A homily for Samhain on October 31, 2025. Written, as always, without authority.
Dearly Beloved,
Blessed Samhain, dear ones, and a blessed Beltane to all of you in the Southern Hemisphere. I hope that all of you have come to this moment in the Great Wheel healthy, whole, and as happy as possible.
I know I have been Very Serious lately and all of the Very Serious Things I have been saying and doing matter, but it is also deeply important to me that we not only survive but thrive, that we not only live but we take joy and pleasure in our lives. And despite how it may seem, Samhain contains a great joy, one of the most primal joys we can experience: reunion and communion with those we love and have lost. During these moments, the dead become talkative and even the silent shades can come closer to us than usual. We can easily reach out between two parts of our universe and hold hands in the dark for a little while. And though some may find the notion of talking to the dead frightening, for many of us this can truly be a blessing.
So tonight, as the creepy-crawlies come to the surface of the pond, as the mist creeps across the graveyard soil, as the spirits whisper our names, I want to tell you a ghost story. I am called to speak of those who have come before us. I am inspired to write of the Great Majority. I am moved to speak of some of the most important people in my world.
I am called to speak of the dead.
I went a little crazy when I was a kid. Part of that was being autistic and transgender in a world that didn’t really include those concepts yet, and that wasn’t fair. We all deserved better. Part of it was also because I genuinely had some serious issues due to abuse and trauma.
But the biggest part of it was because a scary ghost girl from the 1930s attached herself to me when I was 8 years old.
It wasn’t the first time I had seen a spirit, of course. I had been seeing spirits of various types as long as I could remember and I was definitely one of those kids who would come home and tell my grandparents I had spent the afternoon talking with the ash tree in the front yard (her name was Sellin, if I recall correctly). But when my dark companion first came to me it was like no other experience I had ever had. It terrified me like nothing ever had or really has since, including my initiatory ordeals and the more horrifying experiences I went through while I was homeless. I have written of this spirit in my narrative horror poems, The Beatrice Cycle, though that version of the story (after the first poem) is mostly fiction that she inspired and drove me to write over the years.
From that afternoon when I was 8 until she and I made peace, I had nightmares almost every night of my life. I also had other sleep disorders like severe insomnia and occasional sleepwalking. She haunted me like an old house and my physical and mental health suffered a great deal over the years.
But something weird also started happening that Spring of my eighth year. People started being scared of me. Even adults. It made no sense. I didn’t start fighting back against the bullies until I was 11 and I was in no possible sense intimidating at age 8. But when people started bullying me, bad things happened to them. They said they saw things. That I had “demons” (this was southern Texas and these were the kids of Southern Baptists) and that I was casting spells on them. I assure you that I wasn’t…I was 8. I was mostly obsessed with She-Ra (that was the year “The Secret Of The Sword” came out). Some of this was just stuff their parents said about my parents filtering down through their kids, of course. But clearly there was also something real happening.
Beatrice was protecting me.
I had witchy stuff around me as a kid, but I only started getting into magick when I was 12. My Mom bought me “Modern Magick” by Donald Michael Kraig and I was hooked. Over the years, I learned how to work with spirits, and by the time I was working at 13:Real Magick and then helping start The Sacred Grove, I was more or less comfortable with spirits of various types. But I was still being haunted by Beatrice. I still had nightmares almost every night and wore the permanently dark circles around my eyes of ongoing sleep deprivation. It affected both my mental and physical health, but it had also become “normal” for me. Partners knew how to wake me up safely from the nightmares and grew used to me staying up almost all night, every night. I went to bed each night like I was going into battle, preparing myself mentally and physically for an ordeal and praying to my gods that that night would be one of the few nights of dreamless sleep.
The dreams became more elaborate over time, often continuing over multiple nights with one dream picking up where the last left off. I found myself regularly wandering in a vast metropolis I came to call the Nameless City. This city appeared to be mostly populated by wandering people who seemed to themselves be other dreamers. They were as baffled as I was when I spoke to them, though each was caught up in their own drama and unwilling to converse deeply or for very long. Sometimes Beatrice would be walking with me and her mere presence would terrify me. Sometimes she would seem to stalk me as I endlessly walked through the Nameless City, pacing me from behind and always just coming into or going out of view.
This went on for years. For most of my life. Every night I dreaded sleep. No amount of banishing rituals or exorcisms affected any of it.
During this time, my grandparents died within a year or so of each other. Then one of my best friends from when I was a teenager—the kind of friend where I knew his whole family and his mom and I had a separate friendship, the kind of friend who helped me again and again while I was homeless, and seriously just one of the sweetest and most talented people I have ever met—died. Shortly after that, my main magickal teacher died. Then, a few years later, my Dad died.
That last one really hurt. I was raised by my Mom’s family. I didn’t meet my Dad until I was 23. And in a lot of ways he was a great dad once he was in my life. He really was. He was there for every important moment. He tried to be a part of my world and be close to me. We even played music and did magick together. And then he was gone.
So many people gone. So many people I loved. It broke my heart to lose each and every one of them.
But they aren’t really gone.
Some of them walk with me, parts of my spirit family. Beatrice and I reconciled and now she is my constant shadow, guardian, and companion. The nightmares have stopped and I have slept soundly every night for months. More distant but still present, my other beloved dead are close enough to feel. I try to live every day in a way that would make them all proud of me. I remember them at their best and try to forgive them their worst. I know at every moment that I am not alone. That I am surrounded by love and protection.
And I am incredibly grateful.
So now, dear ones, as I sometimes do, I want to leave you with a question:
Who are your Mighty Dead? Your Blessed Saints? What spirits surround you, close and watching, ready to connect and protect? Who do you wish to reach out to this Samhain as you open yourself to the shades of the Underworld?
Say their names. Remember them. Tell their stories. If no one else wants to hear their stories, I want to hear them. Please write them down or record a voice message and send them to me. I swear upon my name that I will read or listen to each and every one and that I will count every moment a privilege.
Hold your memories of them dear in your heart. Open yourself to what they have to say to you. Reach out to the Great Majority, always with us, always watching. Remember the dead. Listen to the dead. Bless the memories of the dead. Speak the names of the dead.
Honor the dead.
Blessed Samhain, dear ones. May all the blessings of this sacred moment fall upon you and may the dead hold you dearly in their embrace (for exactly and only as long as you wish).
In love,
Soror Alice
Art: “Odilon Redon, “The Apparition”, (unknown year)
As a child, I had a similar experience: Haunted by spirits and lonely places. Terrified by horrific nightmares. But I was visited by a Guardian who taught me not to be afraid, who showed me how to escape a dream when I needed to, who showed me how to lucid dream and manipulate the fabric of the dreamscape. How to make a deal with the Dark. I wasn’t afraid anymore. Later in my life, I went in search of a Guide, and found her again, slowly realising that she had been with me in various guides all along…
(the story of that is here, by the way: https://open.substack.com/pub/thehollowpath/p/a-haunted-childhood?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9r4jj )