Over 2,000 years ago, Celtic pagans celebrated their New Year on November 1st. Called Samhain, it was considered the end of summer and the arrival of the dark half of the year. The night before, they would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward of ghosts. Celtic pagans believed that at this time of year the veil between the world of the living and the dead became thinner then at any other time of the year, and the ghosts returned to walk among the living. As time past, and and Christianity was introduced to the region, those traditions were merged with other Roman and Christian holidays into one day of celebration known as Halloween. In the colonial US, Halloween was celebrated sporadicly in some regions, spurred mainly by European immigrants in southern states, mainly as harvest festivals where ghost stories where told. It wasn’t until a flood of Irish immigrants, fleeing to the US to escape the Potato Famine in the middle of the 19th century, that this changed. The Irish brought their beloved Celtic …