EBO.

This series contains adult language and depictions of graphic violence.

Listener discretion is advised. It began long before the candy corn, the jackal lanterns, and the costumes.

Before the black cats crossed our paths and before children

whispered about ghosts as they wandered dark streets in search of candy.

Halloween as we know it is a thin veneer, a mask that conceals something ancient, something

older than anyone alive can remember.

It wasn't always a night of harmless tricks and delicious treats. Once upon a time, it was a night of dread and fear.

A night when the veil between worlds was so fragile you could almost feel the breath of the dead on your neck.

People didn't wear masks to celebrate. They wore them to hide.

And they weren't hiding from their neighbors. They were hiding from something else.

Welcome back to the Devil Within. You're listening to the history of Halloween.

It began with Sowen, the ancient Celtic festival that marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of the dark cold winter.

Now as a quick aside here, I feel like this is a good place to explain that one of the many pitfalls for people like myself who lack a more conventional formal education is the pronunciation of certain words.

You should hear me butcher the names of certain words.

You should hear me butcher the names of the ancient Greeks that I've read,

because I've only read them.

I've never heard those names spoken aloud

by a professor or someone with higher levels of scholarship regarding the

ancient Greeks than I happen to possess. In this case the word is sowin. It's spelled

S-A-M-H-A-I-N.

And that's how I've pronounced it to myself over the years

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