---
title: What Halloween Means to Me
description: How Halloween and the paranormal gave me to language to help me understand myself.
image: https://claredugmore.com/hubfs/Oct%20Essay.png
---

[Skip to content](https://claredugmore.com/blog/what-halloween-means-to-me#main-content)

![Website 2026 (1)](https://claredugmore.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Website%202026%20(1).png?width=1000&height=275&name=Website%202026%20(1).png)

- [🖤Home](https://claredugmore.com)
- 🖤Explore My World
  
  Show submenu for 🖤Explore My World 
  
    - [Books](https://claredugmore.com/books)
    - [Ongoing Stories](https://claredugmore.com/ongoing-stories)
    - [Blog](https://claredugmore.com/blog)
    - [Essays](https://claredugmore.com/essays)
    - [Dear Past Me](https://www.kindredcreativityclub.com/)
- [🖤Letters From Clare](https://claredugmore.com/letters-from-clare)
- [🖤Connect](https://claredugmore.com/connect)

Open main navigation

Close main navigation

- [🖤Home](https://claredugmore.com)
- 🖤Explore My World
  
  Show submenu for 🖤Explore My World 
  
    - [Books](https://claredugmore.com/books)
    - [Ongoing Stories](https://claredugmore.com/ongoing-stories)
    - [Blog](https://claredugmore.com/blog)
    - [Essays](https://claredugmore.com/essays)
    - [Dear Past Me](https://www.kindredcreativityclub.com/)
- [🖤Letters From Clare](https://claredugmore.com/letters-from-clare)
- [🖤Connect](https://claredugmore.com/connect)

[All posts](https://claredugmore.com/blog/all)

 October 19, 2026

# What Halloween Means to Me

![Picture of Clare Dugmore](https://claredugmore.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Clare%20April%2023.jpg?width=50&name=Clare%20April%2023.jpg) By  [Clare Dugmore](https://claredugmore.com/blog/author/clare-dugmore)  ·   3 minute read

How Halloween and the paranormal gave me to language to help me understand myself.

---

I always love this time of year. I’m sitting here wearing a bat T-shirt and bat leggings, while drinking Earl Grey out of a bat mug, with bats decorating my home.

And it’s not just bats. Take a look at my website banner, and you’ll see a crow there. I also have crow pins and a crow T-shirt.

As far back as I can remember, I have been fascinated with the different, the unusual, the other.

As a child, I adored *The Little Mermaid*. Other favourites of mine included[Magical Princess Minky Momo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Princess_Minky_Momo) and the old 1990s BBC adaptation of *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe*, especially the White Witch, Jadis.

As I got older, my fascination with the unusual developed into a love of folklore, mythology, legends, and, of course, witches.

Much to the chagrin of my mother, who is a Christian and has her own reasons for disliking witchcraft and Halloween.

She didn’t approve of it, and once I reconnected with God, this fascination with the *spooky* also felt at odds with my faith.

For a while, I struggled to reconcile these two parts of myself. But eventually, I began to question *why* I’d always been drawn to these characters — witches, vampires, mermaids, fairies.

Even though my writing career started out with me publishing two contemporary romance novels, I have now switched firmly to paranormal, and I also have *countless* fantasy and paranormal books in my drafts/shelved projects pile.

Magic speaks to me.

And I don’t mean in a religious way. I mean in a personal way.

I know I’ve mentioned this countless times before, but growing up as someone with undiagnosed ADHD and autism made me feel ‘different’ in a way I could never fully articulate. And with that feeling of difference came a feeling I might not be ‘enough’.

But I had these characters — Ariel, Minky Momo, the Charmed sisters, Willow from *Buffy*. Even the villains, like Disney’s Maleficent or Ursula, were famous and adored, despite being ‘bad’.

These characters showed me that those who were different — the mermaid who wanted to be human, the shape-shifting magical girl from space, the actual witches — were worthy of love and acceptance. Their lives were no more or less valid than anyone else’s.

I started to realise I’d been doing something similar to what Marvel Comics does, using ‘witches’ — or, in Marvel’s case, mutants — as shorthand for ‘otherness’.

Over the decades, the X-Men have become a powerful allegory for marginalised communities, using mutants\* to explore prejudice, persecution, and otherness. And without even realising it, I’d been doing something similar with witches.

\*A little aside here. Because of my exposure to both X-Men and witchy media like Charmed, to me, mutants with genetic abilities and witches with magical powers are practically the same. It’s why my Triquentra witches and Estelle from *To Burn Beside You* are a blend of mutant and witch.

I decided at some point, I think around 15, that if people were going to think I was weird, why not lean into it? I had newly dyed black hair, and a younger girl called me “Nancy Witch” (after Nancy from *The Craft*) as a taunt. Only her taunt backfired, and I adopted it as a nickname!

Of course, it still took me a *long* time to fully accept my true self. And part of that journey was diagnosis and understanding more about neurodivergence.

But now I fill my home, my books, and the media I consume with things people might think of as Halloween-related, or spooky, or even Goth.

Not because I follow any pagan religion, or because I am especially enmeshed in Goth culture. Heck, I don’t even *like* horror films! Lol.

But I do like the weird, misunderstood outsiders. Be they bats, ravens, black cats, vampires, or even more ‘mainstream’ characters like Sanrio’s Kuromi.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the little girl who recorded the organ music from *Gremlins 2* because she thought it was funky, or danced around the house impersonating Batty Koda from *FernGully*, finally realised she could indulge in these behaviours *all the time*.

Not just around safe people. Not just when it was socially acceptable.

**I stopped believing that fitting in was a requirement for being worthy of love.**

Now I celebrate Halloween because, hello, sweets?! And because I love that ‘spoopy’ mix of cute and spooky.

But more importantly, it’s a day when I can proudly declare:

**I’m different. I’m weird. I’m other. And I’m proud of it.**

---

Stay tuned for next month’s essay, which I see as a companion piece to this one. I’ll be exploring the fictional outsiders, including characters like Jean Grey and Carrie White, and how they’ve shaped the stories I tell — including my Novel-November project **TO BURN BESIDE YOU.**

---

Cross-posted to [Substack](https://claredugmore.substack.com/p/what-halloween-means-to-me) and [Medium](https://medium.com/@claredugmore/what-halloween-means-to-me-f6664fdc9e08)

Share: [facebook-f icon](http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https://claredugmore.com/blog/what-halloween-means-to-me) [twitter icon](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://claredugmore.com/blog/what-halloween-means-to-me) [envelope icon](mailto:?body=https://claredugmore.com/blog/what-halloween-means-to-me)

## Related posts

[![](https://claredugmore.com/hubfs/120824%20B3.jpg)](https://claredugmore.com/blog/memorable-monday-interview-with-artist-lainey-t)

### [Memorable Monday - Interview with Artist Lainey T](https://claredugmore.com/blog/memorable-monday-interview-with-artist-lainey-t)

[![](https://claredugmore.com/hubfs/SMFD%20Review.jpg)](https://claredugmore.com/blog/review-shelter-me-from-darkness-by-katie-l.smith)

### [REVIEW: Shelter Me From Darkness, by Katie L.Smith](https://claredugmore.com/blog/review-shelter-me-from-darkness-by-katie-l.smith)

[![](https://claredugmore.com/hubfs/Sept%20Essay.png)](https://claredugmore.com/blog/one-year-with-kiss-me-after-the-kill)

[Writing Update](https://claredugmore.com/blog/tag/writing-update)

### [One Year With Kiss Me After The Kill](https://claredugmore.com/blog/one-year-with-kiss-me-after-the-kill)

![rose divider (1)](https://claredugmore.com/hubfs/rose%20divider%20(1).png "rose divider (1)")

[Letters from Clare](https://claredugmore.com/letters-from-clare) | [Books](https://claredugmore.com/books?hsLang=en) | [Ongoing Stories](https://claredugmore.com/ongoing-stories?hsLang=en) | [Blog](https://claredugmore.com/blog?hsLang=en)| [Essays](https://claredugmore.com/essays?hsLang=en)

[Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/WriterClareDugmore/) | [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/claredugmore/) | [Threads](https://www.threads.net/@claredugmore) | [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/claredugmore.bsky.social) | [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@claredugmore)

© 2026 Clare Dugmore • Stories of connection, belonging, and hope.

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "Clare Dugmore",
    "url" : "https://claredugmore.com/blog/author/clare-dugmore"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2026-10-19T16:25:23.025Z",
  "datePublished" : "2026-10-19T16:19:22.000Z",
  "headline" : "What Halloween Means to Me",
  "image" : [ "https://claredugmore.com/hubfs/Oct%20Essay.png" ],
  "mainEntityOfPage" : {
    "@id" : "https://claredugmore.com/blog/what-halloween-means-to-me",
    "@type" : "WebPage"
  },
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject"
    },
    "name" : "Author Clare Dugmore"
  }
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "Article",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : [ "Clare Dugmore" ],
    "url" : "https://claredugmore.com/blog/author/clare-dugmore"
  },
  "datePublished" : "2026-10-19T16:19:22+0000",
  "description" : "How Halloween and the paranormal gave me to language to help me understand myself.",
  "headline" : "What Halloween Means to Me",
  "image" : "https://144560029.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/144560029/Oct%20Essay.png",
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "url" : ""
    },
    "name" : "Author Clare Dugmore"
  },
  "url" : "https://claredugmore.com/blog/what-halloween-means-to-me"
}
```