Halloween has always been a time for spells and divinations. Here are five oldies here for your personal research into the subject of one of the most magical nights of the year.
Broom Run
On Halloween night, go outside your house in bare feet and night clothes. Put the house broom over your left shoulder and run around your house three times like this. On your third time around, you will catch a glimpse of your future spouse.
The Cellar Steps
On Halloween night at midnight, you are supposed to stand with your back to the cellar steps. Holding a mirror, look behind you and you will see your future spouse in the cellar darkness.
Graveyard Walk
On Halloween night, you are supposed to walk through a graveyard backwards, holding a mirror in front of you to see behind you. Doing this, you will see a vision of your future husband or wife.
Hanging Apples
Like bobbing for apples, it was a custom to hang apples from the barn rafters on Halloween night. Party goers would try and capture the hanging apples between their teeth. Young people would choose an apple, name it after the person they loved, and then try and capture it with their teeth. If they succeeded it meant that the person they named will love them, too.
The Shirt
To see a vision of her future husband, a woman should take a new, unworn man’s shirt to a stream on Halloween night. There she should rinse the shirt in the running water and wring it out. Upon returning home, she must turn the shirt inside out and hang it to dry in front of the kitchen fire. Leaving the kitchen door open and all the lights off, she will see a vision of her future husband come into her home and turn the shirt right side out.
Sources:
Dresslar, F. (1907). Superstition and education. Berkeley: University Press.
The little giant encyclopedia of superstitions. (1999). New York: Sterling Pub.
Thomas, Daniel Lindsey, and Lucy Blayney Thomas. Kentucky Superstitions. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1920. Print.
