Playlist Friday: A Canadian Indie Halloween

Halloween is tomorrow and we have a whole lot of music to help you celebrate, Canadian Indie style. The playlist began back on the old CBC R3 site back when we could make playlists on there. I moved it over to Spotify and we have been adding to it every year and it is now well over 250 tracks and 16 hours long.

It’s a Halloween extravaganza of spooky, creepy, scary songs. There are plenty of dark songs of blood, killing, and death to fit the mood. Lots of creatures and monsters such as witches, ghosts, zombies, vampires etc. The Devil/Satan/Beelzebub makes an appearance from Hell. There are also a bunch of songs that just sounded fitting for Halloween to me.

If 16 hours of Halloween music is a little frightening to you, don’t freak out, I have made a 2 hour playlist as well. They are on both Spotify and YouTube. Now read an interesting bit about Halloween below that came from Time and Date dot com.

Halloween has Celtic origins. In pre-Christian times, many people believed that spirits from the underworld and ghosts of dead people could visit the world of the living on the night of October 31. These spirits could harm the living or take them back to the underworld. To avoid this, people started dressing up as ghosts and spirits if they left their homes on October 31. They hoped that this would confuse the ghosts and spirits.

Halloween was also a time, when spirits might give messages to people. In some areas, it was traditional for unmarried girls to poor molten lead into water. The shape that the lead took when it hardened was seen as a clue to the professions of their future husbands. Halloween traditions were brought to Canada by Irish and Scottish immigrants. Halloween is now celebrated in a range of other countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.

Whatever traditions you use to celebrate I hope it is spooktacular! Like everything else this year, it will be different but I hope you find a way to celebrate. Maybe this music will help. Have a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!