Saturday, 19 November 2016

Loki and Sigyn

James Doyle Penrose (1862-1932): The Punishment of Loki
If you like Victorian art of naked men in bondage, rather than women, there are - sadly - a rather limited number of mythological themes to go to. Prometheus is one, as I've blogged before. Another is the Viking story of Loki.

William Pogany: The Children of Loki (1920)
Loki is a fascinating character (even before you reach the Hiddleston era). He's the sworn blood-brother to Odin the Allfather, and present throughout the tales of the gods - with an honoured place in their halls, and constantly at their beck and call to get them out of trouble with his Cunning Plans. But he himself is a giant not a god, so often he's working on the gods' behalf against his own kin. And very often the troubles he saves them from are of his own making. He is a mischief-maker, a trickster and a shit-stirrer. He's also not terribly masculine by the standards of the time - a thinker not a warrior, and one who often shape-shifts (considered a terribly effeminate type of magic) - sometimes into female form, wherein he even gives birth. When he fathers monstrous children by a giantess they are instantly recognised as terrible danger to the gods and imprisoned.

Niels Jacobsen (1861-1941): Loki Chained to the Rocks 

Eventually Loki himself goes too far - he causes the death of the beautiful god Baldur and then gets mean-drunk and talks smack to all the rest. They decide to chain him up forever beneath the earth.

W. G. Collingwood: Loki Bound (1908)
To punish him even further one of his sons is killed to furnish the ropes that bind him.Then the goddess Skadi hangs a snake over his head to drip agonising poison in his eyes. Because gods are sadistic like that.

Loki and Sigyn (1863) by Mårten Eskil Winge
The only god to side with Loki is his wife Sigyn, who stays with him.
Loki and Sigyn, by Gebhardt

She catches the venom in a cup to save him as much torment as possible.

But every so often the cup gets full and she has to turn aside to empty it out. Loki then writhes in agony - which is where earthquakes come from.

Sigyn, by Arthur Rackham


But there is good news for Loki! At the end of the world he will break free from his bonds and - accompanied by his three monstrous offspring, the ice- and fire-giants and the hosts of the Dead, he will slaughter the gods at the Battle of Ragnarok and burn the whole damn place to the ground.

Loki breaks free at the onset of Ragnarök, by Ernst H. Walther (1897)
Which is nice for him, but a bit of a shame for those of us who enjoy picturing him in chains. And, er, the whole wide world, obviously...

Wednesday, 16 November 2016

WIP - The Prison of the Angels update

Joys of research: boy have I found some Crazy on the web. 

I've never written a novel so fast. Part 3 of The Book of the Watchers: The Prison of the Angels is already standing at 35K words. It helps that I know the characters so well by now, I guess!

The action so far has gone from here:

Minot in North Dakota
To here:

"Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0"
To here:

Setback: I watched Angels and Demons and saw that Dan Brown had beaten me to all the best sites in Rome, damn him...

My go-to sites are Wikipedia (of course), Bible Hub, the Vatican, (for its rather wonderful virtual tours) .... and oooh look: 101 Lokis

Milja's character has evolved in quite radical ways - anyone who complained that she was 'too reactive' in Bk 1 isn't going to have a leg to stand on now. Egan has turned out to be kinky AF. Penemuel has acquired a personality that surprised me. Poor Azazel is still struggling to cope with human ways.

I'm in the process of finally answering a bunch of questions that have been deliberately left hanging since the first volume -

  • "Why did the Nails work?" 
  • "Why have only three out of four archangels made an appearance so far?" 
  • "What does God Himself think about all this?" 
  • "What is Uriel plotting? Why do the other archangels shun him?" 
  • - and most disturbing of all: "What the hell is Egan's problem?!" (OMG OMG OMG)

I've introduced the Blasphemous Plot Revelation.

I'm a pantser, of course. At this stage my characters are approaching a big action scene. I don't actually know what the result is going to be or how Milja is going to get out alive ... but I do know that things are going to go REALLY BADLY WRONG at this point.

I can't wait to find out how :-)

Monday, 14 November 2016

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment!

Because I am currently up to my neck in Viking mythology for my WIP, here's a excerpt from my short story about Norse witchcraft, The Grief of the Bond-Maid - which, unusually for me, is mostly fantasy with a bit of M/M/F sex.

Sjofn is a seidr-witch and a slave to the cruel rune-wizard Vegtamr. He hangs himself as a sacrifice to the god Odin, a ritual that will bring him back in nine days more powerful than ever. Sjofn siezes that chance to escape from the Hanged Man's control once and for all, and enlists the help of a pair of warriors to journey into the magical world and destroy him before he returns to life. But they have secrets of their own, and the journey is deadly dangerous, and time is running out ...




When she blinked the tears from her eyes it was daylight, and they were kneeling breathless under an ordinary ash tree in a narrow stone enclosure, and Bjarni was standing up from the headless corpse of a week-dead wizard. There was no yawning gulf beneath their feet. The runes on her skin were only ink, not fire. Sjofn lifted her tear-streaked face to Thorkell and without thinking, kissed him: hard and fierce and frantic with relief.

    His response was instant: he rose to his feet, pulling her up against him, and pressed his kisses hungrily upon her lips. He only stopped when Bjarni came up behind her, and then he pulled away enough to grin – a grin like the sun coming out through clouds. Both men were laughing: she was laughing now too. Bjarni’s arm swept round her to clap Thorkell on the back and suddenly Sjofn found herself sandwiched between the two men as they embraced, hot and sweating and loud with delight, their words all boasts and praise and exultation. She craned her neck so she could look over her shoulder and kiss Bjarni too.

    His eyes flashed. Swiftly his hands cupped her bare breasts, squeezing her like he thought she might be about to vanish. Both men were pressed up against her, their big hard bodies like a protective fortress, and now their breathing was turning quick and shallow again, the joy of victory changing to something else. Sjofn gasped as she felt their arousal.

    ‘Wait,’ Thorkell insisted. ‘Not here.’  He took possession, scooping her up in his arms and turning away toward the gate in this, the innermost circle. Sjofn circled a forearm about his neck and relaxed into his chest as he bore her away. She watched in dizzy wonder the granite boulders marching past her vision, until shadow gave way at last to warm sunlight and he carried her out into the meadow. His steps were quickening: she could feel the haste in his pulse. But he lowered her to her feet gently and kissed her lips one more time before he started to tear at the fastenings of his clothes.

    ‘After strife, joy,’ he grinned.
 
    She twisted in his one-armed embrace. Bjarni was striding down the dark track they’d left in the grass, bare-chested now, his own armour and clothing littered to either side where he’d discarded them piece by piece. Red hair stippled his chest like flecks of blood; Sjofn reached out and ran her eagerly fingers through it. He was slippery with the sweat: they all were.  He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her like he was drinking from a mead-cup.

    ‘Sjofn ... slayer of wizards. Our warrior-witch.’

    From behind, Thorkell gripped her hip with one hand and slid the other under her, searching out her hot wet places. She gasped, and Bjarni caught her breasts again. There was no hesitation this time, no pause for negotiation, none of the slowness of seduction. But she understood how they felt, what they needed: they had fought to the edge of exhaustion and the brink of death, and now they were half wild with joy and the need for release. She felt just the same - Thorkell found her slippery and eager for his touch, and he groaned with delight.

    Pinned between the two men, Sjofn was lifted right off the ground as Thorkell sought entry for his stiff cock. She clung to Bjarni’s neck, mewing as Thorkell worked at the awkward angle. They found some kind of grace only when Bjarni reached in from the front, took the other man’s erection in his hand and guided it inside her. Then Thorkell lowered himself into the grass and lay back, his big hands on her waist, holding her above him, settling her astride his shaft. Each thrust of his hips pushed him deeper into her. Bjarni knelt before them, touched with wonder the dark lines of the serpent marked on her skin, then stooped to lick her breasts and suck at her nipples, and slid down even further to lie on his belly between Thorkell’s spread legs. She felt his lips on her thighs and her pubic mound. He parted her labia with his hands and licked at her clit and she nearly wrenched herself off Thorkell’s impaling column, so exquisite was the shock. As one man lifted her up and down on his cock, the other gave worship to her sex. She looked down into his eyes and he arched his brows at her.

    Suddenly he was no longer licking her clit, but nuzzling lower. Thorkell swore in delight and Sjofn’s physical loss paled under the realisation that Bjarni was sucking his balls, was licking at the root of his cock as it thrust into her sex. She squealed. Bjarni took this as admonition and rose again to lick at her clit, and this time it was too much to bear: she began to fall down the long slope of orgasm, and her cries wrought upon Thorkell to pound even faster into her, until he was crying out too and spurting hot and deep inside her.

    When they had both quieted, Thorkell shifted his hips and pulled out, laying her back supine upon his torso. She looked down her body and saw his engorged cock jutting up between her thighs, the flushed skin glistening and wet. The next instant Bjarni took that long weapon right down his throat, sucking the spilt cream, and she felt Thorkell’s moan of satisfaction through her whole body.

     Then it was Bjarni’s turn. Kneeling up over them, he stooped to kiss Sjofn and she tasted her own tang, before he kissed Thorkell over her shoulder. His own cock was as stiff as a spearshaft, and when he put it to her open sex it went in eagerly, its passage eased by the slick of Thorkell’s seed. ‘Oh yes,’ he grunted.

    Bjarni’s cock rooted deep inside her. Thorkell’s hand sought out her sex-lips and spread them, rubbing her clit between two fingers. His other hand tugged at her left nipple. Pounded between such a hammer and such an anvil, she had no chance to resist: she came again, weeping with terror that there should be such pleasure in the world, before Bjarni emptied his horn inside her.

    Then they rolled slowly apart and lay tumbled in a row, grinning. Sjofn shut her eyes, feeling the sweep of fingertips as they lazily stroked her; her head swimming with the scents of crushed grass and fresh sweat - and her heart, at last, full of peace.



The Grief of the Bond-Maid is currently available in this paperback anthology: Cast the Cards

Amazon US

Sunday, 13 November 2016

Friday, 11 November 2016

De Morgan Exhibition


I've been fan-grrling the best-known female Pre-Raphaelite painter, Evelyn de Morgan (1855-1919). There's a small exhibition of her works on long-term display at Cannon Hall Museum, near Barnsley:

It's the posh bit of Barnsley, mind!
De Morgan was related to the Spencer-Stanhope family who owned Cannon Hall, hence the connection. She was a mold-breaker for a Victorian artist, because it she didn't stick to respectable ladylike subjects but scandalised her teachers and critics by painting nudes. Lots of nudes.

Boreas and the Fallen Leaves


I love this picture!

Interesting ... burls ... there

It was really difficult for her even to find models - she used her sister's maidservant and a hired Italian (shocking!) - to pose for Boreas and Oreithyia here:



She was a suffragette, feminist and a pacifist with spiritualist inclinations. Her works tend heavily toward allegory and symbolism. This one below depicts the discontented soul trapped in the physical flesh of the body:

The Soul's Prison House
This one is Blindness and Cupidity Chasing Joy from the City:

catchy title...

Hunted Joy flies through the gate.
Blind Blindness is left desolate.
Cupidity, the city’s fate,
With hungry hounds insatiate,
Stays fettered to a sightless mate.

 Something more cheerful?


Love's Passing
Maybe not... it's all about lovers being parted by death for years and years. But if you are interested, there are many many more lovely works of hers to be found here and here and here.



Cannon Hall belongs to the local council and as such it is FREE to visit the grounds, hall and exhibition!

Monday, 7 November 2016

Blue Monday: Bronwyn Green guests

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment!

Today's guest is Bronwyn Green, with a sporty treat from her new book In Bounds.



Her summer holiday just got a hell of a lot more complicated.

Ivy Wright knows several things to be true: Marrying a guy who can’t keep it in his pants is a terrible idea. So is having a drunken, secret one-night stand with her best friend’s little brother. And catching a soccer ball with one’s face never works out well for anyone. When all three collide, what was supposed to be a relaxing vacation in the English countryside becomes unbelievably awkward not to mention sexually charged.

While recovering from a potentially career-ending injury, English football player, Will Darby, runs into the one woman he’d given up hope of ever seeing again. No longer chafing at being sidelined, Will is a man on a mission. He’s never forgotten his one and only night with Ivy, and their attraction is stronger than ever.

Convincing her to give him a chance is only the first hurdle. Getting her to admit her kinks and let him give her what she needs physically and emotionally is another, but is their connection enough when her secrets keep pushing them apart?
 



Placing his hand in the center of her back, he shoved her down toward the mattress.  “Hair over your shoulder.”

Ivy swept the silky locks forward and exposed the gorgeous line of her back. He wrapped his fingers around the handle of the flogger and dragged the leather over her skin, tracing swirling patterns over her flesh and giving rise to trails of goosebumps as she shivered beneath his touch.

Twisting his wrist, he brought the fronds down against her left cheek. Her skin blushed sweetly, and she startled forward at the impact before moving back into position. He brought his arm down again, letting the strands, still damp with her arousal, snap against her right cheek.

She bowed her head to the mattress and clutched at the bedding, fisting the fabric in her grip as he let the flogger’s tails fall against her back. He alternated left to right, arse to back, occasionally letting the fronds wrap around her to catch the sides of her tits and even her nipples if he got a lucky shot. Her whimpers punctuated the arousing sound of leather against her soft, lush skin.

Stepping closer to where she knelt on the bed, he slid the wooden handle between her knees and nudged them apart.

“That’s it, love. Let me see that pretty pink cunt.”

She shifted, baring herself to him. Her thighs were shiny with her juices, and he leaned down and swiped his tongue across her flesh, letting her sweet, tangy taste coat his tongue.

When she squirmed, he slapped the outer curve of her ass. “Unless you’re ready to end it, you need to keep your arse right where I want it.”

He draped his arm over the small of her back and held her where he wanted her and dragged his tongue up her exposed cleft, loving the way she trembled as she fought to hold herself still for him. He repeated the action, nuzzling her slick flesh and thrusting his tongue inside her, listening with satisfaction to her guttural moans.

Once she let herself get past the anxiety and discomfort that continued to plague her, she was so beautifully responsive. He’d love to see her banish the self-consciousness for good and just freely accept how fucking gorgeous she was.

“Oh, god, Will.”

He sank his teeth into the sweetly rounded curve of her hip before he answered. “Yeah?”

“Please just fuck me already. I’m dying.”

He adjusted his grip on the flogger and brought it down across her arse, smiling as she lifted into the stroke. With his free hand, he reached into the bag and grabbed a condom as he continued to lash the backs of her thighs, and back, watching as the fronds curved up and around to snap hungrily at her pussy. She squirmed, clearly wanting more and less at the same time.

Her reactions were more arousing than he ever would have believed. Steady lines of pre-come leaked from his cock, dripping down his shaft, and his balls ached, threatening to spill all over her lash-reddened skin. He laid the flogger across the small of her back while he quickly sheathed himself and climbed onto the bed behind her. His knee twinged at bearing his weight, so he shifted slightly to the side in hopes of relieving the pressure long enough to give them both what they needed.

Gripping his cock at the base, he dragged it up and down her dripping slit. “This what you want?” he practically grunted as he centered himself at her opening.

“Yes, please. Please. Please. Please. Please.”

He dug his fingertips into her hips and held tight. “How could I deny you when you beg so sweetly?” He paused for a moment. “I mean…I suppose I could.”

She shoved her hips back at the same time she groaned out the word, “No.”

But his hands on her hips kept her from impaling herself on this dick. 

“God damn it, Will.” She panted with frustration. Her head dropped and her arms shook with unrelieved tension.

When he sensed the fight go out of her, he slammed forward, roughly filling her. Her back arched, and her breath pushed from her body on a surprised squeal as he seated himself fully within her. Her channel clenched around him, sending ripples of awareness of how close he was to the edge. He refused to leave her hanging and unfulfilled.

Lifting the flogger from her back, he gathered the ends in his other hand and leaned forward, bringing the collected strands over her head to rest around her neck, startling a gasp from her. As soon as the leather wrapped around her neck, her internal muscles clamped down on him as little unintelligible sounds escaped her lips.

Any attempts to hold back and let her find her peak first vanished at the sight of her straining into the flogger and the feel of her flooding arousal coating them both. He’d never seen anything hotter in his life. Or more beautiful. It seemed like the more time he spent with her, the more often he had that thought.

Then there were no more thoughts. There were only the sounds of their bodies straining wetly together and their harsh breaths—Ivy as she trembled toward her release and Will as he tried to hold his at bay, all the while shafting her harder and faster.

“Tighter,” she whispered—half demand, half plea.

His cock twitched, her need for more nearly overwhelming him. He shifted the leather and handle to one hand and buried his other hand in the silk of her hair and yanked.


Buy In Bounds at:

B&N: 
iBooks:  

Bronwyn Green is an author, blogger, and compulsive crafter. She lives in Michigan with her husband, two children, and four somewhat psychotic cats. When not frantically writing, she can be found binge-watching Netflix while working on her latest craft project.
 

Sunday, 6 November 2016

Evil in Evelyn


This picture is the chilling An Angel piping to the Souls in Hell, by Evelyn de Morgan (1855-1919).

I've just been to visit a small exhibition of her work - more pics later in the week!

Friday, 4 November 2016

Cover reveal: In Bonds of the Earth

THIS IS IT!


BEHOLD!!!


I LOVE IT!


Here's the Blurb:

"I will free them all."
 

When Milja Petak released the fallen angel Azazel from five thousand years of imprisonment, she did it out of love and pity. She found herself in a passionate sexual relationship beyond her imagining and control – the beloved plaything of a dark and furious demon who takes what he wants, when he wants, and submits to no restraint. But what she hasn’t bargained on is being drawn into his plan to free all his incarcerated brothers and wage a war against the Powers of Heaven.
 

As Azazel drags Milja across the globe in search of his fellow rebel angels, Milja fights to hold her own in a situation where every decision has dire consequences. Pursued by the loyal Archangels, she is forced to make alliances with those she cannot trust: the mysterious Roshana Veisi, who has designs of her own upon Azazel; and Egan Kansky, special forces agent of the Vatican – the man who once saved then betrayed her, who loves her, and who will do anything he can to imprison Azazel for all eternity. 
Torn every way by love, by conflicting loyalties and by her own passions, Milja finds that she too is changing – and that she must do things she could not previously have dreamt of, in order to save those who matter to her.



In Bonds of the Earth: The Book of the Watchers 2 is currently scheduled for release in the first week of March, 2017.

Advance review copies (e-print and paper) will be available very soon. If you think you'd be a good candidate for one, you should probably contact the editor at Sinful Press and ask her nicely :-)

I am now too excited to sleep until March... :-D

Wednesday, 2 November 2016

Magic mushrooms


Actually I have very little idea of the identity of any of these fungi except the obvious Fly Agarics above. But I've never see so many or such a variety in one walk as I did this week!

Slugs love those trippy mushrooms
Some look utterly disgusting...


and some more appealing:

Is it a fungus or a pancake?
Some were HUGE


(Bad pic showing pores not gills on the underside)
and some were weeeeeeny:


And they came in a variety of colours:

Pink

Orange
Pale yellow
Brown

different Brown
WHITE

I do love autumn!

Monday, 31 October 2016

Boo Monday: Halloween flash!

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment! Since today is Halloween I wrote a special little piece of flash fiction...
 
Frank Bernard Dicksee - Romeo and Juliet (1894)
I Cannot Sleep
by Janine Ashbless

I lie in my bed, thinking of you in yours. I cannot sleep tonight. Tomorrow’s dawn is the very one we have been waiting for, the time of our promise. As the church bells ring for Lauds over the city squares, and the pigeons descend to bathe in the fountains in the first golden light of morning, we are to meet at the back door of the inn. I have already paid off the ostler and he will have two horses waiting for us.

I picture you lying in bed, your dark hair tumbled all around you upon the pillows. Your nightgown is loose and very thin, for I have seen the candle-light shine through its fine weave when you made your way up the stairs to your chamber, lingering to sweep the room with your eyes, searching me out for one last glimpse. I imagine it crumpled between your parted thighs, damp with the heat of your body, barely covering that precious mound of sweet dark curls where your fingertips linger. I imagine the silken weave puckered by the stiff points of your breasts and rising with each heave of breath, each stifled cry. You are impatient for our nuptials, my love, I know that. In the midst of all our secrets—our clandestine meetings in corridors and under stairways, our fortuitous attendances at feasts and masses together, the  surreptitious dropping of notes and flowers—in the midst of all those, you never made any secret to me of your passion.

When we kissed, your fingers would graze across the tight fabric of my hose, seeking out the stiffening flesh and provoking it to indignities. You’d seize my hand and, tugging open the stiff cordage at your bosom, press my fingers to the hot soft breasts beneath your shift, until it seemed I would catch fire from sheer joy. Once, indeed, you knelt and let me rub my hard cock in the sweet cleft between those two pillowy delights, encouraging me with kisses until I flooded forth on their heavenly spheres. Then, giggling, you laced up your linens and your wools over the dew I’d shed, letting it run down the vale of your cleavage. And I knew that all day you would carry me around with you like a secret kiss, my scent imprinted on your flesh.

Do you remember the day I came into the room while you were sitting on the windowsill conversing with your cousins in the courtyard below? You gestured me to your side, and as you bent over the deep stone sill, your arms braced—even as you laughed and chattered with your cousins—I knelt in the shadows, out of sight of the window, and ran my hand up the inside of your thighs all the way to the sacred cleft at their head. I stroked your puss, the softest and sleepiest of small animals, until it woke in my hand and sucked my fingers into its wetness. There are no words for how hot and tight and sweet that creature was, nor how wet it ran at my caresses, until your words and your laughter grew breathless and I think even your bone-headed cousins must have wondered at the little squeaks and sighs you made, and the sudden thrilling yelp that you blamed upon your kitten clawing your ankle.

The memories, and the thought of you now, have made sleep impossible for me. It is still dark, but my cock stands in premature salute of a dawn that has not yet come.  I want to run to you now my love—your balcony is not so very high, and the climb not so very difficult; I’ve considered it often and often. I want to steal you away, but first I want to find you in your bed, muzzy-headed with sleep and appetite, and I want to kiss your plump lips and part your soft thighs and put the my iron-hard share to the furrow between them—then plough you until we both cry out.

I can’t sleep. It is still dark, but I can’t wait. So I will get up from my bed and come to you. From this muddy ditch behind the tower where your cousins threw me after they cut my throat. From my bed, my grave—to find you, and to keep my promise.



Oh, What's That in the Hollow? - Edward Robert Hughes (1851-1914)

Saturday, 29 October 2016

Samhain

Because the pagan/natural cycles are woven into my Lovers' Wheel series, I'm taking a look in 2016
at the four great Celtic fire festivals, the most important points of the neo-pagan year. I've covered Imbolc,  Beltane and Lammas previously, so now we've got to the end of the autumn with the most famous pagan festival of the lot.

SAMHAIN (meaning "summer's end" and pronounced "SOW-in") is celebrated from sunset on the 31st October through to sunset on the 1st November - in more modern parlance, it's Hallowe'en. It's the festival that welcomes the dark days of Winter. It is a time to retreat to the fireside, hide away from the dark, and give thought to the dead who have gone before us. And maybe to welcome those ancestors back into our homes for a little while....


Caspar David Friedrich: The Cemetery Entrance, 1825

It is however, at root an agricultural festival (as are all the others). Samhain marks the end of the harvest, just as Lammas marks its beginning. There's little left to gather in now except the last apples (see below), so TBH that's it folks. If you haven't already grown and stored enough crops to tide you through the winter AND for next year's planting, then you are facing not just winter's punishing cold but also slow, inevitable starvation. In older days, this was the time of year to bring the animals down out of the far/high pastures and slaughter the majority of them for salting and smoking, because you just haven't got enough hay to keep them all alive. So Samhain ushers in November: Blotmonath in Old English: the "month of blood" or "slaughter month".


Several Irish legends suggest human slaughter at Samhain in the legendary past - sacrifices to dark powers, and the fated death of kings.

Daniel MacleseL Snap-Apple Night (1833)

Apples feature hugely in Hallowe'e'n folklore, because they are available in abundance at this time of year, and because in Celtic mythology they are associated with the Otherworld (and they are also associated in Christian and Classical mythology with immortality, temptation and women). Apples, among other objects, were used in the many rites of magical divination practiced on Samhain (mostly by young women, as ever):



"Peel an apple in one long strip, then throw this over your shoulder: when you look at the fallen peel it will spell out the initials of your future husband."


Just as on May Eve, its counterpart, Samhain is a night when the walls between the worlds grow thin and things can move between this world and the next. May Eve, however, is primarily associated with Fairy visitation, whereas Samhain is strongly associated with the human Dead. For ancestor-worshippers, communing with the dead might be disturbing, but it made sense. Your relatives still took an interest in you even when they were in the grave, so you'd set a place for them at the table, light them home with candles, and generally be ready to chat.

John Everett Millais: "Speak! Speak!" : The Apparition
 For Christianity, all this necromancy was a bit more problematic. Who were you were communing with, if all the dead were safely penned up in Hell, Heaven or Purgatory? They gamely tried, in 835AD, to nullify all the uncanniness by renaming Samhain day (1st November) All Saints - or All Hallows - Day ... hence the word Hallowe'en ("All Hallows Evening"). The emphasis officially switched to praying for the souls of the departed. No spooky stuff allowed.

Yeah, that worked...

It fell about the Martinmas
The nights were long and dark
Three sons came home to Ushers Well
Their hats were made of bark
That neither grew in forest green
Nor on any wooded rise,
But from the north side of the tree
That grows in Paradise.
...
Then up and crowed the blood red cock
And up and crowed the grey.
The oldest to the youngest said
"It's time we were away;
For the crow does crow and the day doth show
And the channerin worm doth chide
And we must go from Ushers Well
To the gates of Paradise."

(The Wife of Usher's Well, Child Ballad 79)


Arthur Rackham: Ghosts at Cock-crow


The well-known modern link between Hallowe'en and Witches is actually less genuinely traditional than is the link with the Dead (May Eve was the real witchy festival in most of Europe). But there's strong evidence of some sort of Winter Goddess in Celtic areas - the Cailleach Bheur or Hag - so this point on the wheel of the year would be when the world enters the Hag's domain.

William Blake: Triple Hecate (1795)

Remember that the feminine avatars of the other festivals are the girl-child in white (Imbolc), the sexually alluring young woman (Beltane) and the sacrificial mother (Lughnasadh)? So it makes sense that this festival is symbolised by the figure of an aged woman full of dangerous - even forbidden - knowledge. 
Edward Frederick Brewtnall: Visit to the witch (1882)

The Lesson before the Sabbath (1880); Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel
For Neopagans, Samhain is when the Great Goddess puts on her Hag aspect, personifying wisdom, endurance and death. The God, her son/consort, has vanished from the earth and will not be reborn until Midwinter; they will not be reunited as lovers until Spring. Some pagans count it as the last day of the year.

Halloween has become a commercialised festival in the USA now, with the happy addition of pumpkins and spice, and the retailers are doing their best to spread the custom to the rest of the world via the viral medium of small children wanting sweets.  But just remember when you go out trick-or-treating, you are taking part in a spiritual ritual older than the USA, older than England ... and that you might be stirring up things you cannot handle...

Bat-Woman by Albert-Joseph Penot, circa 1890 .
:-D