gave the heavy ball a hard enough push to get back to the bowler but not hard enough to roll off the track and upset the player in any way. And if he did, there were consequences.

Pin boys were kids, mostly teens, and despite their young years, they were tough characters,  paid meager wages and often taken from the Skid Rows of cities, including New York City’s Bowery. It was hard labor and resulted in frequent injuries, including  broken ribs, severely bruised chins, arms, hands, and smashed fingers, especially when the bowler threw the ball extra hard and fast, just to see if they could make the pins fly.

In the 1830s, the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City opened three lanes, using clay instead of wood, but no matter the surface, the pin monkeys were at the end of every alley, hoping they wouldn’t be too injured to work again the next day or night. 

Although Child Labor Laws were codified in New York in 1913, these youngsters slipped through the net by lying about their age or being hired by unscrupulous owners. The lives of the pin boys in those early years of the sport were not enviable, but many were willing to endure physical and psychological pain in order to eat.

In The Runaway Pin Boy, the year is 1925, In the Lower East Side ghetto of New York City, known today as Little Italy.  Frankie Martone’s mother dies of consumption, and his alcoholic and destitute father abandons him. After witnessing what happens to other immigrant children without families, Frankie flees the authorities, deciding to fend for himself in the anonymity of Skid Row. He learns to beg, borrow, or steal. One night, while he rummages through a trash pail outside the Pin King bar,  a formidable man stinking with sweat and cigar smoke grabs him by the collar. 

“Whatcha doin’ there, boyo?” asks the barrel-chested man with a grizzly turned-up mustache.  Frankie didn’t answer, afraid his thick Italian accent would get him kicked down the street.

“You’re a straggly lookin’ thing, but I need another boy inside. Let’s see what you can do. “He flings Frankie through the door to the bar. “Hey Joe,” he yelled in his Irish brogue. “Broughtcha another.”

Turning to Frankie, he thrusts him forward and points to the trench behind the bowling lanes. Frankie sees a ledge of boys sitting and three more in the trenches. The thunder of balls rolling down the alleys, pins flying and falling, and drunks yelling was deafening, but Frankie understood what needed to be done, and jumped right in.   That was the first night of Frankie’s life as an overworked, underpaid, often injured pin boy determined to get out of this nowhere life on the fringes of Skid Row. 

AND THE GRANDE DAMES OF MYSTERY

Reprint by Francine Paino AKA F. Della Notte

Originally submitted in 2021, I thought the s tory of the grand old men and women of mystery was worth a reprint. At the end, I have added three books not on the original list, presenting additional feisty, not-to-be ignored, seniors who make their way through crimes – sometimes committing them.  

Overall, fiction provides a brief respite from the realities in our lives. In those few precious hours of distraction, we shut off the conscious minds’ worries and efforts to find solutions to problems or imagine worst-case scenarios. In real-life crises, the subconscious must see an issue with fresh eyes and a different perspective, perhaps even finding a new approach. The most popular category for that escape in the U.S., as revealed by Nielson Bookscan Services, is the mystery/thriller/crime novels, which beat all others by two to one. But if we seek to escape from real-life problems, why is this genre more popular than romance or comedy?  

Explanations are offered everywhere, even in psychology periodicals. One reason for the popularity of murder, mayhem, and crime is that they allow a safe way to immerse oneself in high drama without the destructive aftermath touching the reader in reality. Another is that it is exciting to be emotionally flung about as if on an amusement park ride. Then there is the experience of entering the criminal’s mind—oh, horror—something we don’t get to see in real life—at least not before the evil deed is done. Readers can also figure out, see, or at least suspect what will happen before it happens, and hopefully, by the end, there is the satisfaction of Yes. Makes sense. It was in the clues all along. Most often, that is not the case in real life. These reasons help explain why this genre is the most popular, but why are stories with elderly sleuths so well-liked?

Unlike the many Mediterranean, Native American Indian, and Asian cultures, and despite the growing economic difficulties and stresses on those societies’ families, their elderly are respected; their knowledge and wisdom are put to good use, whereas in the U.S., youth has become a preoccupation. It has the mind of younger people so entrapped in worrying about maintaining youthful looks that they often miss the grace, wisdom, and knowledge acquired with age and experience. 

Aging in a culture that puts enormous emphasis on being young or appearing youthful creates a constant struggle for those susceptible to that fetish. Yet,—interest in stories employing older people in mysteries is widespread – even among the more youthful readers.

 In mystery fiction, older protagonists have already made the mistakes that younger detectives haven’t yet experienced. Whether professional or amateur, senior detectives see the world through more experienced and seasoned eyes. Thus, their mistakes are different and perhaps even more enjoyable. 

Neha Patel, writing for Book Riot, suggests several mystery thriller books starring older women, starting with the Grande Dame of Mystery, Miss Marple, who at age 70 solved the first of her 13 mysteries in Murder at the Vicarage, by Agatha Christie.  

Before She Was Helen, by Caroline B. Cooney, explores the dangers of confronting your own past life.

In Three Things About Elsie, by Joanna Cannon, the sleuth is 84 years old, and in Partners In Crime, by Gallagher Gray, Lil is a feisty woman of 84 who considers herself “84-years-young,” and has a love of playing detective and Bloody Marys. (My kinda-gal!) 

A metaphysical mystery/thriller, Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh, has a 72-year-old widow coming across a haunting. The only clue is a note saying, “Her name was Magda.”

Writing for Early Bird Books, Paul Wargelin offers a list of feisty, intelligent, and frequently underestimated amateur sleuths over 60, beginning with Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth, about a retired governess. Written two years before Agatha Christie’s first Miss Marple novel, Ms. Wentworth went on to write 32 Miss Silver mysteries.  

In Tish Plays the Game, by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Tish Carberry isn’t suited for retirement activities, preferring to use her idle hands and mind to solve mysteries.

Stephanie Matteson’s Murder at the Spa introduces Charlotte Graham, a successful actress who, after four decades of screen and stage success, takes on the role of a sleuth in real life.  

“Does age really bring wisdom?” asks Rochelle Melander. She writes, “Recent studies affirm this adage. Older adults…recover quickly after making mistakes and use their brains more efficiently than younger adults.” In Melander’s article Crime Fiction: Savvy Sleuths Over 50, she offers some fascinating crime stories featuring elderly sleuths.

Celine, by Peter Heller. Celine is an artist and P.I. in her late 60s. In Rage Against the Dying, by Becky Masterman, a 59-year-old ex-FBI agent is haunted by the unsolved murder of her protégé. After an attempt on her life, she needs to unearth the truth. 

Not to be accused of gender discrimination, here are two books starring elderly gentlemen. Don’t Ever Get Old, by Daniel Friedman, is about an 87-year-old retired Memphis police officer, Buck Schatz, who learns that a Nazi officer who’d tortured him might still be alive with a stash of hidden gold. He teams up with his grandson, and they get more than they bargained for.

Summer of the Big Bachi, by Naomi Hirahara, is set in L.A. and Hiroshima. Japanese-American gardener Mas Arai, age 69, is hiding a secret. He faces bachi—the spirit of retribution when a stranger asks about his old gambling buddy Joji Haneda. Joji is murdered, and Mas must try to make things right.

Perhaps one of the qualities that fascinate readers, and they may not even realize it, is that often the elderly almost disappear, even standing in plain sight. They are overlooked, leaving them free to move about, observe, listen, eavesdrop, and study circumstances without anyone realizing what they’re doing. 

These, and many other senior Grande Dames and Grands Hommes of mystery, show how being older does not mean life stops. There is still inquisitiveness, a desire for adventure, and the need to use one’s brain. There are still mysteries and crimes to be solved—they do it with humor, grace, and aplomb.

Grab a bunch and enjoy!

PS: Add to the original list:

 Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, series, featuring the senior citizens of a retirement home.

Catherine Ingel-Sundberg’s, The Little Old Lady who Broke All the Rules, starring 79-year-old Martha Anderson and her four oldest friends, self-dubbed, the league of pensioners.  

Robert Thorogood’s, The Marlow Murder Club, headed up by feisty 77-year-old, Judith Potts.  

by Helen Currie Foster

Aren’t there two keys to your enjoyment of a mystery? (1) Whether you like the protagonist(s), and (2) whether you’re drawn to the setting?

If I don’t find myself caring pretty quickly about the protagonist (or protagonists—see Mick Herron’s Slough House series, with its delightful collection of failed spies, or Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series with its appealing retirement village residents), I can’t read another page. I shut the book. I want to feel I’m collaborating with the protagonist—so I want to be drawn to his or her mind and experience. Is your reaction similar? When you’re in the bookstore or library, and open a mystery by a new-to-you author, how many pages do you give the author before you shove the book back on the shelf? Not many, right?

The same goes for setting. Setting furnishes part of the puzzle, gives clues to the motivations and preoccupations of the characters. Maybe the author chooses a spot on the planet where the reader has never set foot. A tiny coastal village in Alaska? The ancient cities of Sicily? Or Fred Vargas’s French mysteries, with her Pyrenees-born police inspector Adamsberg? bit.ly/3Or0nDh

Whatever the setting, the author must help us experience it. I recently reread the Shetland series by Ann Cleeves and was caught up by her use of sensory detail. She has us breathing salty air and the smell of sheep, feeling the Atlantic breezes, hearing the cries of gulls and kittiwakes, and always tasting the cups of coffee her police detective, Jimmy Perez, makes time for as his long day wears on. https://greatbritishbookclub.com/all-of-ann-cleeves-shetland-books-in-order/

So wherever a book takes us—Texas Hill Country or Gulf Coast, Paris, Venice, Lake Michigan, Maine, the endless vistas of New Mexico or Arizona, the wilds of Yorkshire—give us the smells, the tastes, the sounds! The feel of the place! And an engaging protagonist!

I also revisited The Coroner’s Lunch, book one in Colin Cotterill’s 15-volume Dr. Siri Paiboun series, set in post-1975 communist Laos with its informers and “burden-sharing tutorials.” Cotterill again impresses with how quickly chapter one captures us, when we meet Dr. Siri, age 72, after the Pathet Lao regime denies him retirement and appoints him coroner—a job he must learn from a tattered manual. bit.ly/3K8Td3N

As we meet Siri in chapter one, we learn he dreams of the dead he’s examined: “He was somehow able to know the feelings and personalities of the departed.” He tells no one of his dreams, fearing they’ll think him a raving lunatic. Besides, “His condition did no harm and it did encourage him to show more respect to cadavers once he knew the former owners would be back”—in his dreams.

Arising from bed, “Siri…carried his small transistor radio to the coffee table. It was a sin, but one he delighted in.” Under the Pathet Lao regime it’s forbidden to listen to Thai radio from across the Mekong River. Instead, “Lao radio broadcasts boomed from public address speakers all over the city from five A.M. on.”

Here’s the smell of Siri’s morning: “He brought his thick brown Vietnamese coffee to the table, sat in his favorite chair, and inhaled the delicious aroma. It smelled a lot better than it tasted…The scent of temple incense had already filled the room, but the roosters were still dreaming of magical flights over mountains and lakes.” And here’s part of what he sees on his way to his office, passing the Mekong: “On the far bank, Thailand stared rudely back at him…The river that was once a channel between two countries had become a barrier.”

Siri defies the instructions of his doctrinaire would-be supervisor Judge Haeng: he continues to wear his ancient leather sandals to his ramshackle office, refusing the black patent shoes Haeng says a coroner should wear, and he pursues the murderous truth despite raids on his notes and even the theft of the bodies he’s analyzing.  

Sights, smells, tastes, sounds! An atmosphere of dreams, the presence of the dead, the feel of an omnipresent regime, and the casual defiance of this irrepressible witty doctor in his ancient leather sandals! Plus a dose of magical realism! Siri’s surrounded by vivid, believable characters—but Cotterill keeps us in Siri’s point of view.

But wait, you say—is there no romance? Wait until you meet Auntie Lah, with her baguettes—“the sweetest in Vientiane”—or taste the sandwiches she makes for Siri—“always different and always delicious.” Siri’s acerbic assistant, nurse Dtui, tells him: “She’s got a crush on you.”

An appealing though wacky protagonist, and a fascinating setting: just one chapter, and I was in.

At the moment, my setting’s different. With the epic heat dome squatting on Texas, I’m temporarily two states away from home, drinking coffee in early morning cool, looking at alpenglow pink on the Front Range and sniffing the vanilla scent of ponderosa pine. From the porch you can hear Glacier Creek rushing past. This setting includes a quartet of mule deer boys, sporting their impressive antlers, still velvety, as they stalk quietly through the sage above the creek. Black squirrels prance on granite boulders, pink and green with lichen; Richardson’s ground squirrels dash from burrow to burrow. Hiking yields paintbrush, mariposa lilies, periwinkle-colored harebells.

And the remnants of past fires!

Tomorrow, though, back to the beloved Texas Hill Country: limestone, live oaks, the stubborn creek still reflecting the sky, and Book 9 of the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series.

By K.P. Gresham

When I start a new mystery novel, there are a lot of decisions that must be made. Is someone going to die?  Who’s the murderer? Who’s the victim? What is the setting for the book—location? Era? Is the book intended to be an escape from the world or immerse the reader in a world of reality, using the current (or historical) goings on to push the story forward?

Many authors (past and present) are fearless in their desire to delve into reality and what they have to say about it. They refuse to hide or camouflage their belief system in the telling. Sounds like freedom of expression, to me. So what’s up with all the following authors (living and dead) whose books are being banned?

George Orwell was such an author. His novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eight-Four (1949) made very clear Orwell’s admonishment of communism, censorship and surveillance. Using phrases such as “cold war,” “newspeak,” and “Big Brother,” Orwell introduced terms that are now prevalent in our world.

Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), chooses to shed light on her view that the males subjugate females. Presented on stage, in opera and on film, the book was given new life as the widely popular 2017 Hulu series which brought the novel back into the limelight.

Ayn Rand’s most popular books, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1947), spoke to her belief in the morality of rational self-interest. Rand described her philosophy “Objectivism”, as “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

I chose to highlight these authors because they were very clear in expressing their thoughts on the world, but there are many authors who fit this bill. Consider Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Lincoln referred to her as the lady who started the Civil War.  John Steinbeck’s book The Grapes of Wrath showed the shocking poverty and problems of thousands of immigrants. Even Charles Dickens wrote about the plight of the poor in Oliver Twist.

The author walks a tightrope when it comes to controversial content. In present day, people seem to be more divided on what is right and what is fair and what subjects are forbidden territory.  Most writers do not write to be controversial, but on other the hand, writers must be true to themselves as to what they put on the page.

The decision belongs to the writer. Consequences, good or bad, will follow. But hopefully the author has the grist to hold their heads high, knowing they’ve told their own truths. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “To thine own self be true.”

Seems to me that is exactly what freedom of expression is all about.

K.P. Gresham is the award-winning author of the Pastor Matt Hayden Mystery Series as well as several stand-alone novels.  Active in Sisters in Crime and the Writers League of Texas, she has won Best Novel awards from the Bay Area Writers League as well as the Mystery Writers of America.

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Books by

K.P. Gresham

Three Days at Wrigley Field

The Pastor Matt Hayden Mystery Series

The Preacher’s First Murder

Murder in the Second Pew

Murder on the Third Try

Four Reasons to Die