Oidhche Shamhna (pronounced Oy-hya How-na) takes place tonight here in Scotland, or for English speakers, it's All Hallows' eve.
The veil between the Otherworld and ours is meant to be at its thinnest tonight, when ghosts and faeries from Tir nan Òg (the Celtic Otherworld of gods and the dead) can venture into our world....so be careful tonight if you go out guising!
The element of Celtic magic is woven throughout my novel 'The Golden Feather' and includes a boy called Moses, who has the second sight and can walk in his dreams to other places. As far-fetched as this may seem, while I was researching mystical phenomenon in the Highlands of Scotland, I found this book: Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Scottish Highlands, by John Campbell, published in 1902. The author had toured across the Highlands listening to and recording oral accounts of the magic and otherworldly things that local people had witnessed or believed they had witnessed. There was a strong sense of these strange occurrences just being a part of life and people excepted that there were some things unexplained. It was fascinating to read accounts of people being able to predict the future or witnessing an tàradh or ghost walkers, so all the things that Moses experiences in my novel were the kind of things documented in this book.
Has anything unexplained ever happened to you? I'd love to hear from my readers!
Happy Hallowe'en!
