Who were the gwrachod?

The gwrachod, meaning hags or witches, were groups described in later accounts of Welsh Halloween traditions who went from house to house in disguise. Accounts describe masks, sheepskins and unusual clothing, together with dancing, joking and performances. They provide an interesting example of disguise and performance associated with Nos Galan Gaeaf.

The Origins of Halloween Costumes: Folklore and the Supernatural

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Written by Simon A. Williams

Ghosts, witches and skeletons may seem like quintessential Halloween costumes, but their story is far more complicated than the familiar tale of disguising yourself to fool evil spirits. From seasonal festivals and medieval mumming to Scottish guising, Welsh traditions and the rise of modern Halloween, the costume we know today emerged through centuries of changing beliefs, customs and entertainment.

Key Facts

Halloween: 31 October, the eve of All Saints' Day.
All Hallows' Eve: The Christian name from which the word Halloween developed.
Samhain: A Gaelic seasonal festival associated with the beginning of winter and often discussed in connection with Halloween's origins.
Medieval Hallowtide: The period encompassing All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.
Guising: A later British and Irish tradition involving disguise, performance and visiting homes for food or gifts.
Souling: A tradition in which people went from house to house offering prayers for the dead in return for food, particularly soul cakes.
Turnip lanterns: Traditional Halloween lanterns in Britain and Ireland before the pumpkin became dominant.
Modern costumes: Developed through several overlapping traditions rather than from one identifiable medieval practice.
Important distinction: There is limited direct evidence that medieval people wore costumes specifically for Halloween or to deceive supernatural beings.

Halloween costumes are now almost inseparable from the celebration itself. Witches, ghosts, skeletons, vampires and increasingly elaborate pop-culture characters appear every October. But the familiar idea that people have dressed as supernatural beings for centuries to frighten or deceive evil spirits is considerably more complicated than popular Halloween lore suggests.

The history of Halloween costumes is not a simple journey from an ancient Celtic ritual to the modern fancy-dress shop. Instead, it developed through a mixture of seasonal customs, religious observance, folk belief, performance, disguise and, eventually, commercial entertainment.

The further we look back, the less certain the evidence becomes. Medieval people certainly used masks, disguises and costumes for festivals and performances, but there is much less evidence for a specifically medieval Halloween costume tradition.

So where did the idea come from?

Did Halloween Costumes Begin With Samhain?

The most common explanation for Halloween costumes begins with Samhain, the Gaelic festival marking the beginning of winter.

Samhain seasonal traditions in a late Iron Age Gaelic settlement

Samhain is certainly important when discussing the wider history of Halloween. Early Irish literature associates the seasonal festival with gatherings, feasting and encounters between the human world and the supernatural. Later folklore also connected the period with unusual activity and supernatural beings.

But this does not prove that people at ancient Samhain routinely dressed as ghosts or monsters.

Much of what is now said about Samhain costumes comes from later folklore and nineteenth- and twentieth-century interpretations. The surviving evidence is not strong enough to establish a straightforward tradition in which ancient Celts disguised themselves specifically to avoid supernatural beings.

That distinction is important because Halloween history is often presented as though every modern custom has a direct ancient origin.

It does not.

The modern Halloween costume is better understood as the result of several traditions developing and sometimes merging over a very long period.

Medieval Hallowtide and the Dead

By the Middle Ages, 31 October formed part of the Christian calendar.

All Hallows' Eve preceded All Saints' Day on 1 November, followed by All Souls' Day on 2 November. Together these dates formed the period known as Hallowtide.

Medieval villagers returning from an All Hallows’ Eve church service near a churchyard

The emphasis was strongly religious.

All Saints' Day honoured the saints, while All Souls' Day provided a specific occasion for remembering and praying for deceased members of the Christian community.

Medieval people lived much closer to death than most people in modern Britain do. Disease, childbirth, accidents and warfare could all bring sudden death, and families frequently experienced the loss of relatives.

The dead were therefore not simply a Halloween theme. They were part of everyday religious and social life.

Churches held services and masses. Bells were rung. Candles were lit. Families remembered their dead.

Alongside these formal religious practices existed popular customs and local folklore.

This mixture of official Christianity and popular tradition would become important in the later development of Halloween.

Did Medieval People Wear Halloween Costumes?

This is where the historical record becomes much thinner.

Three people in medieval or fantasy attire walking through a village street at night.

There is evidence that medieval Europeans wore masks and disguises during festivals, processions, performances and seasonal celebrations. Mumming and related traditions involved people adopting characters, disguising their identities and performing in front of others.

But that does not mean these were Halloween costumes in the modern sense.

Nor is there good evidence that medieval people routinely dressed as witches, ghosts or demons on 31 October.

Some modern descriptions claim that disguises were worn to confuse evil spirits by making the wearer appear supernatural. It is an attractive explanation, but the evidence is insufficient to treat it as the universal or original purpose of Halloween costumes.

Disguise had many possible meanings.

It could be theatrical. It could be humorous. It could allow ordinary social roles to be temporarily reversed. It could form part of a seasonal ritual or communal performance.

The boundary between entertainment and ritual was also much less clearly defined than it is today.

A person wearing a mask during a winter festival was not necessarily participating in a "Halloween costume" tradition.

This is one reason historians have to be careful when connecting medieval masquerade with modern Halloween.

Mumming, Masks and Seasonal Performance

One of the most useful pieces of the puzzle is the long tradition of seasonal performance.

Across Britain and Europe, performers could appear in disguise, wear masks or adopt exaggerated characters. Some performances involved mock battles, comic figures, death and resurrection, or the temporary reversal of normal social roles.

These traditions were not confined to Halloween.

They appeared at different times of the year and varied enormously between regions.

What they demonstrate, however, is that the idea of transforming one's identity through costume has deep roots in European popular culture.

The costume could turn an ordinary villager into a king, fool, monster, animal or supernatural figure.

That makes the later development of Halloween disguises much easier to understand.

People already had cultural traditions involving masks, performance and transformation. Halloween eventually provided another setting in which these ideas could flourish.

Guising and the Development of Halloween Disguise

A much clearer connection between Halloween and costume appears in later British and Irish traditions.

Guising involved people, particularly young people, dressing up or disguising themselves and going from house to house. They could perform a song, rhyme, joke or other piece of entertainment in exchange for food or a small gift.

The disguise was therefore part of a social performance.

It was not necessarily about hiding from ghosts.

The practice became particularly associated with Scotland and Ireland and eventually contributed to the traditions that crossed the Atlantic.

Wales developed its own Halloween customs too, including traditions associated with Nos Galan Gaeaf. Later accounts describe groups of people going from house to house in disguise and performing for others.

The evidence for these customs is largely later than the medieval period, which is precisely why it is safer to describe them as part of the development of Halloween costume traditions rather than claiming that they were unchanged medieval practices.

This distinction also helps explain why Halloween costumes became associated with entertainment as much as superstition.

Souling: The Christian Side of Halloween

Another important tradition was souling.

Villagers receiving soul cakes during the medieval English tradition of souling

People went from house to house offering prayers for the souls of the dead in exchange for food, particularly soul cakes.

The practice provides an interesting contrast with modern trick-or-treating.

Modern children generally offer little or nothing in exchange for sweets beyond the ritual phrase "trick or treat". Souling had a more explicitly religious purpose.

The visitor offered prayers.

The householder provided food.

The dead formed the connection between the two.

This tradition demonstrates how Halloween and Hallowtide could involve people moving between households, performing a social or religious role and receiving food.

It therefore forms part of the much wider historical background to modern Halloween customs.

But again, souling itself was not a costume tradition.

The modern Halloween celebration emerged by combining and transforming many practices that originally had different purposes.

Costumes and Supernatural Belief

Halloween developed in cultures where supernatural belief was woven into everyday explanations of the world.

Ghosts, spirits, witches, fairies and other supernatural beings appeared throughout British and Irish folklore. People had different ideas about where such beings lived, what they wanted and how humans should behave around them.

This provides important context for Halloween costumes.

A frightening costume did not necessarily represent a literal attempt to fool a supernatural being. It could instead turn something frightening into something that could be performed, mocked or enjoyed.

Folklore provides numerous examples of supernatural beings being represented through masks, stories and performances.

Welsh traditions surrounding the Tylwyth Teg, or Fair Folk, provide one particularly interesting example of how supernatural belief could shape the way communities understood unexplained events and misfortune.

Our article on Welsh Witch Trials, Fairy Belief and the Tylwyth Teg examines this relationship in more detail.

The important point is not that the Tylwyth Teg created Halloween costumes.

They did not.

Rather, traditions such as these show the wider cultural environment in which supernatural stories, seasonal customs, disguise and performance could coexist.

Halloween costumes eventually became one way of turning those ideas into something visible and participatory.

From Turnip Lanterns to Pumpkins

Costumes were not the only Halloween tradition to evolve.

Lanterns provide another good example.

In Britain and Ireland, people traditionally carved turnips and other root vegetables and placed candles inside them. These could be used as lanterns and became associated with Halloween folklore.

When Halloween traditions became established in North America, pumpkins proved much easier to carve.

The pumpkin eventually became one of the most recognisable symbols of Halloween.

The same pattern can be seen with costumes.

The modern Halloween costume is not simply an ancient object that survived unchanged.

It has been repeatedly adapted to suit the society using it.

When Did Halloween Costumes Become Popular?

The transformation into the modern Halloween costume accelerated during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Halloween customs travelled with Irish and Scottish immigrants to North America. Guising and other traditions changed as they encountered new communities and environments.

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Halloween celebrations in North America increasingly involved parties, decorations, games and costumes.

Costumes gradually became less closely connected to religious observance and more closely associated with entertainment.

The range of characters expanded.

Ghosts and witches remained popular, but costumes increasingly included animals, fictional characters, historical figures and, eventually, characters from film, television and popular culture.

Mass production transformed the market again.

Instead of making a costume from old clothes, paper, cloth or household objects, families could buy ready-made costumes.

Halloween had become both a cultural tradition and a major commercial event.

Why Are Witches, Ghosts and Skeletons Still Popular?

The persistence of supernatural costumes is not difficult to understand.

Halloween has retained a fascination with death, darkness and the unknown.

Ghosts represent the dead.

Skeletons represent mortality.

Witches connect Halloween with centuries of European folklore and later ideas about magic.

Monsters represent things that exist outside the normal boundaries of human society.

Costumes allow people to temporarily adopt these identities.

That is probably more significant than any single claim about ancient people trying to fool spirits.

Halloween provides an unusual cultural space in which frightening things can become entertaining.

The monster becomes a costume.

The ghost becomes a joke.

The witch becomes a child carrying a bucket of sweets.

Fear is transformed into play.

The Origins of Halloween Costumes

There is no single moment when Halloween costumes were invented.

The modern costume emerged from layers of tradition.

Ancient seasonal festivals such as Samhain form part of the wider background to Halloween, although the evidence does not support every modern claim about Samhain costumes.

Medieval Hallowtide established an important religious framework around the remembrance of the dead.

European traditions of masking, mumming and seasonal performance demonstrated the long-standing appeal of temporary transformation.

Later practices such as souling and guising introduced house-to-house visits, performance and the exchange of food or gifts.

British and Irish folklore supplied an enormous cast of supernatural figures.

Migration carried Halloween traditions across the Atlantic, where they developed again.

Finally, mass entertainment and commercialisation transformed the costume into the familiar product we recognise today.

The modern Halloween costume is therefore not simply a relic of the medieval world.

It is something more interesting: a cultural collage assembled over centuries.

The witch, ghost or skeleton on a modern doorstep may have little in common with the beliefs of a medieval villager. Yet the underlying fascination is remarkably familiar.

For centuries, people have used stories, masks, costumes and performances to explore the things that frighten them.

Halloween simply gives us permission to do it once a year.

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