Halloween as a concept is not particularly new. In fact, it's very, very old.

It's also not a distinctly Western holiday.

I mean, yes, Halloween as we know it, with all the candy and dressing up and carving pumpkins,

those are all pretty much exclusively European.

The idea behind Halloween, though, is fairly ubiquitous.

Plenty of cultures celebrate a time of year

when our world and the spirit world draws closer together.

Most people view this one of two ways.

Either, it's a time when loved ones and long lost family members come back to us, like Day of the Dead, or at a time

where we put up a bunch of protective rituals to keep away things that go bump in the night.

Halloween falls into the second category, which is why we wear masks and make jackalantons to keep the malevolent spirits away. I can tell you without hesitation that both interpretations are correct.

The story I'm about to tell you took place when I was a teenager. I was living with my family.

It was me, my two parents, my older brother and sister and my grandmother. I'd had a younger

sister too, but she and my grandfather both died in a car accident several years earlier.

We moved houses not long after.

Our new house was much bigger. I think having a smaller, cozy house would have let us feel

their absence too easily. In a large home, we could just dismiss their absence as them being in another room, even if we knew they weren't.

Anyway, one Halloween, our whole family, minus Grandma, was gathered into the living room, where

we had a lit fire and put a movie on for the evening.

It was late, and the trick-or-treaters were starting to thin out.

The movie was a bit of a lull and there came a shriek from upstairs.

Instantly we all knew it was Grandma who had screamed,

...