Welcome back to the Haunted Haus!

Throughout the last few weeks, in parts one through three of our Haunted Haus zine, we have framed the liminality of this season as an opportunity to move through time and dimensions. We’ve explored nostalgia, inner child work, and the ghosts of painful emotions. We’ve pulled back the veil within our own consciousness to engage in shadow work. Now, with Halloween just a few days away, we’ll explore other therapeutic uses of this liminal time.

Welcome to Part 4 of the Haunted Haus, where we will explore the therapeutic themes of Halloween. There is such wonderful duality about this holiday, both modern and ancient: we welcome the ghosts of our ancestors and repel other wandering spirits, we honor both the dark and the light, we embrace both the scary and the sweet.

As different realities are blending, this becomes the perfect time to embrace and cope with the contradictory nature of the human experience. We’ll jump into this work again this week, using common Halloween practices as inspiration.

First, here are a few of our Halloween favorites to get you into the spirit of the season:

We can trace modern celebrations of Halloween back to the holiday of Samhain, which was a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of the cold dark season of winter. Participants would engage in divination, make offerings to gods, spirits, and ancestors, and ritually cleanse themselves. Ghosts were afoot, costumes were worn, treats were had!

It isn’t hard to see how many of the Samhain customs were rolled into modern Halloween celebrations, but some of the spiritual, therapeutically rich aspects of the holiday do seem to have fallen away.

If you’re interested in what it might be like to adapt some ancient Halloween ideas into your current self care practices, read on!

interact with ancestors

When we say that the “veil is thin” on Halloween, what do we mean? We mean that the barrier between our world and the spirit world is easy to cross, giving us the ability to communicate and commune with loved ones who have passed, but also with mysterious spirits, unknown to us. On Samhain, those celebrating would welcome friendly ancestors close but wear costumes to repel any unwanted spirit visitors.

Who would you like to call close to you during this time? With who or what would you like to set boundaries?

Halloween can be a great time to honor the people you knew who came before you, to thank them for bringing you into existence. But what if you don’t know your ancestors or don’t find them worthy of celebrating? Make up your own family tree!

Your ancestors aren’t just the people who donated their genes. Perhaps, spiritually, your ancestors are the stories and experiences that have shaped you into who you are. Come up with your own narratives about the people (or creatures) in your lineage. Make up characters or use characters from history, literature, or other media.

Spiritually, was your grandfather E.T.? Was Buffy the Vampire Slayer your mom? Who and what has made you who you are today, and how might you honor them during this season?

sacred fuel

In ancient times, Samhain festivities involved large bonfires, around which the whole community would gather to benefit from the protective and cleansing qualities of the flames. These sacred fires served as a kind of sympathetic magic, in that they imitated the power of the sun to stave off the cold clutches of winter. It is said that participants doused their hearth fires before the festivities and then re-lit them from the sacred bonfire at the end of the night to carry this piece of protection with them in their homes throughout the winter. This served to remind them throughout the winter that the dark, cold season would end, and the warmth of the summer sun would eventually return.

As the weather gets colder and we notice an increase in depression, what are some things that you can keep close in order to remind yourself of the eventual return of brighter days?

You can create a collection of things that act as a “bonfire” of hope through dark emotional times. Consider keeping a box, journal, folder on your phone, etc. full of things that help remind you of better days. Interact with your collection on especially hard days to remind you that winter ends, depressive episodes end, and life gets easier. Here are some of our suggestions of thing to add to your collection:

photos of beloved friends, family, animals, places
really kind voicemails you have received that make you smile
songs that remind you of fun times or good relationships
poems or quotes that inspire hopefulness

expel fear through tapping

Fear is, and always has been, a huge part of this season. In modern times, we draw fear close by watching horror films and telling ghost stories. In ancient Celtic rituals, people desperately kept fear at bay by carving grotesque faces into turnips to repel evil spirits and lit bonfires to protect themselves from the coming harshness of winter.

Outside of seasonal rituals that grant us protection, in what ways can we move through fear in our daily lives?

One suggestion we would like to offer is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), also known as “tapping.”

Why “tapping”?

Scary experiences take a toll both emotionally and physically, through lingering troubling thoughts and discomfort in the body. Emotional Freedom Technique, or Tapping, is a practice focused on restoring balance by helping you identify, regulate, and transform the fear that has gotten “stuck”.

How does this work?

This is done by tapping with your fingertips on specific meridian points (common to traditional acupuncture) while talking or thinking through upsetting thoughts or memories and allowing yourself to experience and then release the wide range of resulting emotions.

Tapping focuses on these 9 meridian points:

karate chop
top of head
eyebrow
side of eye
under the eye
under the nose
chin
collarbone
and under the arm (on ribs)

To practice, focus on what you’re struggling with: a fear or anxiety, trauma, an unresolved problem, or anything that’s bothering you. While focusing on this issue, use your fingertips to tap 5-7 times on each of the body’s 9 meridian points (often people choose to start from the top of the head and work down to under the arm). Tapping on these meridian points sends a signal to your amygdala (which is the part of your brain responsible for regulating your fight or flight response and processing scary events), to turn your stress response off. The practice restores your body’s energy to a balanced state.

You can also complete this practice while reciting affirmations that you would like to internalize and more easily access. Some examples may include:

-I am safe in this moment

-This feeling will pass

-I am capable of tolerating fear

Thank you for joining us on this Haunted Haus adventure! We hope that some of the tools and activities we have suggested over the past several weeks will help you make the most of this holiday on the threshold between seasons.

Please let us know if you enjoyed this zine and if you would be interested in reading something similar from us on a more regular basis.

Happy halloween! take good care of yourselves. take good care of each other. xo

As the wheel of the year turns, we acknowledge the changing needs of unhoused individuals and families during the upcoming winter. Please visit Twin Cities Mutual Aid Map to familiarize yourself with the cold weather needs of community members and consider making donations of supplies, money, and/or time.

TC mutual aid map

Haunted Haus: Part 4 - Halloween

Lo-fi Halloween vibes to set the mood:

True stories of the paranormal:

A Black horror fiction podcast:

Local Minneapolis witch shop: