Spooky Parades

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Samhain (or Halloween to those of you outside Ireland) is creeping close, and the abundance of bone garlands and grisly dioramas in shops and on doorsteps lifts my spirits. Sadly in Ireland we don’t have a festival such as Thanksgiving to function as a buffer between now and the winter festive season, so by the weekend we’ll be inhaling pine-scented perfumes and nodding our heads to agressively-upbeat carols. Pumpkins will be pulped.

I do not want to shake my fist and mutter ‘Bah, humbug!’, since the next holiday has its perks, but I’m always sad when the decorations switch from gory to cheery.

But spooky days remain, and to celebrate, our sun — in the volatile grip of solar maximum — decided to pull faces for Halloween.

Here are two recent ones:

Those are large coronal holes in the Sun’s outer atmosphere, which are dark, low-density areas that emit high-speed solar winds composed of charged particles. When they are directed at Earth they can cause geomagnetic disturbances and increase the chances of seeing auroras. The sun may be planning on incredible light shows for the season that’s in it.

As you might remember from my discussion on Interstellar Object 3I/Atlas, it is motoring through out solar system at tremendous speed, and is currently behind the sun from the point of view of the Earth. It had its precise alignment on October 21/22 — a superior conjunction — and to celebrate the sun shot out four massive Coronal Mass Ejections directly where Atlas was passing by (Mars and Venus got singed also). Because it was on the far side of the sun we can’t measure the strength of the solar flares exactly, but we can be grateful they weren’t aimed at us.

The sunspots from which the massive CMEs were ejected will rotate towards us in about two weeks. Hopefully they will be exhausted by then…

Today, 3I/Atlas hits its perihelion (the period where it is closest to the sun) during its grand tour of our solar system. It’s quite likely the sun will start shooting out more fireworks, hopefully aimed at the interloper and not at us.

I will be flying to England tomorrow evening, so I would appreciate it if the sun would behave while I’m in transit…

Luckily for those of us living in Galway, we’re the home of Macnas, an internationally-acclaimed spectacle theatre company which was founded in 1986 and specialises in large-scale outdoor performances that blend theatre, visual arts, and community participation. The Macnas Halloween Parade has become a hugely popular event and every year the Macnas team explore a different theme. Thousands of people stream into Galway to watch it in person.

This makes the city a bit of a nightmare to navigate on the designated evening, so I don’t attend annually, but since we had visiting relatives we patiently waited in the large crowds as dusk enveloped Galway’s medieval streets.

This year the theme was ‘An Treun – The Summoning of the Lost’, which was inspired by the recent discovery of a previously-unknown Bram Stoker short story called ‘Gibbet Hill’. It was published on 17 December, 1890 in a supplement to the Daily Express, and it was found by several Stoker sleuths in the archives of the National Library of Ireland. (1)

I’m sure all of you know that Bram Stoker was the Irish horror writer best known for the classic vampire novel, Dracula. In fact, the Halloween celebration in Dublin is called the Bram Stoker Festival. (2)

I read ‘Gibbet Hill’, and it’s an odd, atmospheric piece indicating Stoker’s penchant for snakes and worms (as evidenced in his 1911 novel, The Lair of the White Worm). There is an interesting element at the end that reminds me of the famous chest-bursting scene from the original 1979 Alien film. Funny enough, it also brought to mind the comic book mini-series I wrote with Kim Newman for Dark Horse in their Hellboy Universe, The Mysteries of Unland, which featured giant eels as the monsters. It made me consider there could be a spin-off Irish story wiggling in the cultural loam.

Macnas took the Stoker piece and commissioned a new story for children called ‘Holding Up The Sky – The Return of the Lost’, written by Louise Lowe and illustrated by Lisa Sweeney.3 This was the primary inspiration for the parade, which was directed by Louise Lowe aided by lead designer Owen Boss of ANU Productions.

This year’s parade celebrates environmental awareness through the story of the Corncrake, one of Ireland’s most endangered birds. A century ago, its distinctive call could be heard across the country – until the fields fell silent. Through this year’s parade, young people and schools can come together to explore themes of climate change, biodiversity, and cultural memory, reimagining what has been lost and daring to bring it back.

You can look through my album of photos on my Flickr account if you fancy a small sampler of the resulting fantastic procession. The city was lively but in good humour. Later that night merry people in fun costumes thronged the streets and drinking establishments, and I observed spontaneous dancing by slender women dressed up as marionettes to the music performed by buskers. Traditionally, this is considered a period when the veil between the realms is thin, so with all the odd characters rambling Galway’s paths, it would be easy to overlook strange folk who have come over to our side for a wee gander.

If you can handle the numbers, a visit to Galway during the Macnas Parade is an entertaining evening.

And Dubliners, don’t feel left out. You’ll get a performance of the parade this Sunday, 2nd of November.

On that afternoon I’ll be attending the World Fantasy Awards Ceremony at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, where I’m nominated in the Best Short Fiction category for my story, ‘Raptor’, which appeared in the Heartwood anthology, edited by Dan Coxon and published by PS Publishing in England.

I’ll also be part of a panel discussion this Thursday, where I’ll be chatting about ‘British and Irish Folk’ with writers Tristan Gray, Rhiannon A Grist, and Cardinal Cox.

I’m looking forward to meeting friends and colleagues and attending the wide variety of events during the four-day conference. I’m sure I’ll be somewhat nervous at the ceremony, but it’s been marvellous to have my work singled out by jurors James Brogden, Jessica Day George, Lee Murray, Jonathan Oliver, and Molly Tanzer.

Whatever happens, it’s been an honour!

Wish me luck!