What's the difference between a
ghoul and a goblin?
It has come to my attention that these
words are being tossed around too easily, as if they meant almost the same thing. Let's
not get sloppy just because it's almost Halloween.
Ghouls are the more disgusting of the two.
They were evil spirits who robbed graves to eat the dead (This was before fast food
hamburgers). The 19th century low-life grave robbers who provided doctors with fresh
corpses on which to experiment were also called ghouls.
Goblins were frightfully ugly sprites who
could be bad as bad can be, but sometimes were merely mischievous. The latter were often
called hobgoblins. Some goblins were also said to come with old houses (and you thought
crabgrass was a problem).
Why do we call people who turn into
wolves "werewolves?"
Well, what would YOU call a person who
turned into a wolf? Something respectful, I hope, if he were standing nearby.
The werewolf legend dates back at least to
ancient Rome. The King of Arcadia was said to have been turned into a wolf when he sought
to test the divinity of the god Jupiter by serving him a hash made from human flesh.
Jupiter, who was probably partial to omelets, took offense and before you know it, the
King was howling at the moon.
Oh, the word werewolf comes from the Old
English, "wer," meaning man. Yes, man-wolf sounds backwards, but what do you
expect from a guy who walks around on all fours?
Why do pumpkins become
jack-o'-lanterns on Halloween?
It all started with the Druids, a learned,
priestly class among the ancient Celts. At their October 31 feast celebrating the end of
summer, the spirits of the dead returned for a night. The Druids, the first ghostbusters,
lit fires to keep away the unwanted guests.
In the early Middle Ages, the Church
co-opted the holiday, making it All Saint's Day (also called All Hallows Day and Eve, from
which we get Halloween). It was brought to America in the 1840s by Irish Catholic
immigrants, along with the holdover custom from pagan times of carrying a light to ward
off evil spirits. In Ireland, candles had been placed in carved out potatoes to make
jack-o'-lanterns. But in America, pumpkins were plentiful, and it was the light shining
from them that told marauding spirits: hit the road, Jack!
